Question: How can we come to love God?

Answer: When Jesus was asked once, what the principal commandment of Judaic Bible was, He answered: “Love the Lord your God with all the heart, and with the soul, and with the mind, and with all the strength”. His second, not a lesser precept was: “Love your neighbor as yourself!”.

Let us consider now the first of these precepts. How do we understand it? I think that almost each one of us can say that they do not separate its four components, that they are united. But in reality, each of them has its own profound and sacred meaning.

What does loving God with all the heart mean? First of all, one should understand that it is not an anatomic heart that is meant here, but the spiritual heart.

One can love “from the mind” as well as “from the heart”. What does it mean — to love “from the mind”? This means that if one accepts the authority of a certain religious teaching, in particular, the Teaching of Jesus Christ — one has to follow its precepts, including that which requires us to be kind to other people. But there is also love “from the heart”, which represents not intellectual, but emotional aspect of love.

In old days, there was a trend in the Orthodox church, which can be characterized as Christian raja yoga. It was called Hesychasm — from the Greek word hesychia, that means inner silence. Hesychasts developed one of the finest techniques in the history of spirituality on the Earth — the Jesus prayer. There exist various forms of this prayer, but all of them had to contain the word “Jesus!” — addressing Jesus as “the sweetest”, “the most beloved”. This emotion of love had to be introduced into anahata along with the name Jesus, like a mantra. And after many years of practice people would suddenly get transformed — and the spiritual heart would “open”. The whole world would get transformed for them; they started to perceive everything through their love.

Emotional love is inherent in some people — very few — without special efforts from their side: they came to this incarnation already having it. There are also those who have easily developed it through natural situations in life, for example, a harmonious motherhood. But the overwhelming majority of people do not have a slightest idea of what “cordial love” is. For them, it is mere words.

There is a dominating opinion in Orthodoxy that the secrets of Jesus prayer have been lost. But we managed to re-discover these secrets, using scientific method. And so, during the years when the word God was de-facto forbidden in our country, when the word love was used only in its sexual meaning — we trained thousands of people using these methods; we helped them master the basics of spirituality — emotional love.

Let us remember that it was Jesus — after Krishna — who offered us the only reliable path of becoming closer to God, closer the Divine Perfection. This path consists in development of the emotional love. How can we learn to love God, whom we cannot see with our ordinary eyes, Who is initially not the reality for us? Therefore, Jesus said that we can come to love God through learning to love emotionally. How is this task to be fulfilled? Through love to people! Learn to love each other — and through this you will learn to love God! For only when we have developed the emotional love, can we re-direct it toward God! Love to God is the only means of approaching Him! Love is the force that attracts us to the object of our love! Love is that which unites! Love unites person with person, it is also that which can unite man with God! The ultimate goal of our development, of everyone’s evolution, is mergence with God-the-Father. This is what apostle Thomas said in The Book for the Perfect about it: “We have to become one with the King”. This is what God says in the Bhagavad Gita about it: “Submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me, then you will live in Me!”. But one can achieve this only through cultivation of love.

We are speaking of spirituality all the time. But what is it? There are such words in the Gospel of John: “God is Spirit”. From this the word spirituality originates. It denotes the extent of closeness to God, to the Divine Perfection, seeking which is one of the precepts that Jesus gave to us. And it is with development of Love that spirituality begins. And only if the intellect is based on this foundation — wisdom will form. And only if power is added to the foundation made of love and wisdom — it is possible to say that mastering of this power will be beneficial, rather than detrimental to its owner.

So the direct esoteric path to the Perfection starts with the development of the anahata chakra. I will make it clear that our emotions are born not in the brain, as physiologists taught us. When we experience emotions, certain processes are registered electrophysiologically in the brain. But they are not the emotions per se. The brain just participates in the collection and transmitting of information. Emotions, as bioenergetic processes, are born in chakras. And it is the anahata chakra that is the “organ” of emotional love. So one cannot really love a person or God — if one’s anahata is not developed.

This is the profound meaning of the recommendation that one should love God with all the heart!

And what does it mean to love God with all the soul? In these words there is also an immense profundity. The meaning of these words is revealed in one of the sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John: “God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth”.

What is implied by “in truth” is clear — to understand adequately one’s duties before God, to aspire toward ethic perfection, perfect knowledge, and so on.

But is everything clear as to the rest of the citation? The first part of the phrase is: “God is Spirit”, i.e. God is not a material object. God is the Universal Spirit.

“And those who worship Him must worship in spirit...” What does this mean?

Being born in material bodies, we identify ourselves with them from the very birth. All of us believed — and some still believe — that we are bodies. But this is not true. Man is not a body, but a consciousness. The consciousness does not die when the body dies, but just gains freedom from it. Later it enters into a new body to continue its evolution. All people, who are successful on the spiritual path, know this truth. All sacred books proclaim this truth. And this is not just a theory, but knowledge verified experientially.

So, man is a consciousness, or a soul. And man — as a consciousness — has to learn to love God, Who is also a Consciousness.

And how should one come to love God with all the mind? It should be noted that in order to understand this part of the precept one has to have a clear idea of what God is.

We are not going to examine the pagan fantasies about this. Let us consider the monotheistic meaning of the word God. And we will see that it has two meanings.

The first one is — God as the Creator, the Father, the Supreme Goal of one’s personal evolution, the Supreme Teacher.

But there is another meaning of this word: God as the Creator who created everything that is alive out of Himself and in this respect He is one with His Creation. In this sense God is All (the Absolute).

And now, a natural question arises — one has to merge with God, but in which meaning of this word — the Creator or the Absolute?

Whom did Jesus call the Heavenly Father? — The Creator. It is toward trusting Him and mergence with Him that Jesus called. The same is written in the Bhagavad Gita.

The Absolute can also be cognized, although not with the mind, but only with the crystallized consciousness, by looking at the Creation from the state of the Creator with His eyes.

But how and where should one search for the Creator? We can find Him in the highest, the most subtle spatial dimension. God in the aspect of the Creator is Primordial Consciousness that exists on the deepest plane of the multidimensional Universe.

As early as at the turn of the 20^th century, mathematicians started speaking of the multidimensional nature of space. This is really so, though mathematical formulas are of no help when it comes to the empirical cognition of this multidimensionality. This task can be solved through methods of raja yoga and buddhi yoga, i.e. by means of developing the consciousness (buddhi) and penetrating with it into the depths of the multidimensional space. It is buddhi that represents the “instrument” of the cognizing process that we are talking about. While all physical instruments are effective only in the material world — the most dense spatial dimension.

So, God should be sought not on the sky. Jesus was saying about this the following: if you seek God in the sky, then birds will precede you. God is to be sought not in Shambhala, or on some mountain, or on another planet. God is to be sought in the depth of the multidimensional world. And anahata is the structure of our organisms where we can touch Him for the first time, through the bliss of Samadhi. Why is it anahata? Because God reveals Himself only to those who love Him! But, as I said, it is not possible to love without a developed anahata. Having developed the anahata through love to people, for all beings, for the whole Creation, and for the Creator, and using esoteric methods for accelerating this process, we become capable of immersing into the Abode of the Creator through this chakra — so that later to dissolve, disappear in Him.

Of course, it is easier said, than done. There are a lot of nuances on this Path, on which I will not dwell now. But to those who seek and love Him, God shows the way toward Him!