What Love Must Be

Love is the main quality of God. In order to merge with Him (or even to escape hell, to begin with) we have to learn to feel emotions of love and to perform deeds of love, to eliminate all the opposite states and actions, whatever circumstances we may live in.

Love is the main thing that God wants from us. And we do not have any other possibility to cognize Him and to merge with Him, unless we transform ourselves into Love.

Love is a special emotional state; in other words — this is a state of the energy of the consciousness. And the consciousness (soul) is what every one of us is in reality.

Every time we leave the state of love, we alienate ourselves from God. “Every instance of leaving the state of love leads to accumulation of bad karma” — this is what God told me once [7].

People blame their misfortunes and diseases on anyone but themselves. Although it is always they who are to blame.

It is of paramount importance for us to understand that the stable and confident state of love can be achieved only through practicing special psychic self-regulation techniques, which must include working with the chakras, primarily with the anahata chakra. (We will describe these methods in the following chapters of this book).

In the ancient Christianity a special method of “opening” the spiritual heart was developed, which got named Jesus Prayer. Adepts had to repeat constantly a special prayerful appeal to Jesus, and after years of practice some of them succeeded in making the prayer “break through” into their spiritual hearts — and this made them realize what love really is. When this happens, the whole life of such a person changes dramatically [59].

… Once God, seeing my sincere aspiration to Him and my strong desire to help people, helped me create a tremendously efficient system of methods of “opening” and development of the spiritual heart. Some of these methods were described in several books of mine and were widely taught in Russia and some other countries some time ago.

However, I need to mention that out of thousands of students, only a few were able to attain the actual and quite complete cognition of God-the-Father. What was the reason for the “dropping out” of the rest? It was their inability to thoroughly comprehend the points of the Babaji’s formula.

The overwhelming majority of the students were lacking that intensive aspiration toward cognition of God, which could allow them to switch their attention to Him from the objects of the material world. Others gave in to threats of sectarians.

The psychic techniques per se cannot make a person attain God; they can only play the role of wonderful and necessary aids. But the main prerequisite of success is the ability of the spiritual seeker to comprehend with the developed intellect the entirety of the Truth and to build a steadfast loving aspiration toward the main Goal, in other words — to fall in love with the Creator.

The true spiritual Path necessarily implies the complex development of a person, which must include intellectual, ethic, and psycho-energetic components.

Also, a person cannot successfully cultivate real love only by performing exercises with the anahata chakra during meditation classes. Development of love must fill one’s whole life and pervade all of his or her activities.

It must be manifested:

— in staying constantly with the concentration of the consciousness in the anahata chakra,

— in sincere respectful and tactful attitude toward everyone, whether one knows them or not,

— in the ability to forgive and forget insults quickly, without taking revenge,

— in behavior that excludes any possibility to offend or aggrieve someone wrongly.

Love has to include a sacrificial component of willingness to help others even if it goes to one’s own detriment. Interests of those who deserve this help has to be given a higher priority than one’s own.

Love must be directed not only toward God and people, but also toward animals and plants; nobody may think that their love is developed if they are still able to kill or maim plants unnecessarily, if they allow themselves to eat bodies of animals for the sake of satisfying their gluttony.

Love has to be irreproachable in relationships with children. This implies being incapable of getting irritated. Although, being demanding in teaching children discipline and honesty should not be excluded — in the interests of the children, in the first place!

Everyone should analyze the characteristics of their love in the sexual sphere, since this is where human vices usually are manifested very vividly.

Any kinds of violence or constraint in sex — even in the verbal form or in thought — are examples of a behavior opposite to love.

Carelessness of a man as to the prevention of unwanted pregnancy is another example of the same type of behavior.

Passiveness of a woman during a sexual intercourse when she is not aiming to give her love to her male partner, but only selfishly expects satisfaction for herself, being able to resent him for doing something “wrong” — is a phenomenon of the same nature. (Since all people differ by the features of their sexuality, and the new partner never knows in advance how to satisfy you better!).

True sexuality is the art of giving yourself and your love to the partner through sexual relationships. And only a combination of sincere and giving love on the side of both partners can lead to harmony in sexual relationships.

I am sure that many women would benefit from reading the wonderful book of Barbara Keesling [38], which promotes the practice for women of giving their sexual love as a gift. Although I would not recommend doing everything that is written there. For example, practicing oral sex regularly increases the risk of transmitting infections dramatically. Also, sexual relationships with so many partners are absolutely incompatible with a serious spiritual Path: during a sexual intercourse an intensive energy exchange takes place between partners, which leads to taking on possible energetic coarseness, impurities and diseases of the partner .

… Everyone builds their destiny themselves, using the freedom of will granted to us by God. Someone develops in sacrificial love by helping others. Someone cultivates capricious egotism, hatred, coarseness, cruelty. The former forbear and forgive, do not become immersed in hostility and thus preserve themselves in love and aspiration to the Creator — and attain Him. The latter become “refuse of the Evolution”. The former can be truly called Christians. And the latter, though wearing crosses and visiting churches, — how should one call them?

Our sexuality was conceived by God not only as a means of reproduction but also as a method of spiritual development. It facilitates the cultivation of such aspects of love as tenderness, care, self-giving, merging of two consciousnesses into one, which prepares one to the Mergence with the Consciousness of the Supreme Beloved — the Creator. Sexual love can directly contribute to the development of the spiritual heart, which we have already discussed. It also teaches us Peace (if everything goes well), which is an indispensable component of Perfection, one of the qualities of God, which we need to master.

But all this relates only to the sattvic, pure sexuality of people who make real progress on the spiritual Path. In this case it does accelerate their advancement significantly.

But sexuality of coarse and egotistic people who do not possess developed spiritual hearts can be disgusting and lead them to hell.

The spreading of a perverted “Christianity” that has lost love became a damnation for the spiritual evolution of many people of the Earth. Among other things, it pronounced anathema against sexual love and declared renunciation of it a “Christian feat”. It profaned all conceptions by calling them “defiled” as opposed to the “immaculate” (i.e. without a man) conception of the mother of Jesus Christ that allegedly took place. The human body itself, especially the female body, was declared shameful. In the past, “decent” people felt shy to say even the word legs. The words that related to the sexual theme were declared “indecent” and transformed into cursing — a means of defiling other people. In this way the obscene language was created — the language of the tamas guna.

And how could a pure attitude to sexuality form in people who regard it as an odious “vice”, who hate sexuality in themselves and especially in others? But without this pure attitude toward sexuality one can hardly succeed in refinement of the consciousness, development of love, and getting close to God.

People started to fear what in reality could help them to become better!

Many men came to hate women exactly for what women could help them with. Since women are, in general, significantly more refined than men, if for no other reason than their hormonal status. And by this characteristic they are closer to God.

Jesus Christ taught the same [56] in addressing men:

“Respect her, uphold her. In acting thus you will win her love and will find favor in the sight of God…

“In the same way, love your wives and respect them…

“Be lenient toward a woman. Her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames the brute in him, and makes of him a lamb.

“The wife and the mother are the inappreciable treasures given unto you by God. They are the fairest ornaments of existence….

“Therefore I say unto you, after God your best thoughts should belong to the women and the wives, woman being for you the temple wherein you will obtain the most easily perfect happiness. Imbue yourselves in this temple with moral strength. Here you will forget your sorrows and your failures, and you will recover the lost energy necessary to enable you to help your neighbor.

“Do not expose her to humiliation. In acting thus you would humiliate yourselves and lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing exists here below.

“Protect your wife, in order that she may protect you and all your family. All that you do for your wife, your mother, for a widow or another woman in distress, you will have done unto your God.” (Life of Saint Issa, 12:13-21).

But “Christianity” (and not only “Christianity”)… declared woman… “the source of sin” and prescribed to cover her body in any possible way. In Russia for many centuries women had to wear special long dresses when bathing and even to sleep in clothes: “What if you die in your sleep — you will appear before the Lord naked! What a shame it will be!”.

Another example of a similar kind of abomination is declaring some children “illegitimate” and holding up to shame the motherhood of these women to whom God entrusted the upbringing of these children!

… We need to understand that it is people of the tamas guna who are immersed in vice and who do not see anything except it, while possessing aggressiveness, seize the “reins of government” in the originally holy religious movements and gradually turn them around to the opposite direction, warping the doctrine of God to its exact antithesis.

In the sexual aspect of life they — while themselves belonging to hell, obsessed with passion for violence, defilement, and satisfaction of their egotistic lust — are unable to imagine that for other people, sattvic ones, sexuality does not mean lust, but a way of sharing their love, giving it to other people as a gift and that this may be their way of serving God!

* * *

But getting obsessed with sex is also not good. The term fornication is valid not only for people but also for God. It denotes both too many sexual contacts and sex with inadequate partners (those who are not at the same level of the spiritual advancement). Sexually transmitted diseases are the mechanism that God uses for slowing down the tendencies for sexual amusements in people.

The truth here is that we have to try to direct all our attention toward searching for God, without distracting excessively for anything else. (And sex is just one of such distractions).

… So, in sex, like in everything else, everyone has to find the golden mean between two extremes…

* * *

Refinement of the consciousness and true sattva, as a necessary stage of cognition of the Holy Spirit and God-the-Father, are impossible to achieve without accepting and understanding concepts of BEAUTY.

“Beauty: Cosmos establishes Evolution on this formula” — this is what God taught us through Helena Roerich [26,40].

Spiritual beauty exists at two levels of the scale of gunas: rajas and sattva.

Rajas is, in particular, boldness, self-discipline, and beauty of exploit. It is manifested in a spiritual warrior with unbending will.

Rajas can be found in the states of nature; it also can be expressed in dancing, music and fine art. Examples of the latter are paintings of Nicholas Roerich.

Sattva — spiritual purity and beauty, refined and saturated with tender love — is the last step on the stairway leading to cognition of the Holy Spirit.

In nature we can observe sattvic states in the purity of sunlight at dawn, in singing of spring birds, in charming silence of a tranquil evening, etc.

Among the most vivid examples of highly sattvic music are some compositions of Ananda Shankar.

Sattvic beauty of harmonious human body is also spiritual and can attune the one who observes it to tenderness, tranquility, and peace, which so many of us are lacking.

* * *

And another comment on the subject of love.

One day I was traveling by train, perfecting lowliness of mind when studying the situation: among my fellow travelers were a mother and a son. She had a huge body and was very rude. Her son — a military cadet — was about fifteen years old. All the way she constantly shouted. About what? It… was just her regular manner of talking to her son, shouting everything that was coming to her mind: all her thoughts. For example: “Darling! I am going to go to the toilet and throw out the apple core!… Why don’t you answer, when your mother is talking to you???!!!” And her exhausted son was looking at the window with a dull expression on his face being only able to nod listlessly…

How can the behavior of this “mommy”, who sincerely loved her child, be characterized?

Was it violent? — Yes, it was. Was it tactless? — Yes, it was. One could name some more of her traits… But what is important to stress now is that her love lacked peace.

The ability to feel deep inner peace, especially when there is no need to perform energetic actions is a very important and valuable quality. It is a fundamental prerequisite of true love.

Attempts to love without this inner peace sometimes turn into what I have just described. Such “love” can only cripple its victims. It induces in them only an urgent need to escape. If there is a place to escape to…

… The state of God-the-Father in His Abode can be described as Tender Peace. Let us learn this from Him when preparing ourselves to meeting Him.

But true peace is not something opposite to a sound drive and energy, but matches them harmoniously. Let us analyze this postulate — and apply it to our lives!