Question: Why does God need us to love Him?

Answer: First of all, it is us, who need it.

Everything that we do at our classes will be of little value, unless it is devoted to one strategic goal: advancement toward God, seeking God, rather than just getting pleasant sensations.

When classes are over, we may wither like flowers, which have not grown powerful roots, after a drought. These roots are steady aspiration, a powerful magnetic center, in Gurdjieff�s terms.

Only provided that everything we are doing now is sustained by an intensive individual search for God � only in this case � our classes will bear fruit!

Let us recall what we were in the past: coarse, self-centered, seeing most people around as rivals or enemies... And what we are now? The most essential thing is that we cognized what the emotional love is! This is what we lacked before! In the past we could have close emotional contacts (and not always) only with one, two, or three persons. But God loves everyone! We were so far from Him at that time! Now there are a great number of beings whom we love! And when we learn to love wisely and powerfully all creatures in the entire Creation without exception, plus the Creator Himself � then will our love will become perfect.

Apart from love, we also acquired knowledge � through reading, communicating with one another, and our talks. Without proper understanding of what God is, what each of us is, what our place in God is, what our duties are in connection with this � without an adequate understanding of all of this, we are not destined to attain the mergence with God soon, even if we have developed structures of the emotional �center�.

Earlier we knew only the material plane and its coarseness. Now we know the subtle worlds and have touched God. But it is not enough just to touch Him! One has to settle down in His Abode and merge with Him!

And to attain this, one needs powerful magnetic center directed at Him.

What will happen to those who do not have it after our classes are over? Now, let us imagine: the classes are finished, each one is left to oneself. What are we doing? Yes, we have nice recollections of powerful, bright experiences in this gym hall... But we leave this wonderful past farther and farther behind, proceed into severe present, and gradually lose everything...

To avoid it, a continual personal intellectual search for God, for the path to Him, is required. This is an intellectual process!

Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says: �Direct your mind to Me, submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me � verily, then you will live in Me!�. �Direct your mind to Me� is on the first place. The second cannot be effective without the first.

The developed magnetic center � this has to be formed! We have to direct our minds to our Highest Goal, and then the corresponding emotional dominant will be formed: the magnetic center.

An indicative thing happened in one of the groups that practiced our methods. The instructor was reluctant to talk with students about God because she saw that atheists, who happen to come to her classes, are not too pleased with this subject. That is why during exercises she used only such words as harmony, bliss, joy, and so on. I was against it, saying that from the very beginning the instructor must talk with students about God, and if there are those who do not like it, it is not time for them to practice these methods yet. But she insisted on her position. As a result, one of her students went to another school where the whole practice consisted in repeating the name of God. When they met some time later, he told her that at last he had found the true faith, now his activity is really related to God, while what was at her classes was similar to masturbation: getting pleasant, but fruitless sensations in meditations, some tricks with anahata, � and what for?

Why did he see no sense in the classes? Because he did not see the Path to God in all this. And why did not he see it? Because the instructor presented it this way!

She retold me this story, trying to show how bad some students are! But it was the student who was right. Since whatever we do for sake of pleasure is not spiritual work! And students with true potential will leave for the places where people speak about God.

I am telling all this to you to call upon you once more to direct your minds to the Creator. We should work with our magnetic centers; we should attend these classes not just for fun, but with a firm resolution to devote our lives to searching for God! And when we have our magnetic centers formed � that which attracts us to the Goal like a magnet � then the seeds of the knowledge you acquire here, will grow on the fertile soil!

At present, we have enough information concerning the Path to God. But this must not be abstract knowledge, but that which will really transforms us � transforms in terms of affecting the life, affecting one�s beingness, as Gurdjieff put it. Only then we reach the �homestretch� of the personal evolution, when we fall in love with God! And what does being in love mean? This is not just thoughts that I seem to love Him. It must not be expressed by the �I love You� phrase, said casually. We have to fall in love with Him passionately!

We have to make all efforts to fall in love with God! But to achieve this, we have to be capable of falling in love, we have to become passionate and energetic! All this we have to be developed, if have not developed it yet! Maybe, some will need to fall in love with each other as a kind of training � for if we are not able to fall in love with people, how then can we fall in love with God? How can we long for God, if we have never longed for a beloved person? And when we feel that we miss God, that we long for Him, that we cannot live without constant contact with Him � only then can we say to ourselves: yes, now I do love Him! And only then can one�s quick approaching God start. For it is this passion of emotional love that brings us close to Him quickly! And nothing but this passion can unite us with Him!