Serving God
(lecture)

Every child after being born begins inevitably to learn… egoism. This happens because children can do nothing by themselves; everything is done for them by others. This is inevitable…

But then children grow… And at this stage, the correct education must include weaning them of the egocentric dominants and teaching them caring about others…

… One can observe funny examples in behavior of animals, for example, grown-up baby crows.

Baby crows, their bodies are already of the size of the parents, demand again and again food from their parents! The tired parents are desperate:

“We don’t have any more food! What can we do?! We flew all over the neighborhood! We are hungry ourselves! You should seek food yourselves: you have grown up!”

Finally the parents manage to find some food. They bring it and put in front of the children. And what do the children do? Eat it? No! They cry even louder, demanding that the parents take the food from the ground and put it into their mouths!

… Another case. People tamed a baby crow. He became large, the size of an adult crow. These people cautiously put pieces of bread into his mouth: he has a large beak and can bite painfully! Sometimes the pieces of food fall out of his beak… The baby crow, instead of taking them from the ground, demands in his crow language: “You have put it bad! Do I have to bow to it?!”

… But as time goes by, his needs will make him seek food himself and bow to it… Then he will have his own children… And these children will become that school where he will learn to care about others, the school of altruism…

… In case of people, it happens in a similar manner. But the correct or wrong education plays here a more important role.

So often one can observe total egocentrism in adult people!… Even in those… who are “believers”…

Yet the true love that God wants to see in us is the opposite of wanting something for oneself; love is not one’s passion-wanting!

True love, which alone is accepted by God, implies making good to others, helping others in everything good, sacrificing oneself for other’s sakes!

Totally egocentric people misunderstand it so much that even in bright altruistic deeds of others they try to see only selfishness, always seeking a reason for irritated condemnation, hatred… Such people cannot understand God. And cannot approach Him…

* * *

How do people understand service to God?

Some think that “to serve God” means simply to belong to the clergy of some religious confession. Others think deeper and seek to serve by participating in common prayers and meditations. And some even dance and sing in honor of God.

But God wants us to do much more.

In particular, Jesus Christ and other Divine Teachers* edify us that one has to view the service to God as service to all, to help all in everything good. And one has to help not for the sake of one’s own profit, but for the sake of those whom one helps; they can be people, animals, or plants. Also, one has to see behind all of them God’s interest in this.

In order to be able to understand this and understand also how to discriminate between good deeds and those just seeming to be good, one has to try to look at situations from the point of view of the global strategic Plan of the Creator. Namely, we have to understand the essence of the universal Evolutionary Process and find our place in it.

And then we will be able not only to try practicing the precepts of God but also to see their important role in the global Strategy of the Creator. This will bring us to a deeper understanding of our own tasks and the ways of helping others better. Then we will gradually become active participants of the Evolution of the Universal Consciousness, active assistants to the Creator.

Active participation in the evolutionary process has to be regarded as consisting of two main parts: a) spiritual self-development, b) help to others.

In this process, as the apostle Paul taught (1 Cor 12,14), we should strive to serve with our highest abilities, as well as to seek to acquire even higher skills.

The essence of the Creator's Plan of creating material worlds (including this small “islet” of matter in the universe — our planet) is to transform less perfect constituents of the Absolute into more perfect. In this process, the individual Consciousnesses Who have achieved the full Perfection enrich the Creator with Themselves.

So both personal self-development and help to other evolving souls in their evolution are good from God's point of view.

In particular, if we develop ourselves through meditative work, the quality of our service improves: we become closer to the Creator by the quality of the consciousness and begin to see the world better; we approach His capabilities of seeing and understanding.

We also develop through our activity of helping others, increasing our knowledge about how to help. This knowledge will be useful even after disembodiment.

… Let us feel (or at least imagine) that there is only One Universal Macro-organism — the Absolute. Inside the Absolute, the process of Its development — the Universal Evolution — goes on. Let us feel unity, interrelation of everything in Him as a Whole. Let us feel our inseparability from It, from the Process of Its Development. Let us feel the joy of this awareness! And now — with this new understanding — let us direct our efforts to assisting the transformation of all capable “lumps” of consciousness — into the Consciousness of the Creator.

We all are One in the Organism of the Absolute. This is the essence of the principle suggested by Jesus Christ: love your neighbor as yourself, and even more than yourself. This principle concerns the aspect of LOVE called CARE. Its highest manifestation is self-sacrifice for the good of others. Jesus Christ demonstrated such a sacrifice: He gave us an example of CARE by the exploit of His life and death on the Earth. Let us become like Him in this respect!

* * *

Quite a few people long for cognition of the Absolute and seek the Creator.

Others, schooled by atheism and perverted religious movements, or those perverted on their own choice are well satisfied with partaking of the “forbidden” (by God) fruits from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”.

Such people risk going to hell, because earthly attachments provoke coarse emotions: anxiety, fear, sorrow, despair, jealousy, envy, irritation, hatred, anger, and so on. And those who habituate themselves to such emotional states actually accustom themselves to living in hell and go there after disembodiment.

The fruits of the Kingdom of Heaven are gained by few who find peace of the soul outside of earthly passions and developed selfless Love to such an extent that it enables them to fall in love with the Creator and thus become attracted to Him. And He meets such people with His Highest Love!

But the others…

— “love” themselves,

— call their cravings* “love”,

— demand more and more love for themselves from others, cherishing thus their egocentrism, and hate other people because they poorly please ME! and, on the whole, do not do what I! want them to do.

* * *

All beings — both embodied and non-embodied — differ by the age of the soul.

It is one of the main features of every person, in particular.

Other important features are such qualitative characteristics as the level of intellectual development, ethical maturity, coarseness or subtlety of the consciousness. The quantitative valuation is based on the size of the soul.

The evolution of a soul goes in a series of many Earth’s incarnations. And one cannot expect a high spiritual potential from a soul that is incarnated in a human body for the first time; it comes to this soul later, provided that its development is auspicious.

From this, one can understand that not all embodied people — even if they have obtained a certain higher spiritual knowledge — can reach the Abode of the Creator in their current incarnation, no matter how hard they try.

Moreover, when too young souls get involved in meditative work, which is too serious for them, at a certain moment they lose understanding and start to play “religion” like children play their childish games. It may result in a development of inadequate perception of oneself, just like in the case of boys who play “war”, imagine themselves “colonels” and “generals”. In the worst case, it may cause mental disorders. The latter is often the case in the religious organizations, where instead of God and Love, frightening mystical factors (devils, demons, sorcerers, vampires, and so on) are brought in the focus.

This is why religious leaders must use esoteric techniques and information very carefully, taking into account their possible harmful effects on those people who are intellectually and ethically immature.

And everyone who seeks spiritual progress should evaluate their own capabilities and not climb those “steps” of the “stairway” of spiritual development where it will be hard for them to stand.

By the way, it is not bad at all — if you have realized that you are a psychogenetically young soul. On the contrary, it means that you have not grown in yourself all these vices that otherwise you would have to get rid of for a long time.

A young soul is the one that has the entire joyful spiritual Path ahead!

Just do not waste time in vain!

* * *

… I have lived my Earth’s life very intensively. And when I was making the way to the Creator for me and for my friends, many people got involved into the stream created by me at different stages. At the beginning, it always looked wonderful. But later, starting from a certain stage of the work, many of them would lose understanding of the work, they would get drawn backward or to entertainments. And since I was not interested in playing games, discontent with me, protest, and even hostility towards me would arise.

It took me quite some time to come to understand that one should not give the highest knowledge and methods to anyone asking for them. And this understanding could not come until I accumulated tremendous experience of providing spiritual help to people. Sometimes this experience was very dramatic (for me). (Now I share this experience with you — as I do in my other books — to help you avoid making such errors).

But let these warnings scare no one away from the spiritual quest: one should just choose for oneself the tasks that one is equal to.

One of the really attainable goals for anyone is to ensure oneself of going to paradise after the end of their current incarnation and to predetermine an excellent destiny for the future.

It is very simple to achieve! One has just to know how. And we have discussed this question a lot.

And take into account that this goal can be attained only through one's own spiritual efforts and not through participation in rituals, “prayers of saints”, or anyone’s prayers altogether.

Also let us not confuse prayer with meditation (sometimes these terms are used in place of each other). The main meaning of these words is the following: prayer is a request to God, which sometimes degrades into begging Earth’s welfare from God. But the term meditation denotes work of the consciousness aimed at cognition of God, which can ensure success on this Path if one is ethically and intellectually mature.