Ecopsychology

Work in the Material World

In regard to work, two principles are important for any person, even if he or she is not mature enough to be able to comprehend the highest religious truths. These are — honesty and striving to learn as much as possible. The second principle implies not only aspiration to study but also quite frequent changing of the field of applying one’s efforts and change of places of work. We come to every new place enriched by the experience we gained at all of our previous places of work. This significantly enriches our experience, develops us intellectually, and creates an objective prerequisite for respectful attitude from other people.

For religious people, the attitude towards their work implies a more serious approach. Namely, they should regard their social activity as their service to God.

This is called Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga is the path of self-development through helping God in His Evolution. This consists in various kinds of help to other people — help in what is really useful for them, including spiritual help.

We have to try to serve people with our highest abilities, as well as to aspire to master even higher skills for our service [6,11].

This attitude towards work implies that personal material gain moves far down on the list of our motives, because this kind of service is a way to express our love for God and for people. But is it right to sell love?

Krishna said about this: “Regard only the work and not the reward for it!… Miserable are those who act for the sake of getting reward for their activity!” [11] (Bhagavad Gita, 2:47, 49).

Karma Yoga does not imply working for free. But Karma Yogis eat “remains of their sacrificial offerings”, as Krishna figuratively put it. [11] (Bhagavad Gita, 3:13).

Those who receive help must not forget that the one who helps them also has to pay for food, transport, accommodation, and so on. Let us recall the words of Jesus Christ that relate to this: “Laborers deserve their food” (Matthew, 10:10), “Laborer deserves to be paid” (Luke, 10:7), and important words from the Bhagavad Gita: “The one who receives gifts and gives no gifts in return is verily a thief” [11] (Bhagavad Gita, 3:12).

Man develops Love, Wisdom, and Power through constant spiritual quest, which has to be accompanied by service according to the Karma Yoga principles.

… We have talked much about Love; now let us talk about Wisdom. Without this quality one cannot achieve Perfection and merge with God.

Wisdom is the knowledge of the most essential things: what is God, what is man, what is the meaning of man’s life, and what is the Evolution of the Universal Consciousness. It also implies being familiar with the diversity of human souls, as well as the ability to classify people according to their qualities, faculties, and psychogenetic age. Wisdom consists also in knowing the Straight Path to Perfection and the ways people may diverge from it. Also — knowing how one can help people in their evolution by determining what kind of spiritual help would be most appropriate for them.

One acquires Wisdom by performing theoretic research and by gaining practical experience. The former consists in studying the instructions that God has been giving to incarnate people, as well as in getting acquainted with the experience of people who sought for God, their errors and successes. One gains practical knowledge by studying oneself and God, as well as by engaging in spiritual service and creative spiritual work.

Spiritual Service

We cannot reach the end of the Path to God without helping other people spiritually. This is objectively necessary for the process of the Evolution, since this makes the number of people initiated into spiritual knowledge grow. This also contributes to our own development, providing us with lessons in psychology, in particular. After all, the process of spiritual development can be considered as a “course of learning to be God”, and God is the perfect Psychologist, the perfect Soul-Knower.

On the spiritual Path, just like during a war, some of the human qualities get manifested in a dramatic way, such as stupidity of some “superiors”, which turns out disastrous for many people, and the wise heroism of the others, which saves many lives.

In these battles, emotions of people get activated; human cowardice, which makes those of little faith insane, gets highlighted. Manifestations of both vicious and high soul qualities also become more intense.

Spiritual warriors temper themselves in rebutting attacks of envious persons and aggressive fools.

Betrayals of “best friends” teach them not to get attached to people.

The warriors develop themselves saving those who walk by their side the spiritual Path or those who follow them. In the battles before the face of God, the warriors cultivate Love, Wisdom, and Power and thus gradually attain Divinity.

What must be the initial spiritual help to other people? First, it must consist in explaining to them the correct concept of God and of the Path to Him; second — in teaching them the methods of regulating one’s own emotions.

Those who deserve it, by intellectual and ethical criteria, may be taught the art of meditation.

But before aspirants begin serious meditative work, they have to purify the body of energetic impurities: it is impossible to enter subtle eons, where God abides, from a contaminated and therefore sick body.

This is why it is allowed to involve in esoteric practices only those aspirants who have renounced eating “killed” food, taking alcohol, tobacco and similar toxic substances, and have abandoned close relationships (including sexual) with energetically coarse people.

Aspirants have to set as their primary task the establishment in love and peace.

And those who deviate from this path or do not make progress — they should be debarred from further studies — for their own good. This is because the same psychic methods can bring those, who are focused on refining of oneself and growing as love, — to God, but others, who go in the opposite direction, — to hell, transforming them into devils.

I have witnessed the latter many times in various cities and countries, including those where they used the methods developed with my help. Some instructors, either for money or fame, or simply due to their culpable irresponsibility, started to teach psychoenergetic methods to everyone interested without a careful prior selection of candidates. This led to personal tragedies and in one case even to formation of a criminal gang [7].

Once I was careless enough to show wonderful places of power to many of those who subsequently proved undeserving. Now… I meet sometimes downright black magicians there, who leave traces of their energetic coarseness, defile the sacredness of those places…

But there is no place for violence on the spiritual Path. I do not have any right to demand that those perverts do not go there to grow devils out of themselves… God gave them free will, and they have a right to move in the direction of hell. Maybe after having lived in hell, they will want to escape from there. And then my books will probably help them…

One of the wise things to know is that no one can be “dragged” into the Abode of the Creator. He does not need this, let alone it is impossible: the spiritual Path is primarily qualitative self-transformation, as opposed to, say, climbing a mountain. And it is we ourselves who can and have to walk this Path; other people can only show us the way.

Everyone has to be absolutely free in building their own personal relationships with God. This is why there must be no “religious discipline” or strict subordination of people or spiritual groups. Everyone has to develop in total accordance with their own free will, given to them by God. Breaking this rule distorts the harmony of the Evolution and interferes with God in His leading us to Himself.