Can you love someone who has done something bad? Where is the boundary between love, making excuses and responsibility? In this conversation with Olga Stolyarova, I explore one of the hardest subjects: how to relate to someone who has hurt you, made a mistake or done something that seems unacceptable to you.
This is a conversation about loving every person, about boundaries, responsibility and spiritual perception, and about how not to confuse love with accepting bad behavior. About why people excuse themselves with fatigue, their personality, circumstances or some external energies, and why none of that removes their responsibility. And most importantly — whether you can see a person beyond their mistake without supporting the evil that has manifested through them.
How to view another person’s actions. The most important exercise in a person’s life
Can you love another person? In essence, you need to love another person — any person. As I’ve said before, look at what is happening: there are wars in the world now — there have been wars, there are wars, and there will be wars in the coming decades. You can rail against this, but you can also look from a higher perspective and understand that it is the cause and effect of human development under all circumstances. I am not excusing anyone here in any way. People die; it is very bad, but it is the cause and effect of human development.
Even if a person begins to look at himself: say, people close to him were killed — why did that happen to him? Or people around him are killing other people — why did that happen? Trying to stand apart, or to compare yourself with yourself, is only a desire to save your own personality. The one thing you can do is truly look at other people from the understanding that absolutely anyone can be loved.
That is why I have said, say, and will keep saying that there is one of the best exercises in a person’s life — the only one you can practice while doing nothing else. It requires no meditations, retreats, trips, practices or clever teachings.
It is to observe every day how you act toward another person, what you feel toward them, what you experience in relation to this person. Is there love?
Look for love for another person, look for it in every glance, conversation and encounter. Look for love even when you need to uphold certain social norms or a social contract.
There is such a thing as a social contract, after all. When we meet, we have a contract. Someone takes a job or hires someone, sells someone a product, or you buy something — there is a contract and there are certain agreements. You have agreed on particular terms, but even within those terms you need to remember that you must feel love for the other person. Remember that. It is so important! It is so powerful and so necessary — regardless of what that person has done.
Where is the boundary between love and making excuses?
There are reasons for what they did. That is not an excuse, but if you understand the chain, you understand that the person does not even know what they are doing. When you look at the chain, most of the time a person has no idea at all, does not understand what is happening — simply does not understand. Is it easy to accept that? It is not.
I think I’ve talked about this at some of my meetings. About eight years ago a horoscope was made for my wife, and the man in India who made it told me that she had certain aspects of her own behavior. That mattered to me then. I have a different point of support now, but I’ll explain. He said there were things she would do that she did not control, that were not her wish. And that became a very powerful motivation for me. When she did — or does — something inappropriate, remembering that information let me calm down. Not excuse her — it’s not a question of excusing. I could look from a higher perspective, I could calm down.
Why? I lead a great many spiritual meetings, and when a person does something good or bad, people always ask me: “Did this person do it consciously or not?” Everyone is interested in that: did they know or not? Everyone wants to understand whether they knew. I tell everyone: “What difference does it make whether they knew or not? They did it — they are responsible for it.” Everyone wants to use this as an excuse — knowing or not knowing.
So, knowing that there are planets that influenced this person — that is, that something external affected their state — seems to excuse them. Just as women have their menstrual cycle. Look: society excuses women’s behavior on the basis of that cycle. And I always say — with all due respect — that this is just a narrowing of perception, and you need to be in a state of expanded perception.
Why, then, don’t you excuse men? If I’ve worked fourteen hours, come home angry in the evening and snap at everyone — why don’t you excuse me on that basis? But society does excuse it. Society says: “He’s been working, he’s tired. Put a beer in his hand.” Society excuses it, but you cannot excuse it.
Of course physical states exist. If you plunged a knife into my leg with all your strength right now, or a bear appeared in front of me, I would start behaving inappropriately. That’s my physical or psychophysical reaction — I wouldn’t withstand it. My physical body wouldn’t withstand it; it would start behaving inappropriately. But the psyche, too, can behave inappropriately and affect the physical body and your consciousness — even more than a direct physical influence does. It can happen in different ways, in very different ways.
External energies, karma and human choice
So there are external energies that led a person to certain actions. In fact, most of the things you do in your life are uncontrolled energies. Notice that I used the word “external.” A person may get the impression that they are then not responsible, and that astrology, for instance, is an external energy. But in fact it is external only in relative terms.
Look carefully: on the one hand, these are external energies. A person was born at a particular moment in the positions of the planets, and all the planets move. You know: everything moves, everything shifts — the sun shifts, and we all shift. We are always moving — not only revolving around the sun: the sun itself moves, heading, you might say, toward the center of the Universe along a particular trajectory, shifting, and everything else moves relative to it too.
But human beings develop. In the spiritual world, everything is constantly developing: every planet, every spiritual being, every system. God, in essence, develops. God. That is very important. The whole divine hierarchy develops, everyone develops, everyone is in motion. Everyone. Not only particular spiritual beings or dark hierarchies — Lucifer developing, or Ahriman, I don’t know. All the divine forces themselves develop. The spiritual beings of the planets develop. Everything is in motion, in change. Here, by the word “development” I mean change — not in any way a positive or negative quality, but precisely change.
So if a person was born at a particular time, on the one hand, supposedly they are not responsible for that. But in fact they chose the time and date of their birth, their entry, their birth into a particular family. In fact they chose it as a spiritual being together with other spiritual hierarchies. And even where they did not choose it — if someone says they didn’t — there is a karmic basis. All right, let it be a karmic basis: they took certain actions that brought them to a particular state, and from there they bring about certain events.
So why should you not love them? Then the question becomes: whom do you love more — your mother or another woman? Do you love your own child or someone else’s? That is exactly what this is about. Olya, look: that is exactly what this is about.
The main trap in understanding love
The point is not that a person has done something bad. I always give this example: whom would you choose to save — your own child or someone else’s? There is no answer, because the question “whom would you choose” is itself a foolish one. But you do have your own point of support.
If you immediately say, “I would choose my own,” you are in a lie of perceiving truth. You cannot choose at all; you have no right to, if you relate to people with love.
Someone will say: “But a blood relative is still a blood relative.” There you have it: you have separated one person from another — “by blood.” And if that blood relative did something not very good, while the other person is positively saintly — whom would you choose? A person will say: “If it’s not very good, I’d still choose my own.” And what if he did something very bad? Whom would you choose then? And what is “very bad”? Very bad is whatever a person has decided for himself to consider very bad.
One person thinks having a glass of wine is very bad. Another thinks it is very good and normal to drink a bottle of wine every day, but heroin or vodka — that’s bad. They say: “No, wine is good for you. Vodka, not so much.” Someone says: “Vodka is fine, but cocaine is bad.” Someone: “Cocaine is fine, but heroin is bad.” Someone: “Heroin is fine, but killing a person is bad.” That is the society we live in. And someone says: “Selling heroin is fine.” Olya, not using heroin — selling it to other people. Selling it!
These are shadows. Valery Lomovtsev has this concept — “shadows.” These are shadows of the third order. There are different kinds. I won’t go into it now — to contradict or not contradict, or perhaps to express it incorrectly — but Valery Lomovtsev describes shadows in a simply incredible way. It is an incredible force. It is worth reading about. In his “Practical Worldview” books, he describes shadows and worlds: worlds as a positive phenomenon, shadows as a negative one.
Drug dealing is shadows. But there is a higher story: someone who does not deal drugs directly but creates the conditions, makes decisions, and allows or disallows the drug trade. Those are shadows. They do not touch it themselves, but on the whole they authorize, choose and make decisions. These are high-level world politicians, powerful world politicians, major financial structures, various organizational structures that control all of it.
Over the weekend we visited Las Vegas and put on the movie “Casino” with Robert De Niro in the background. A friend of mine was with me. He says: “The people shown in this movie are nobodies in terms of society’s financial system.” They are shown as rich people: expensive cars, gold, luxury, money. But they are nobodies. The mafia leaders, the mafia bosses — nobodies. And the company owners above them — nobodies. There are higher structures — particular corporations or particular people who make all these decisions, because it is a matter of power. As soon as I went into the question of shadows, there was the question of power.
Olya, look: can you love every person? Everything pales here when we move on to such subjects as power and shadows — even above the second or third level. It immediately becomes very serious.
So you should not even ask yourself the question: can I, should I love a person who has done some particular thing? You should, you can. And this is incredibly important for saving humanity, because otherwise you are fighting the wrong ones.
A person cannot kill another person on his own, out of his own personality and his own personal desire. He cannot do it. He would be under the power of certain energies — he cannot do it himself. But a person is able, personally, as a spiritual being, with his whole system, to be in love toward everyone. It is an incredible state — do you see what I mean? And an incredible difference. A person cannot kill a person on his own. But he can be in love. He can truly live that love. Genuinely, honestly, in truth he can.
What is true love?
Look, true love is not about making excuses; the two are not connected. I was just telling you about a person excusing himself. When you love another person, you simply love another person. And when a person does something bad, he doesn’t need to be in that zone of excuses. He has to understand that he is doing something bad, something wrong. Or that he is in a state of narrowed perception because he is tired. Simply understand it, treat it this way: you’re just tired right now, you’re physically unstable, unsettled, unable to withstand things. But hear it and, from your own inner system, agree with it.
Recently my wife came to me in the morning and said something about the kids: one of them hadn’t said hello that morning. I say: “Listen, regardless of the day of the week, of the state we’re in — whether we’re the best of friends or in some conflict — when I see you in the morning, if I say ‘hello’ to you, you say ‘hello’ to me. And if I don’t say ‘hello’ to you, you don’t say ‘hello’ to me.” She says: “I can’t think straight in the morning. That’s the state I’m in.” But that’s the whole point: you have to try.
The next morning I go into the bathroom, and she says to me: “Hello.” For me it was, you know, as if I’d been pricked — it’s unnatural, after all. But good for her. That’s what making an effort is. Why did she do it the next day? She made an effort, Olya. Why did the person do it the next day? They made an effort to do it.
If a person keeps trying, these things will disappear. You have to try.
I remember a female friend of a close friend of mine telling me: “Sasha, I get up in the morning and I just can’t do anything with myself. I want to destroy my husband. Until I’ve had coffee, until I’ve eaten, I just can’t control myself — it’s impossible.” And she asks: “What do I do about it?” Make an effort for the other person. Make an effort for the other person and for yourself too — for yourself.
Do you understand that you are destroying yourself every day? You are destroying yourself. Make an effort. I want to tell you that this is an incredible salvation: if you feel this way every morning — try. Try for your own sake, please. Try! Look: this is simply inappropriate behavior. And try to sort it out. Try to look at it, to study it. There are a huge number of ways to study it now. Maybe you overate before bed, or the house was too warm at night? What happened? Why is it like this? Maybe you need to sleep alone in a room? Try to resolve this question. Honestly, truly try to do it. If you try, everything will be fine, everything will be good.
And then the issue is not that you’re tired after work or that you have your period. That is understanding, and it is natural and normal: if I go into the garden now and dig holes for four hours, I’ll be drained in my physical body and may react in a certain way when someone asks me to dig one more hole. But if I’m trying, if I’m trying — the world will bring everything into alignment; then everything will line up. It’s natural that a person can be tired. It’s natural that a person can have impairments. But that is not an excuse, Olya.
And I also want to tell you this: there are a huge number of people in the world who are unwell in how they perceive life, in the energies that move within them. We are used to excusing visible things that science has shown us or that were written in some book. So categories such as ADHD were introduced, people were divided into choleric and melancholic types, creative and systematic types — thereby excusing a person’s behavior. But in doing so, a person was equated not with a human being but with some material substance — a bolt or a saw. Simply equated with some object and told that it has such a property, so if you use it the wrong way, you’ll cut or hurt yourself. Such categories were introduced, among other things, as excuses.
And then we see that rationale break down. This has been discussed very intensely in America over the past two years, with the arrival of the new administration: when you have fifty laws supporting people of different races, but not white people. And, as people say, the ones most harmed in society over the past ten years have been white men. On the one hand, there is truth in this in terms of different people being demeaned in different societies, social strata and countries. On the other hand, it is inappropriate.
We see this on religious grounds too: people say that if you don’t pray in a particular way, you should be killed. Or that if you belong to a different religion, you should be excluded, expelled from the country or stripped of citizenship. This is a false belief, a false thing, a truly false thing. I tell you truly: it is a false thing.
This brings something to very strong attention, Olya: you really must love a person and come to know this. Love for every person regardless of their actions — with an understanding of who they are, what they are, what energies work in them, and what you are supporting and what you love. Do you love the person, or do you love those energies? A great many people in the world love energies.
For example, someone has made a trillion dollars — and everyone immediately listens to him. Everyone immediately listens to all the billionaires, completely. But people turn a blind eye to the fact that this person may have ten wives, or uses drugs, or visits certain specific establishments, or destroys other people. So what do they love? They love certain energies.
So love the person, not these energies. The person. You love him not for money, not for the amount in his account, not for adornments — you love his spiritual substance, his structure. You love this person, truly love him — then it is possible. Otherwise it is impossible.
You will always be living in a lie. You will love your child for particular actions, and he will do something you consider bad. After all, there are things you consider bad a priori — for example, killing another person. Not everyone thinks so: there are people who readily support it. And there are things you consider bad — for example, when he breaks a cup at home. Or you simply love this person, and then you interact with him, understanding that life differs in terms of social arrangements and that he might break a cup.
Can you scold him? Go ahead, scold him, explain the rules to him. But the love doesn’t go anywhere.
Can there be love that is not tied to these social events? That is the question a person should ask himself every day, and observe it.
And if there is a certain anger and irritation inside him — look, search for the reasons, not excuses, for why this is happening to him. Because a person will deceive himself. Today we recorded another video together, and I said that I am in a particular space and this space is fragrant with life. And supposedly a person in it should feel incredibly harmonious. Yet a person in this space can feel absolutely terrible. What’s more, he can excuse himself and say: “I feel bad because I’m in too good a space.” And we often hear this: “You have too much good in your life; you need to plunge into something bad.”
And there are people who plunge into something very good — and become even more truthful; their love grows. And there are people who plunge into something good — and their ego grows, because they have the cause-and-effect connections for living through such a structure of energy and such a karmic experience.
So a person’s task is to separate, to set apart the truth from an incredible number of social, mental and scientific actions, events and preconceptions. In the same way, really, as seeing light and love in every person — regardless of their race, blood, connection with you, the actions they take, regardless of anything.
Give this person love. Give any person love. And this is the truth.
Can you love someone without interacting with them?
– But love doesn’t mean interaction: you can love a person and not interact with them?
– Of course. Olya, once again: what do you mean by love? That’s the whole point. Can a man love another woman more than his wife? Look, that’s precisely the point. Taken as a whole, a person should love all people equally. Even if I use the word “should” — in quotation marks, of course — equally. Beyond that, you simply have different experiences with someone, a different experience of life. But to say that a woman loves this man more and that one less for some reason is to divide people into different strata.
Of course, I have one mother. I’m not dividing: I understand that I have one mother, but I want to relate to all women with the same love as to my mother. To all of them. That’s wonderful. I have two daughters. I want to relate to all children and all women equally, just as to my daughters. And to relate to my daughters with the same love as to my mother and my wife. And the same as to you. Equally. To try to relate equally, remembering this.
When you remember and know, “Oh, this is the truth,” everything is fine. And then I act and make various decisions — social ones. Yes, I have blood ties with them, hereditary, psychophysical and so on. The experience is different. But I have an enormous shared experience with you too. I have spent a lot of time with you in various discussions. In terms of discussing life, I’ve spent far more time with you than with my wife, my mother and my daughters. Should I diminish this experience or exaggerate it? For what? What do we want to compare? Do we want to compare it with blood kinship, or with someone being a wife or a mother? Are you sure? Don’t compare.
That’s the whole point: comparison is meaningless. It’s absurd. You don’t even need to ask yourself this question — you need to remember love for the person.
But again, remember that love for a person is not because there is shared experience, and not because you have spent a lot of time with that person. It is not even known with whom I have spent, and will ever spend, more time. Because life is not limited to this life and not limited to past lives. That is very important. There will be many more intersections in the world and across lives. And ahead, at the very least, there are still years and decades of life. For some, perhaps years; for some, decades; for some, days. What difference does it make?
From the perspective of the spiritual world, you and I also have spiritual interaction. Imagine: every night a person falls asleep, and their astral body and their “I” separate from the physical and etheric bodies. Their astral body and “I” — the part of their spiritual system that constitutes them — live in the spiritual world. They interact with other spiritual systems, among others. With whom do they interact more there — with a wife, with daughters, with you, or with other women? That’s a big question from the perspective of the spiritual system. There, that division simply doesn’t exist. It would seem not. What division is there? There is a division there, but it is on a higher level.
Of course, if from the very first day of life all of society explained this to everyone every day, showed it and guided them toward it, attitudes would be completely different. But it doesn’t benefit parents to do that. Parents want their children to love only them. Many parents want that — not all, of course. They want their children to love precisely them and to treat them in a special way. At a neighbor’s home the children may not clean up, but at their own home they must.
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