Stages
of the Spiritual Path
(lecture)

A person who starts walking confidently the religious Path can go through the following seven stages of it:

1. Acquiring the correct understanding of our highest Goal and the ways of its attainment.

2. Initial ethic self-correction in accordance with the intention of God through elimination of ethic imperfections as well as through the development of required qualities, of which love is the principal one.

3. Refinement of oneself as a consciousness in order to get into the highest planes (eons or lokas) of the multidimensional space, of which the Abode of the Primordial Universal Consciousness — God-the-Father, the Creator — is the subtlest.

4. Quantitative development of the refined consciousness.

5. Mastering the methods of merging with God.

6. Consolidation of Mergence with God.

7. Acquiring Divine powers — and providing help to other incarnate beings from the state of the Holy Spirit.

For the majority of the readers, deceived by the atheistic and sectarian propaganda, this may sound surprising and even implausible. But this is exactly what God has been teaching people throughout the entire history of mankind — through prophets or Himself, appearing before people in human bodies of Messiahs, Avatars, and Christs (all these words mean the same in different languages).

The meaning of our lives consists in the development of ourselves as consciousnesses, first within our temporary abodes — our bodies, and then beyond them — in the boundless multidimensional universe.

This development has two major directions: qualitative and quantitative.

The former consists of the following three components: intellectual and ethic perfection and refinement of the consciousness.

The quantitative aspect implies a direct increase of the amount of the energy of the individual consciousness, which subsequently — using special meditative techniques — infuses into the Ocean of the Universal Consciousness, Who may be called differently in different languages: the Creator, God-the-Father, Jehovah, Allah, Tao, Ishvara, Primordial Consciousness, Adibuddha, etc.

… The universe is multidimensional. This is not just a mathematical reasoning but reality, which can be experienced by man. Spatial dimensions have been known to religious practicians from time immemorial. They were called eons in Greek and lokas in Sanskrit; in Agni Yoga the term layers was used to refer to them.

The highest, primary spatial dimension is the Abode of the Primordial Universal Consciousness, Which, as it was described in the Bhagavad Gita, creates the “manifested” world by condensing diffused cosmic energy (protoprakriti) to the material state. These “islets” of solid matter get inhabited by small parts of another kind of previously diffused energy — protopurusha — which will have to evolve up to the Divine state by means of multiple incarnations into organic bodies and then to infuse themselves into the Primordial Consciousness, thus enriching It with themselves.

This process of soul development starts with initial forming of lumps of energy on crystalline lattices. Then follow incarnations into vegetable, animal, and finally into human bodies.

The task of every one of us — at the final stage of the development of the soul — is to make efforts on bringing ourselves as soon as possible to the Divinity and to Merge with the Creator.

* * *

Creation of the world is not a phenomenon of the all-universal scale. Astronomers periodically observe birth of new stars and planets. Other star systems get destroyed. This constitutes their end of the world.

All souls who have not attained Divinity by that moment get disintegrated down to the protopurusha state. The material component of the “islets” of matter and material bodies of people, animals, plants turn into protoprakriti and become thus the construction material for new worlds.

Protoprakriti and protopurusha are collectively called akasha. (In some publication this word is sometimes translated as ether, which is absolutely inadequate).

We have described already the multidimensional structure of the universe. Here I can only say that this phenomenon can be likened to radio waves of different frequencies that coexist within the same volume of space with little or no interaction with one another. And all of them are in the multidimensional depth beneath the material world, including the matter of our bodies; we are being unable to perceive them under regular conditions.

In the same manner spirits that inhabit coarser eons cannot see what is going on in deeper, subtler eons, although they are supervised from there.

… One can move into subtler eons only in the incarnate state — by making spiritual efforts. The transformation (“transmutation”) of the energy of the consciousness can take place only in a human body — a specialized “transmutation factory” capable of assimilating the energy derived from ordinary food and using it, among other purposes, for growth of the “lump” of the energy of the consciousness.

From this, it becomes clear that neither someone’s prayers nor “solicitations” have the power to resettle souls from hell eons to those of paradise. The legend about Jesus Christ releasing sinners from hell contains distorted information: He was not saving non-embodied sinners, but embodied ones — by giving them the Teachings of God; by following these Teachings they could free themselves from suffering through the refinement of the consciousness — through love-tenderness, forgiveness, compassion, elimination of anger and all kinds of rudeness, as well as egocentrism.

* * *

In esoteric literature one may encounter inadequate usage of the term fourth dimension. This is the case even with The Book of Jesus*, in which Jesus used this term when talking to Ben Cullen “in his own language”, i.e. using the words which His interlocutor uses and whose meaning he knows. In this book the term fourth dimension was used even in two inadequate interpretations: as the Abode of God-the-Father and as the aggregate of non-material eons.

But in reality, by the logic of the term fourth dimension itself — it should denote the material world, existence of which is determined not by three but by four “dimensions”: length, width, height, and time.

* * *

Let us continue talking about the universal Evolution.

The process of settlement of every new “islet” of the Creation begins with the Spirits Who achieved the state of the Holy Spirit (Brahman) in the course of Their evolution on other “islets”. They become Constructors and Supervisors of the evolution of life on the newly created planets.

The whole space inside and around our planet is also pervaded with Their huge Consciousnesses, Which are called collectively the Holy Spirit or Brahman.

In other words, as it must already be clear, the Holy Spirit is not at all a “radiation” of God-the-Father (or of God-the-Father and of God-the-Son). No! The Holy Spirit is Living Divine Consciousnesses — subtle and loving, Who teach us and are constantly present inside and outside our bodies. They are extremely glad when we lovingly direct our attention towards Them, willing to accept Their help in order to get closer to Them — to Their state.

The same is true for the Consciousness of the Creator. It is even deeper in the multidimensional space and incomparably larger — It is boundless.

The Consciousness of the Creator, as the Consciousness of the Holy Spirit, is present inside (in the multidimensional depth) beneath every cell of our bodies. The distance between us and It is not greater… than the thickness of finest paper, as Jesus Christ perfectly formulated*.

And one should not fly anywhere or travel too far in search of God: He is present right here and now — inside us, but in another eon. And the only thing separating us from Him is our coarseness, which is a consequence of our religious ignorance and lack of the development of the consciousness.

We have to find God inside, in the depth of our own spiritual hearts. This well-known postulate is not just a nice metaphor but a quite concrete instruction on where we have to direct our efforts.

… Apart from the Abode of the Creator, there exist many other eons that differ by the level of coarseness-subtlety. The subtlest of them are called paradisiacal. The coarsest ones are called hellish.

If we want to save ourselves from going to hell after the death of the body, then we have to learn to live steadfastly in a light, pure, and subtle state of the consciousness while we are still embodied. Since upon parting with the physical body, we will live in the state, which became habitual for us during our life in the body.

And, according to this, we will find ourselves in the eon inhabited by beings similar to us: either evil, furious, irritated, anxious, and deceitful — or affectionate, calm, tenderly loving and caring…