Does everyone need spirituality? About human spiritual development

– Does everyone need spirituality? Or is it only for those who have already “gone into” it?

– Let’s divide the categories. If we are considering people who relate to spirituality as a hobby, like going to the store, drawing, or sports, then I will not argue or prove anything here. We do not have such a task.

You can endlessly ask this question and endlessly discuss it. But in order not to remain in this constantly and not to conduct endless discussions about whether spirituality is needed, it is necessary first to consider what spiritual life is.

– What do people call spiritual life?

– Usually, a person perceives spiritual life as something special: visiting a temple, a state of meditation, or performing certain rituals.

Spiritual life is often perceived as a certain abstraction. Which one exactly? A person says that there is a soul. Here I have the following clarification: if you perceive the concept of “soul” as a fact or perceive that spirit exists — you come to church, encounter it, direct your attention to it — it is strange to claim that this does not need to be engaged in.

For this, it is important to understand what is primary. A person perceives spiritual life through abstract concepts — soul or spirit; and there is the physical body. What is primary: the physical body or the soul, the spirit? A person must answer this question.

I am not going into the assertion that everything consists of the spiritual world. A sufficiently material person can reason about this, but at the same time have a certain belief in the soul and say that they would like to devote time to spiritual life — 20 or 30 minutes a day, like drawing or playing the piano. Fine, do it. But consider: is the physical body primary in relation to the soul, or is the soul primary?

What does “primary” mean? If the soul is secondary and the physical body is primary, then the soul is a component of the physical body. If the soul is a component of the physical body, then it is a physical object. But we immediately come to the conclusion that it is not a physical object.

If it is not a physical object, then what is primary? After all, something created it. That means there is something more primary than the physical body and the soul — something else, unknown.

Usually, at this point a person’s perception ends. They have heard that there is hell and heaven, have heard about demons, angels, archangels, saints. All of this is mixed: there is an icon of a saint who lived 200 years ago, there is an icon of Nicholas the Wonderworker, there is an icon of Archangel Michael — these are simply “icons.”

But what is Archangel Michael? What is an angel? Is Nicholas the Wonderworker a person, a personality? Was there a spiritual being behind him, or were spiritual energies manifested through him? What stands behind this?

When we move to spiritual life, we come to these questions. If the soul is a component of a human being, then the physical body is also a component. If the physical body is a component of a human being, then there is some kind of human.

– If a person does not believe in all this, does it mean they do not need to engage in spiritual life? Do they not need spirituality?

– If a person considers spirituality as some kind of material abstraction, like a hobby, there are no questions. I do not enter into discussion and do not discuss such a person.

But if a person understands and believes in aspects outside the physical world, it is important for them to stop deceiving themselves in this and it is necessary to begin to understand it.

If a person has a physical body and a soul or spirit, the physical body they perceive somehow, and the spirit and soul — relatively; or a person believes in God and at the same time asks whether it is necessary to engage in spirituality — if you perceive this, then it is necessary to engage in it.

I will give an example. A person lives in an apartment. If they do not take care of it — do not clean the bathroom, the toilet, do not clean surfaces — the apartment will gradually fall into disrepair, begin to collapse, everything will break. Housing needs to be taken care of.

Just like health. A good example is teeth and dentistry. A person brushes their teeth because this is a natural process of maintaining them in a healthy state, not for development. Is it possible to do something for the development of teeth? Theoretically, yes: use additional means, special pastes, undergo procedures and improve their condition. But in most cases, a person simply maintains health. They do not engage in development — they at least perform basic actions to preserve the current state.

In the spiritual world, there are a huge number of things that need to be done to maintain the state, not to mention development. But people do not want to engage in maintenance. They want to develop, want to achieve results, want to become “stronger” from the point of view of the spiritual world, “better.” They measure themselves by this, boast about it.

We recently filmed a video and discussed that people, even those who believe in the spiritual world, cannot name a single parameter by which one can compare spiritual development, state, or strength between people. How can this even be compared?

We know, by studying human development, that people differ in terms of spiritual strength. Just as in ordinary life, people differ in skills: some drive a car better, some cook, some speak different languages, play the piano, grow plants, build businesses. Someone is a good carpenter, someone is an astronaut, someone is a translator, someone is a Russian language teacher. Different knowledge, different skills — even in things such as raising a dog, the ability to understand it, to read behavior.

From the point of view of the spiritual world, people also differ.

But a person does not strive for the knowledge of the spiritual world and not for maintaining basic things — basic hygiene, so to speak. They strive to get “stars” for themselves, to put “check marks.”

I have various development groups, and often people want to demonstrate their importance, to emphasize that they have undergone changes in terms of development. If you look at business clubs and modern educational formats, they are often aimed not at gaining knowledge, but at achieving certain results and numbers. At the same time, basic serious education speaks of something else: first you need to get a base of knowledge. It is not necessary to immediately get the final result in the form of a business with a profit of 100 million dollars.

There are things where knowledge and “hygiene” are important.

– What if someone is afraid to look into the area of spirituality, afraid that it will become even worse? Many are afraid to go into spirituality because it seems that it can only become more complicated, that you will begin to see things you will not be able to handle. What should be done with this?

– This is the same as when a person says: “I will not figure out our relationship, because it will be very difficult for me, I will sleep badly, I will have stress.” Or a person says: “I am a creative person, so I will not deal with system reports, management systems in business and financial systems.” Then you will have problems with finances in life.

You must calmly understand: when you see a certain difficulty, fear, this does not in any way reduce the problems that may occur further. In order to understand many things in life, you need to go through difficulties, including trials and suffering.

I consider any spiritual study as a blessing, as an aspect of a gift from above and am always happy to immerse myself in new knowledge, interests, materials, to find in myself some aspects of disharmonious development, to see manifestations of the ego of Ahriman or Lucifer. I am glad to see this, to truly perceive it. Just as I am glad to learn in advance that somewhere behind the wall rot is accumulating, because I know: if it continues, it will spread to my entire house, and then I will need to do repairs not for 500 dollars, but for 100 thousand dollars. I will be glad to detect some illness at an early stage rather than learn about it as a fact, telling myself: “At least I did not suffer, did not experience stress.”

There are things that you will have to face: for example, every person will have to face death; with observing how other people die. But mostly everyone does not care. For most people, someone will die nearby, and if you do not see this, then at least you yourself will die very quickly — you will have to face it. Someone will face their own death over an extended period of time, and someone will face it in an instant.

Not buying a dog, understanding that it will die in 10 or 15 years, is a very specific way of thinking. The question is: what do you feel, what do you see, do you normally, naturally understand that all animals will die? I will point out that the dog you did not buy will still die in 15 years. You tell yourself: “I will become attached to it.” But that is what living life is about: observing how something is born and something dies. Flowers are born, then die. You can suffer because the roses died, or a rabbit ate them, or they spoiled, aphids attacked them, or you can rejoice when they bloomed and relate to it exclusively from that position. From the position of understanding that this is real life.

– If a person has understood and accepted that there are such spiritual aspects (spirituality, spiritual life), but understands nothing about it and wants to try to go into studying it — where should they start?

– First of all, what needs to be done is to stop considering spiritual life through the prism of material perception. It is necessary to realize that the spiritual world is around; it is the source.

When we said at the beginning what is primary — the physical body or the soul — it is necessary to understand:

• there is the spiritual world
• there is the spiritual human
• there is a component of the spiritual world
• there is a component of the spiritual human.

If we actually look at what is happening from the point of view of the spiritual world and you as a human, draw a map, build a 2D model — not even a 3D model, it is impossible to build a map of a human spiritual being in 3D. It is multidimensional, but it is difficult for a person to perceive this. Therefore, even if we create a 2D drawing, we will see that the current life is a certain point on this map: not the highest, not the lowest, not the deepest, not the most convex, not the largest, not the smallest, but it is just a point on this map in some period of time.

Is it possible to engage only with this point? I want to say that there is nothing wrong with focusing on this point, while maintaining a normal understanding that you are in a huge world and are dealing with a point. There is no mistake in this. Please, deal only with this point, with this specific action. But remember that there are a huge number of other causes and effects that fly around, that there are past lives, a huge number of patterns — keep this with you every day, be with it all the time.

The perception that spiritual life is not a reflection of the amount of money or your mood, state, your feelings, emotions as an indicator that everything happening has a spiritual cause, without arguing with it. When I lift a glass — I simply lift it, and there is no spiritual cause, but even this, if you dig deeper, has a spiritual component:

Why could this glass be lifted at all? What components does it consist of? How was it made? Who made it? Who brought it here? This has a spiritual aspect and a spiritual cause.

This gives truth and real movement forward, and not the lie that a person goes to church only when someone dies, or only to ask for help; or a person crosses themselves when a black cat crosses the road, or a person begins to speak in a благостный completely different voice when a priest comes to them. It does not matter whether this priest is a murderer or a good person; it does not matter whether this priest hears the spiritual world or he simply studied to become a priest.

Do you understand the absurdity of what is happening? We are used to doing this.

• We are used to calling doctors doctors only because they received a certain education or because they accepted a certain number of clients.
• We are used to calling a person a saint only because certain components are present in them.
• We are used to saying about a person that they understand business management because they have a certain status or they are the head of a company, even if by inheritance; even if they are untalented. People will come to their lectures, will listen to them.

This is the essence of the modern world. And this is where a person can receive incredibly strong development forward.