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How God Can Be Cognized/How Can One Come to Perfection?

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How Can One Come to Perfection?

We have already discussed that the evolutionary process of development consists of three main lines: intellectual, ethical, and psychoenergetical ones. The first two must be mastered first. As one masters them, God – under natural conditions — opens up for such a person the stages of psychoenergetical work.

But if one interferes with this process and tries to drag ethically and intellectually immature students to higher stages of psychoenergetical work, violating thus the laws of the methodology of spiritual development, — then this may result in strengthening of ethical vices of the students and even in gross psychical disorders of schizophrenic or paranoiac types.

In the psychoenergetical aspect, work with the spiritual heart is favorable and suitable for all people independent of age or way of life, of course if one desires it. This level of work, which ensures the development of the bioenergetical organ responsible for the production of the emotions of cordial love, is useful and safe for everyone.

As for higher stages of psychoenergetical work, here one needs to select students more carefully. For such a selection, in addition to personal conversations, one can suggest to the students to speak at the seminars or to fill in a questionnaire. The questionnaire can include political questions about the student’s attitude towards certain party or political leader (in this way one can distinguish, for example, politically immature aspirants); there can also be questions on everyday matters.

Let me give some examples of the latter:

“What would happen if one stirs sugar in tea using a knife?” The correct answer is: “Sugar will dissolve”. People of lower intellectual development can respond in a way typical of them (at least in Russia): “The knife will become blunt”.

I also used ecological tests on intellectuality. For example, we were walking in the autumn forest. It was the time of leaf fall. At one place, there were about twenty oak leaves lying on the ground, but there was no large oak tree nearby. I asked the group: “How did these leaves appear here?” Everyone looked up but could not see any oak tree: there were only birches and spruces. They began to suggest silly things, like: “Someone was carrying them and dropped them”, “A bird brought them here”… But the answer was simple: they fell from a small oak tree 50 cm tall and were lying near it. But this stereotype of thinking did not allow one to find such a solution: an oak must be a big tree with a large trunk! Thus, the students could not recognize an oak in a small tree without leaves.

For anyone experienced in spiritual problems it is clear that people who have not learned yet to think critically and independently cannot sort out numerous nuances of spiritual advancement. Such students will unavoidably be tempted by pseudo-teachers and pseudo-teachings!

There are many such examples.

Take for example the sect activity of Aum Shinrikyo. Its leader declared that he would make everyone who follows him perfect… A reasonable person understands that no one can make you perfect. Only you yourself through your own efforts and super-efforts can come to Perfection!… The tragic end of this sect is well known: the giant amount of money collected from fooled followers was used by Asahara for buying and making weapons for mass destruction of people. Paranoia? Most likely, yes. Personally, to me it was clear that he was a false teacher from the moment when I saw his photograph in a magazine for the first time: his energies were not like the energies of an Enlightened One. I warned everyone who became interested in his advertisement about this… What more could I do? Try to publish my opinion in the newspapers? But who of the newspaper editors would believe that one can make such a conclusion from a photograph?…

Another example is well-known in Russia fascist “White Brotherhood” with the cult of “Maria Devi Christos”. It was enough for their leaders to dress themselves with eccentric clothes, proclaim themselves Divine, and begin to conduct mass mysteries and initiations which were completely useless — and immediately masses of spiritually blinded young people came to them. And no one of the followers could see that the teachings of their leaders did not contain anything Divine but consisted only of primitive slogans…

What is the solution to this problem? What can one recommend to those who seek to begin walking the spiritual Path but do not know how to do this, where to find a true Teacher…

The answer to this question was given by God through the Bhagavad Gita, Quran, Bible: seek God, worship God, study God, love God, take Him as your Teacher, Helper, Father, Goal, strive to communicate with Him, to merge with Him! Do not seek this in people! And everything will be good then!

Avatar Babaji once laconically and precisely explained about how we should organize our lives on the Earth:

Truth — Simplicity — Love — Service — Struggle with the lower self for the sake of cognition of the Higher Self and Mergence with It.

Everyone desiring to begin one’s own Path can start with attempts to realize these principles.

For beginners the books [ 11, 41] can be very helpful.

And for those who want to more deeply study the Path I can recommend books [12; 16] and the books listed in the bibliographic section of this book.

* * *

It is necessary to know that all people traverse the largest part of their personal evolutionary path (it can happen only in this way) by developing themselves intellectually and ethically in usual earthly conditions. Their main task on this stage of development is to grow to the level where they can understand what is God, who are people, and what is the Will of God for us?

And only then one gains an opportunity to overcome many distorted and perverted ideas about the religious Path — and become oriented to living God, Who exists not in temples and not on icons but in the universe. Then such people begin to turn away from worldly interests and switch their attention to the Creator.

Only after that the time will come for them to begin intensive psychoenergetical work, which should result in Mergence with God and then in the personal Manifestation of Divinity.

If this sequence is violated, then unnecessary difficulties arise.

People seeking to become spiritual leaders must accept the principle that there are never many students ready for higher spiritual initiations; such students are always a few.

Only knowledge pertaining to the initial stages of the Path can be imparted to masses.

Let me also note that none of the Highest Divine Teachers on the Earth have ever revealed the higher psychoenergetical techniques to masses of people, though They knew such techniques for sure. They dedicated their preachings mainly to ethics and to a general outline of the Path. They gave higher initiations only to a few disciples.

I heard such an objection to this: God brings students to esoteric groups and He will lead them out when the time comes; the task of the teacher is only to impart knowledge.

Yes, God does this, protecting His most deserving students. And He allows teachers to make mistakes with other students and thus He gives to the teachers the freedom of will, the freedom of choice — to harm or not to harm people. Why? So, the teachers can realize themselves that they were wrong.

In a similar way He allows people to violate other laws, not only the laws of the spiritual development. People violate them and thus affect others’ destinies and build their own destinies.

Therefore, everyone, including esoteric teachers, must learn to observe the main ethical principle: “Do not harm others!”

* * *

Originally primitive or degraded with time religious movements consider people and God as two forever separated poles. We are sinful and powerless: our task consists only in avoiding going to hell with the help of prayers and sacrifices (sometimes bloody). And God is a distant and incognizable frightful creature (sometimes depicted by fantasies in the human body or in a body of some animal) who punishes people and struggles more or less successfully with the universal evil called devil. This being can give or not give worldly boons to us. In hope that he may give, one must beg him persistently, for example in this way: “Lord, give me this! Lord, give me that!”…

People with such an outlook cannot understand the desire of God that we should aspire to Mergence with Him by making efforts on self-perfection and by developing love for Him!

Yes, this is an interesting paradox: many believers cannot understand what one must do in relation to the fact that there is God!

The first thing they should understand is that the truth is opposite to the consumerist attitude towards God. There is no truth in believing that God is our servant who must give His grace to us! On the contrary: we, people, must regard ourselves as servants of God and must serve Him! It is we who must learn to love Him for our own good! And there is no sense in asking Him to love us: He loves us anyway!

But in order to realize this, one has to accept all the knowledge expounded in this and other books about God, about people, about the meaning of our lives and the laws of our development.

We must serve God! But how?

Again, many people who have pondered this question conclude that “serving God” means bowing down as a sign of their humility and worship, praising God in hymns.

Of course, this is better than panhandling something from God all the time! Because it strengthens one’s faith and helps one to lay the foundation of love for Him.

However, God wants more than this from us…

He wants us to improve ourselves on the Earth through work.

It is called karma yoga: improving oneself by working for the good of God, to be more precise: for the good of the Evolution of people on the Earth; personal interests in the result of such work must not play a leading role in such activities.

One might ask: why is this needed? Isn’t it true that we have to become engaged in the higher forms of meditation and to try to merge with Him as quickly as possible to leave the Earth forever? Wasn’t it taught by Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ?

This is a serious question that requires a detailed answer. Krishna spoke a lot about this. His answer consists in the following:

Only those become free from service to people who have cognized the Atman and found the meaning of life on the Earth only in further mastering of the Atman and then of Paramatman (God-the-Father).

How many such people are on the Earth? Very few, a few out of millions.

Krishna said: submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me — and live thus in Me!

But let me repeat: only very few can realize this precept right now.

Krishna said that they who cannot realize this precept should improve themselves in the art of meditation.

Yet, as we have discussed already in this book, very few can successfully practice meditative techniques. Many people need to become mature and strengthen through karma yoga. It is a work — physical and intellectual — that prepares the body and the mind for ascending effectively and safely to the stages of higher meditative practices, which are the “homestretch” to Mergence with the Creator.

Therefore, everyone must work, dedicating work to God and denying the principle “I work for myself”!

Krishna called this path — “a path where there is no loss”.

Selfless service, which also includes feats of arms in struggle for the true monotheistic worldview, was proclaimed by God through prophet Muhammad. God suggested through him the following slogan: There is no life but the life to come!

Karma yoga — as the basis of self-improvement — was proclaimed in the twentieth century by Avatar Babaji.

The same was taught by Avatar Sathya Sai Baba.

This is how we should live!

* * *

The most correct and powerful stimulus for spiritual work is love for the Creator.

But what if one has no such love (and how can one fall in love with Him who has not been cognized yet, who is too distant to be understood?) — in this case good motives can be, for example, the following: the desire to help people, to strive to improve oneself, to gain knowledge, to realize recommendations about the necessity of constant work on oneself given through Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Babaji, Sathya Sai Baba and through other Divine Messiahs and prophets, aspiration to achieve Divinity, to become like Them…

But let us check ourselves again: is my knowledge that profound, shouldn’t I make it deeper first?

For example, if you believe:

— that it is okay to sin; one just needs to go to a church afterwards and to confess to a pastor,

— that Jesus Christ remitted all our sins; we just need to believe that He is the Son of God and then no efforts are necessary,

— if you know the teachings of one religious confession and deny all other teachings,

then you should not start psychoenergetical work now.

Intellectual readiness implies the steadiness of one’s views. For example, what happens if someone, having learned about your practices, begins to yell at you: “You want to become a saint!? This is the vice of pride! Repent immediately!”?…

… The foundation of ethical readiness is observance of the principle of Compassion.

But if, for example, you eat bodies of killed animals, so you are considered as complicit of their murder,

if you have the habit of tearing off flowers, leaves, blades of grass and throwing them, thus you don’t have due respect to the lives of vegetal living beings,

if you are capable of stepping on ants,

if you believe that you must avenge anyone who offended you with words or deeds,

then serious psychoenergetical work can only be harmful for you.

If you have not given up smoking and drinking — then you do not have the willpower and aspiration that are needed to withstand the struggle for your Perfection. Then it is better for you to improve yourself in righteous earthly work for the good of others and in strengthening your faith!

If your sexual partner does not want to walk together with you on the path of purifying the organism and refining the consciousness — then all your efforts on improving yourself in the psychoenergetical aspect will be in vain. Because every sexual contact unites the energy systems of both partners, and this results in “averaging” of the quality and quantity of the partners’ energies…

But if everything said above is not true for you — then you can begin. But what should one start with?

First one must read a lot. One must think about everything said by God to people in different times; one must become acquainted with the concepts of various spiritual schools in order to understand their advantages and mistakes.

In ethical terms, we can use literature as follows: to select the most important quotations (in our opinion) from different literary works. Then during weeks in a quiet environment, we read them time and time again and think about them, thus “imprinting” them in ourselves. In this way we “adjust” ourselves to the sample of Perfection. The number of most actual quotations grows smaller with time: some quotations become imprinted in the consciousness and the corresponding result is achieved. Then we continue working with the remaining quotations.

It is good to commune with living nature, to attune with its harmony and beauty. Quietness, calm, subtlety — we can learn these states from it.

Works of different forms of art can also be very helpful on this Path.

One also must refuse to participate in the earthly situations that coarsen the consciousness. First, one must become strong in subtlety — and only then one can be in the company of anyone without being afraid of becoming attuned with coarseness.

Let us watch our emotions. One must refuse all coarse states and live only in subtle states! Care and tenderness in relationships with each other are also very helpful. “Be brotherly loving to one another!” (Rom. 12:10) — that is what the New Testament teaches us.

The psycho-physical exercises described in [16] can be very useful for correct orientation of one’s own emotional activity.

It is also useful to master several relaxation exercises and pranayamas. And then one can begin to work with the spiritual heart [16].

* * *

Further psychoenergetical work including exercises on cleansing and development of the chakras and meridians, meditations at places of power on entering higher spatial dimensions and growing the size of the refined consciousness — all these are described in the book [16]. In the same book one can also find a general scheme for studying the structure of the Absolute, the principles of full cognition of It and exiting from the Creation into the Consciousness of the Creator. Information about this is presented also in the books [12; 39] and in our films.

One can describe in general terms the methodology of spiritual self-realization of man as follows:

1. First, one must learn to concentrate the consciousness in the chakra anahata inside the material body — and to interact from within it with the outer environment.

2. Then one learns to expand the spiritual heart outside the body — in larger and larger volumes. One trains oneself to flow with the consciousness developed in this way — into more subtle dimensions and to dissolve oneself there.

3. As soon as one has mastered this — the consciousness becomes developed, so that it gains the ability to enter the Abode of the Creator and can begin to settle there in Mergence with Him.

It is very important to stress that the Creator allows us to approach Him and lets us into His Abode only if we come to Him in the state of an impeccably developed spiritual heart. Any other variations are excluded because He Himself is the Universal Spiritual Heart. And He lets into Himself only those like Him.

In other words, we can enter the Abode of the Creator only through the development of the middle dantian. But the structural-functional systems of the upper and lower dantians can also be pulled there after the middle dantian. Therefore, nothing valuable is wasted — including the mind and the accumulated knowledge.

All this is not hypotheses or fantasies. This is the Path that we have traversed.

But before starting to master the methods necessary for working with the chakras and the further steps of the psychoenergetical “stairway” of spiritual ascent — I recommend that you study and accept the intellectual information and ethical principles presented in the books listed in the bibliography.