What Is Man
In the book Genesis of the Old Testament, there is a statement that God created man in His likeness and image. Some people who believe that man is a body concluded from it that God-the-Father has the appearance of a human body. And they began to picture Him in the form of an old man sitting on a cloud.
But man is not a body, man is a consciousness, a self-aware unit of conscious energy dwelling temporarily in a body or outside it. And God, too, is a Consciousness.
An ordinary man is a small consciousness. But God is an Infinite Ocean of Consciousness of the whole universe.
And the task of every one of us is to attain qualitative Godlikeness and sufficient growth on the amount of consciousness, and then to infuse into that Ocean and become one with It.
However, it is not enough just to become intelligent and large. Man sent for self-development into the world of matter gets accustomed to living in dense spatial dimensions even without a body. And these dimensions are so distant from God-the-Father that He even cannot be seen from there. Even when man lives as a spirit in the non-corporeal form, he cannot move into subtle spatial dimensions. So, people-spirits who are far from the Perfection can only know something about God, but they have never seen or experienced Him.
In order to cognize the Creator, one has to become:
a) intellectually developed to be able to comprehend where and how to go to God, given that the Path to the Abode of the Creator is much more difficult than any path on the Earth,
b) ethically perfect so that God allows approaching Him, otherwise He does not allow,
c) strong, because one needs tremendous power and stamina to move from one eon to another; the power in question is not the power of the body, but the power of the consciousness. Moreover, the consciousness has to learn to live in the state of the Creator’s subtlety. Development of the coarse power of the consciousness means movement to the direction opposite from the Creator.
The task of knowing subtle spatial dimensions is facilitated thanks to the multidimensional structure of the human organism (not of the body, but of the organism); a material body is only one of the layers of the organism. One can say that every human is represented potentially in all subtle realms. But it is not the same as what occultists describe in their books; there is no point in taking seriously the names they invented for several non-material “bodies” that every human allegedly has.
But the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19) as well as God-the-Father (1 Cor 3:16-17) indeed “dwell in us” — They abide in the multidimensional depth beneath our bodies; “the Kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21), said Jesus. And it is enough just to “dive”… But to realize this, most of the people need years or even many incarnations.
We discussed the methods of the refinement of consciousness. It starts with correction of the emotional sphere: getting rid of the coarse emotions and cultivating the subtle ones. Then one has to cleanse and develop the spiritual heart and then — other structures of the organism. After this, one continues this work outside the material body, inside one’s expanded spiritual heart.
The most important part of the human organism is a root (Rom 11:16, 18). It is a “connection link” between the chakra anahata inside human body and the Abode of the Creator. By exploring gradually this structure of the organism and the multidimensional space around it, one may realize the fact that every incarnate person possesses a multidimensional “framework”, which one has to fill with the consciousness growing from the anahata chakra in the process of spiritual Self-realization (= God-realization). Having fulfilled this, one gets a possibility not only to enter the Abode of the Creator for a time but also to settle there in Mergence with Him.
Now, it is easy to understand what is meant by the statement in the Old Testament that man was created in the image and likeness of God: the human organism with its multidimensional nature represents a kind of small model of the universal multidimensional Absolute.
The human organism has one remarkable feature: the energies it receives from outside (from the material food, first of all) may be used not only for support of the vital functions of the body, but also for growth of the consciousness. Thanks to this, the consciousness can grow like muscles grow due to the material components of the food.
Let us note that it is the working muscles that grow. And on the contrary, non-working muscles atrophy. It is the same with the consciousness: it grows (if it really grows and not weakens due to dominating negative emotions or long exhausting diseases) in that spatial dimension where it works. Special work aimed at the refinement, deliverance from attachments to the matter, and at the growth of the consciousness is called meditation.
All processes of transfiguration and development of an individual consciousness are possible only in the incarnate state, for it is through the organs of the body that we obtain energy needed for these processes. In other words, the organism is a kind of factory that converts energy contained in the matter of food into the energy of the consciousness.
I want to stress, that the growth of the consciousness may be correct or wrong. The latter happens when the consciousness grows in the coarse spatial dimensions. And this process depends on our understanding of the principles and goals of our lives, on the level of cleanness from vices, on the manner of communication with other people, on the adequacy of the methods of spiritual work that we use, and even on what we eat.
As a result of the correct work on the development of the consciousness, one gets “born” in subtle spatial dimensions and “ripens” there. This is what Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus (John 3:3,5-7), that the one who gets “born” in the Abode of the Father and even manages to “mature” there during incarnation becomes coessential to the Father. Jesus said the following: “Truly, I say to you, unless man is born in the Spirit’s element, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born in the Spirit is Spirit.” But translators did not understand this statement, translated it according to their comprehension, and it became almost impossible to understand what Jesus meant. As a result people decided that Jesus commanded just to accept the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” — and no problems. For example, in the Russian Orthodoxy a priest blows three times from his mouth to the face of the baptized and says that he/she receives “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. And that’s all…
