How Meditation Works: From Bodily Sensations to Expanded Perception

GAGalya

I watch your meditations, and I have formed an impression. It may be mistaken or entirely my own, but listening to them regularly rather than just once seems to affect a person's health—specifically, to improve it. Is that so?

AVAlexander Volchek

Before we turn specifically to my meditations, let us examine the general question: can entering different meditative practices change your health? We will look at that before discussing the series on my channel that you mean. First, every second of life affects our health. Everything around us, everything happening, constantly affects it. Everything. The course of our health is not exactly predetermined, but it is strongly conditioned by many things: karmic processes, heredity, and what we have done in life. There is a great deal of predetermination in the body we inhabit and the life we live. All of it affects health. When someone says alcohol, taking particular pills, exercise, or something else affects their health, in most cases those are only consequences of various causes connected with what is to happen. In most cases. At the same time, there is, of course, an area of freedom.

That means a person can die earlier or later, feel worse or better. There is still an area of freedom and considerable scope for change. To approach that scope, understand that every moment affects health. Every moment. Absolutely every moment. The question is how much. If I jump out of a window, that will obviously affect my health. Or if I fall on my head, or simply hit my head against a wall. If I somehow go thirty days without sleep or enter a space full of poison, it will affect my health quite quickly. At the same time, simply recording this meeting—sitting in a chair or looking at a screen—also has some effect. We will enter a particular meditative state anyway. Its effect on health is relative, but different kinds of effects are present, and it is important to remember them.

There is still some tiny effect on fatigue or your state, although fatigue is relative. We could sit at a computer for fifteen hours without getting tired. Very relative. Recently I began comparing the different readings on my wristband with my activities. I see how far from obvious the patterns are; many supposed patterns are simply invented. Even holding a phone before bed is, in a qualified sense, an invented pattern. In a qualified sense. Obviously it has an effect, but what actually affects sleep? What actually does? When we discuss meditation and entering real meditative states, as I have explained in earlier videos, I do not mean performing exercises. Here, meditation is part of life and, consequently, an expansion of perception. So does expanded perception affect your health? It affects it from two sides. First, it does affect it. Understand that health is not determined solely by the physical body.

That is very important: not solely by the physical body. Different impulses arise. Consider what we mean by health. Suppose a person is to die in ten years: an event is to occur in which they die, and a sequence of actions leads to it. Suppose it is not an airplane crash unrelated to their health, but a disease. Do you recognize that, in terms of certain energies, this disease will form and develop within them over those ten years? When we speak of energetic processes and spaces, and energies appearing that affect health and illness, expanded perception allows you to encounter and see those energies before they become something easily detectable in the physical body. Even ordinary medicine says to work preventively with certain diseases, in advance—

not fight the disease only once it appears, as people usually go to the doctor when they already feel bad, but attend to things and examine them beforehand. But what should you examine if it is not needed at all? Suppose a person is to die in an airplane crash in ten years. They can exercise, watch their diet, and attend to their health as much as they like, then die in that crash, entirely unrelated to their illnesses. Entirely unrelated, for example. Or a person eats certain foods so that a disease will develop, because a particular energy is operating within them. The first point is that, in a real meditative state with genuinely expanded perception, you can see and encounter somewhat different spaces and energies. Encounter those energies. You asked specifically about these meditations. Watching them does not necessarily mean seeing or perceiving anything. But not seeing or perceiving does not mean that enormous numbers of the processes described in those meditations and meditative states are not occurring within you.

Enormous numbers of meditations—practically all of them—are directed toward expanding perception. To expand perception, the system will become healthier. That does not mean it will grow younger or acquire a child's body, an athlete's body, or that of a supremely healthy person. But the system will definitely recover. That is a fact. In general, the person will be ill less often. Again, “less” is always a very particular question. We recently discussed dental floss. Someone said, “My husband flosses four times a day.” My wife asked, “Have his teeth gotten better?” I asked the same thing. But what does “better” mean? We do not know how things would otherwise have been. When we say better or worse, we do not know the alternative. If someone with extensive perception of different spaces dies, people say, “They practiced spiritually and died. Why?” Or they practiced and became ill. Why did they become ill? Who told you how they would have lived in that body without those practices?

What would have happened in that body if they had not done it? Yesterday, while driving in the rain we have had these days, I saw someone running. It reminded me of a friend who runs and recently told me a blood clot had been found. How is being exceptionally athletic and physically fit connected with developing particular, directly dangerous health problems? Again, the important point is that, generally, expanding perception brings recovery. As you said, the person recovers. But there are different spaces within expanded perception. Expanding perception is one thing; the spaces you occupy while doing so are another. In meditative states and practices, you can enter a space that will worsen your health. Definitely worsen it. In what sense? You can encounter an energy or acquire a virus without karmic conditioning, hereditary conditioning, or a cause rooted in your life.

You simply encounter it and have to live with it. Be with it. It can destroy your physical body. Such things do exist. So, speaking generally again about meditative practices—

GAGalya

Look, there are meditations—

For most people, the popular ones are meditations for money, success, or some other result. My first question is whether that is right at all and whether particular meditations really lead to success, money, and so on. You could name any desire. That is the first point. Second, when I recommend your meditations to someone, I may say quite specifically, “Listen to these meditations in order to...” I realize I am putting them into a particular framework by naming a purpose. Is that an appropriate thing to do? Does it contradict the essence of the practice, of meditation?

AVAlexander Volchek

The only purpose for which a person can meditate—the only purpose—is to know the truth. There is a small opening here: you can meditate to expand your perception, hear yourself, and bring your whole structure into one system you can perceive, all bodies and spaces connected and perceived, including by the person. “By the person” is relative, because the spiritual being awakens first. Understand that the spiritual being is not an archangel flying around everyone while the human person simply cannot hear it. Many people think that way. They fall into the misconception that the spiritual world is separate from the material world, a kind of projection, and that spiritual beings are supremely benevolent while the person has not discovered truth and hears nothing. Of course, there is also the other projection: only the material world exists. The spiritual being is at a particular stage of development—a particular stage—and, you could say, of illness too. Not illness in the physical sense, but there are enormous numbers of injuries, an incredible number, including a lack of perception in the spiritual being, enormous numbers of dependencies, and much else.

Even when we say a spiritual being chose where to incarnate and enter a particular life, there seems to be awareness in that. Yet it happens according to laws, not because the being simply says, “I will make a decision.” According to laws and in coordination with various spiritual hierarchies. In coordination. Lucifer is an example of a spiritual being saying, “We are on our own.” Having reached a substantial level in the spiritual hierarchy, the level of an angel or even above, Lucifer said, “I will move and continue developing on my own.” This is crucial to perceiving what actually happens. Even when we want to know the truth and expand perception, that expansion does not begin here. It begins in the spiritual being. This completely changes how we understand meditation. Meditating to make things better here is one thing. But everyone who watches me knows I always say: if you look at your “I” and allow energy into it, it will pour an incredibly powerful stream into here.

If someone else who can see looks at your “I” and illuminates you in the spiritual world, it will flood all the bodies. Everything. Everything will begin filling anew. Everything possible. Again, what you can meditate on is expanding the spiritual being's perception—all that I have described. Now, could you approach someone and say, “Watch meditation thirty-four or thirty-five, and you will resolve this issue”? Could that happen? Of course. You see the spiritual world in its own terms. Perception through inspiration occurs, along with other forms such as imagination and intuition—spiritual intuition, not the human intuition usually described in the material world. You have vision. You know the sequence: a particular meditation will bring transformations, and the resulting action will occur in the person's life. The important distinction is that you are not telling them to watch in order to resolve an event; you see that the event will resolve if they watch.

Those are different things. Completely different. Otherwise, here is what happens. If I go for coffee, I go to a particular coffee shop to drink coffee. I am not simply going somewhere to do something, like the Russian fairy tale: “Go I know not where, bring back I know not what.” Someone says, “I will pursue spiritual development to have more money.” Perhaps they read it in a book: meditate more. The same is said about health and everything else, everywhere. People who encounter and like the idea of the spiritual world use these formulas: want more money, freedom, happiness, or health? Do spiritual practices. It is the same as “Go I know not where, bring back I know not what.” If I go looking for coffee without knowing where to go—even coffee—or go looking for money without knowing where, it is meaningless. There is plenty of territory here where I could drive for a very long time. Very long.

There is a chance I might stumble upon it somewhere. A chance. But in the ordinary world I can ask and see with my eyes what a coffee shop is. Ordinary people who are not initiates, entering meditation or joining a group in a meditative state, are blind. It is not merely “Go I know not where, bring back I know not what.” They do not even know how to go. Even as they move, they cannot see anything. Try reaching a coffee shop with your legs or arms tied, your mouth taped shut, and your eyes covered. I will not find it. I will not last long at all, especially in the hills where I live. That is the analogy: you are not simply going somewhere and looking around. Your eyes are covered; you have no idea what is happening. If someone sets themselves that task for the day... I have had long discussions about this over the past thirteen—fourteen years. Fourteen years. Some people do find their way in.

My own process began with a desire for power. Well, I did not enter spiritual development because of a desire for power: my spiritual being was moving me. That is clear. But intellectually, I thought this process would give me a certain power. I very quickly shifted to simply wanting to know the truth. Very quickly—perhaps a year or a year and a half. That is quick; people can go decades without perceiving it. It happened that way for me because that was my spiritual being's path. Many people enter spiritual development—actually, not many: everyone. Absolutely everyone. It is hearing and receiving impulses from your own spiritual system, the spiritual world, and your spiritual being. It is not your logic. You cannot begin meditation through logic. That is an illusion. The only exception you could stretch this to is going to a gym for yoga that consists solely of physical exercise. Everything else is drawn in and connected by your spiritual being.

Sometimes you hear that someone should watch certain meditations not because you saw it, but because their spiritual being gave you that impulse. That is important to notice. I discuss it in different places and, I think, in a video here on the meditation channel. Notice it; it is important information. Then you calmly pass it on. Not all information should be passed on, though, as you know. Sometimes you need to limit it because the person cannot perceive it now or needs to hear it differently. But a truly pure flow of information contains no distortion. If it needs to be done, the person needs to watch. What happens if you tell them and they do not watch? Yesterday someone came for a spiritual session and asked about interacting with a person they had asked me about six months earlier—not they themselves, but an acquaintance of theirs.

Not they themselves, but their acquaintance had asked six months ago. I told that acquaintance clearly, “Do not pursue contact with this person.” They continued anyway. Six months later, someone returns and asks what to do about the person. I say, “The problem is that you do not understand the consequences of being told not to do something and doing the opposite. You do not understand what consequences there will be.” There are always consequences. If you recommended something and the person did not do it, that has consequences too, because the energy and spiritual world opened and the information entered and is present. Again, meditations for money, success, or results are all illusory. Someone meditates on money and encounters certain spaces. It is like saying, “I will earn money by sitting in a field.” I will not earn money there. You need to know where to be, how the energies work, which causes and effects exist, and whether you have those possibilities.

It is like meditating on being able to lift a thousand kilograms. I cannot lift a thousand kilograms. Whatever I do, I cannot lift them. If I try, I will die. Simply die. If that weight comes down on me, a thousand kilograms will crush me and I will die. That is a failure to understand cause and effect properly. The same projection applies to success and money. Entering the spiritual world to gain something without wanting to understand its rules is like getting behind the wheel to go somewhere when you cannot drive. You do not know the rules or how to drive. You will have an accident. Notice: if you cannot drive and get behind the wheel in a big city, an accident is virtually guaranteed. Put any of my children behind the wheel, or my mother, who cannot drive, and the probability is catastrophically high. In fact, it is practically one hundred percent.

They would not even get far; they would hit the first fence. That is how seriously you need to view the spiritual world. Exactly that way. Where you do not know, an extraordinary range of combinations and actions can arise. I think I have used this analogy for meditation before: a ten-year-old decides to start a business, knowing nothing. Nothing at all. “I will go start a business,” and off they go. It is that kind of desire without understanding what is happening. Or going hunting barehanded in Africa, on a safari where tigers, lions, coyotes, and panthers roam. “I will go hunting.” The circumstances are similar. The outcome is clear, is it not? Clear. In a serious jungle or forest, I do not think that person would survive until morning. They would not survive until morning, especially if they decided to attack.

They want to hunt and decide to attack barehanded. They will not survive until morning.

GAGalya

So, to meditate properly, reach deep states, expand perception, illuminate your spiritual being, and connect with your “I,” you can only do it with a teacher?

AVAlexander Volchek

A good conclusion. On one hand, yes, a good conclusion: you are saying it is clear that you need to learn something. But there is a nuance. Suppose someone begins by saying, “I want to meditate to know the truth, not to develop myself.” That matters. You can meditate and know the truth all the time you are awake. Sleep is a separate process of perception; let us leave it aside. The separation of the astral body and “I” is a separate process. While awake, can you meditate all the time? You can come to know the truth at work, driving, having lunch or breakfast, talking with children or family, walking alone or with someone, drawing, or hammering a nail. Whatever you do, you can be in the process of knowing truth and expanding perception. Notice: that is meditation, a meditative state. If you truly remain in the desire to know the truth, continually coming to know it—

the question becomes whether a teacher is needed then. You do not need a teacher to perceive what is around you. To perceive how you feel now, I can simply want to do so, not for a further purpose but as part of interacting. As people say, if you want to talk with someone, begin perceiving them, and you will not have a single question.

GAGalya

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

Simply wanting to, simply paying attention to you, will immediately change the state. Or paying attention to what is happening in this space. It seems I do not need a teacher for that. We need to distinguish this from the idea that a guide or another person is always necessary. On the other hand, you can learn to drive without a teacher. Can you? Of course. Study the rules yourself, sit behind the wheel, move off slowly, watch videos, investigate, read books. You can learn somehow. Somehow you can learn. Can you repair a car without a teacher, books, or videos? That becomes much harder, but you can still take things apart. There is a chance you will damage it and fail to reassemble it. That usually applies to me: if I dismantle something, I do not put it back together. My wife laughs and says, “Understood. That is going in the trash.” You need to be aware of your capabilities. Some people really can do it. In the spiritual world, there is also a possibility of doing it yourself.

In many areas, though, we endlessly learn from other people and from the space around us. People learn constantly. In the spiritual world, the word “teacher” has been singled out as something special. A spiritual teacher is special. How is that different from a mother or father teaching a child, or a schoolteacher with whom the child spends whole days? You send a child into first grade and take them out in eleventh. They encounter all those teachers. How does that differ from what we call a spiritual teacher? I remember asking about baptism. Someone told me, “There must be a godmother and a godfather.” I asked, “Where is that written? Is there a book that says so?” “It is the custom.” “Call the church.” They called: “This church says both are required.” “Call another.” The other said both were not required. I said, “Let us understand this person's role. Can a person's own father be their spiritual father?” Can you imagine the shift in state that question creates?

It turns out that a child's parents cannot be the child's spiritual parents. This is where Christianity has led; we see it directly in the Orthodox religion. Explain why other spiritual parents are sought from the outset. Why not first consider this particular child's parents as their spiritual parents? Why must someone else be needed? The same serious confusion surrounds teachers. Still, many people can help you enter spaces you could not otherwise reach, both bad and good. As in ordinary life, some help people do bad things, others good things. Some lead you to a bad place, by day or night; others to a good place. In the spiritual world, too, someone can take you to a good or bad place. In the physical world, some people help you recover, while others perform an operation and say, “Well, statistically, someone died.”

When my father died, I called the doctor, who said, “It happens.” To that person, it was just a statistic. Just a statistic. Some person. A number, not a human being. Just a number. But there are doctors who see the person and know what will happen. Just as an educator knows what will happen with a child and what to give, say, or do—truly knows, rather than casually suggesting something. You go to a dentist and hear, “We filmed this. You need fourteen teeth replaced.” Do I need fourteen replaced or not? “Probably. It would be better.” Would it be better, or is it guaranteed to be better? “It would be better to have this operation, but you can choose not to.” Is it better to do it or possible not to? Do you see the consequences or not? It is the same in the spiritual world. The same.

Many people really can help you move forward tremendously—far more than we can imagine in the material world. It is much more serious in the spiritual world. In the material world, some things are written down and understood, while others are unwritten and unclear. People remain as ignorant as before. Nobody understands how the global economy develops, how serious diseases arise, or why wars begin. They did not understand and still do not understand what they are doing. Some movement simply continues. Today they say yes, tomorrow no, the next day apple, and the day after that a speck of dust. They move through space without awareness. But there are things perceived consciously. In the spiritual world, enormous numbers of things are consciously perceived and understood. Very consciously. Very clearly. There are extraordinary meditative states and practices that bring extraordinary transformation. As I have told you many times, some things do not need doing. They are meaningless. Why do them at all? Why do them? Someone is sitting there, and another person says, “Your aura has the wrong color.

Let us do something about it,” and waves sticks or moves their hands. Snap your fingers and the aura's color changes, becomes invisible, or takes another form. People do not understand color ranges. They think white is good, or black, dark gray, or blue. Invented abstractions attached to words. They need only read the basics, even basic religious material, look at the color ranges, and relax about all the possibilities of good and bad colors. There are substitutions too. I can effortlessly create yellow, red, black, or no color in front of me in terms of energy. It is simply a particular action. What does someone see when they see red in an aura? All right, make their room red; let us make your room red now. What will happen when someone enters that space? That does not mean spending a long time in a red space has no consequences. But it also does not mean a red space is a problem right now.

There you are.

GAGalya

Some people sit down to meditate and say, “I feel nothing. No sensations.” There are no special effects. Should you try to feel something? Should you interpret your sensations, and if so, how? Another point: people who enter meditation and feel nothing sometimes say they do not particularly believe in anything spiritual, or do not understand it. People perceive this differently. Some think you must belong to a religion. There is confusion about whether meditation requires belief in something spiritual or is something else entirely.

AVAlexander Volchek

The question again?

GAGalya

First, should you try to feel something? If sensations appear, should you interpret them? You also ask us to reflect after meditation. What does that reflection mean? And do you have to believe in anything spiritual?

AVAlexander Volchek

Let us start with the first question, about feeling something. Reflection is a good point. I do ask people to write a reflection immediately after watching a meditation, to record their state right afterward. That takes considerable effort and many experiences of meditation. Many times, to understand what writing a reflection even means. It creates a desire to investigate. What is a reflection? Each time they write, they wonder, “Did I remember everything or not? Do I understand how to write this?” Why is it needed? To learn to remain conscious and perceive during meditation. That requires learning to perceive many spaces in parallel. Suppose you enter a world of genuine stillness, one of the many worlds of stillness—

how do you remember there that you need to think about your reflection? How can you think about reflection in a world of stillness, where supposedly you do not need to think? I lead many sessions—dozens, hundreds, many. People in stillness rarely answer, “I am thinking about my reflection,” when asked what they are thinking. I do not remember anyone ever saying, “I was thinking about how to reflect on this.” Sometimes, perhaps even with you, someone says, “I need to remember this.” Usually, as you say that, everything begins dissolving: “It is gone; I remember nothing.” In fact, remembering reflection within those states is very valuable, because you begin seeing how everything dissolves even at the moment of perception. At the moment of perception, everything dissolves. Recording your perception as it really was, preferably even by voice, lets you remember it for yourself, listen again, and study how you felt over a long period.

It is a very important practice. Very important. On one hand, it helps you recognize things for yourself. More importantly, it allows you to remain engaged in different areas during a meditative state. Different areas of engagement. You need the strength to perceive them simultaneously. I am speaking while holding particular energies of mine and yours in different spaces, and observing something else. That is not a simple state. I also need to monitor my own state. It takes strength. I would always be interested in connecting monitoring equipment to myself and seeing what it shows. How I thought I perceived things is one thing; how my physical body actually experienced them is another. This is your question: why do it? To compare and see how fully I truly sense everything happening. The physical body is one thing; there are also enormous numbers of spaces, worlds, and bodies a person has. And simultaneous presence in many spaces, both within and outside time.

Being in spaces within and outside time is a separate subject. How can you record being simultaneously in time and outside it? It is not a simple task. In a sense it is ordinary for me, yet at that level it is not brain activity. Not brain activity. You either have the strength or you do not. This brings us back to whether you should perceive or feel something during meditation. Should you? Nothing I have described said “should.” There was no “must.” I described how a process happens, not what must happen. That is where people get caught. If you enter thinking, “I need to feel my body become free,” you definitely enter a space in which the body is supposed to be free. In the WHOOP wristband, meditation is classified as recovery. Very strange. Being with a child is also recovery there, Galya. It is not under strain, but playing with children is under recovery.

I wonder who designed it. A programmer who has never seen a child. Children create the entire possible range, from tremendous recovery to tremendous strain and stress. The whole range. There is no part they cannot produce, just like any other person or essentially any activity, including my talk today. I give many lectures in a state where my physical body is almost asleep, with very little stress. Other times I am tense, because speaking can involve the entire range of physical engagement. The entire range. This is faulty logic, and millions use a system with faulty logic built in. Why should being with a child mean complete recovery? Why should meditation? Meditation is listed under recovery, but no: you can enter a state that places you under serious strain. We know people who watch a meditation and say, “I am exhausted, as though I had been digging potatoes for fifteen hours.” They say, “I am so tired.”

Or someone says, “I was so tired, and now I have more energy than I have felt at any time in the past ten years.”

Not once in ten years. I often show visitors a state of profound stillness and say, “You have never felt this in your life, except in childhood.” Can they remember it? Can you want to see a state of stillness if you do not know what it is? What does knowing it mentally mean? Being able to enter it quickly. Stillness or no stillness, worried or not, wanting cake or not wanting cake. That is awareness. Everything else is an illusion. Everything else. You need to know the state. There are enormous numbers of states you do not know. Those you know are often small ones, such as turning off thoughts. Are you sure thoughts need to be turned off? When we discuss reflection, study, and movement, are you sure you should only be in a state without thoughts? With thoughts switched off, you cease to be mentally aware of what is happening. Are you sure you want to enter that process? I am not saying it is bad. Those processes of deep immersion are good.

The point is that when you are completely switched off and unaware, you do not recognize what is happening. You do not. That matters greatly. Mentally, you do not control the process. Yet when someone enters wanting sensations, they want to control it. A mistaken action. A mistaken action. Remember, too, that meditative states—even seated or lying-down meditations, let alone going about your day—include the full spectrum of sensations. The full spectrum. Trembling and shaking, cold and heat, a complete absence of sensation, an extraordinary explosion in the head, total weakness, strength. The entire range of possible sensations. Entering an unknown state with expectations is illusory: “Go I know not where,” expecting something to happen. Something is happening; you simply do not control it. Often it may seem that nothing is happening. I have seen enormous numbers of people, and you have too, who write reflections when it is plainly visible that they perceived the spiritual world, yet say, “I saw nothing. I saw nothing.”

In fact, they were knowing and perceiving the spiritual world. How do you verify that? That is a separate task. You look at the person and see it from outside. An enormous amount of unusual perception can be perceived externally by someone else. I can see whether someone is perceiving or not, in children, adults, and all kinds of people. Can it be hidden? Yes, in certain ways. Some people cannot be assessed. Some cannot. Yet there is always someone who can assess another person—something more powerful always exists.

GAGalya

The next question is whether you need to believe in something spiritual for meditation to work. Generally, you know—

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you need to be religious? Belong to a particular cult or believe in something?

GAGalya

Something spiritual. Some people connect meditation with having to be a spiritual person or striving for enlightenment.

AVAlexander Volchek

First, people need to understand who they actually are, what thoughts they have, and the scope of their perception. I think I recorded a video about this on my other channel, about personal development. You can watch it for a detailed examination of the spiritual world and the spiritual human being. I will explain briefly here to approach your question; without it, we cannot move on. Suppose someone lives exclusively in the material, scientific world. Nothing exists beyond physical space. Nothing. They do not start invoking terms like quantum physics, or if they do, they mean only material things: “We can fly to stars, see all the planets, touch them. They are physical, material spaces. There may be physical people or aliens elsewhere.” Everything is physically tangible. If that is their complete view, they can only understand meditation as, for example, restoring their breathing.

Can they call a physical breathing-restoration exercise “meditation”? They say, “I take thirty breaths in and thirty breaths out in a regular pattern, and my breathing normalizes or synchronizes. If I do it with someone else, we synchronize much faster. Two or three of us together: faster and easier. Alone is harder, although not difficult either; together is easier. We sit, breathe, and do it.” We remain within a purely physical process, though that process actually has a spiritual one within it. Suppose that is how these people reason, never considering that emotions may be governed by more than the physical body: it is all hormones. Clever people throw hormone names around. I listen and think, “Such clever people, throwing these words around.” I cannot even recall one right now—cortisol, for example, and others. Names explaining why someone experiences one state or another. If they see the causes of all such events exclusively in that—

then they will say every event is random or physically and materially interconnected. Every event. This discussion is not for them. Everything is already clear to them. Why enter a meditative state? What do you need or not need to believe in? There is another situation, though. Someone says, “If someone dies, I will go light a candle or make the sign of the cross.” Or a materially minded person says, “I will have my children baptized anyway.” Bingo. Just bingo! Everything is firmly, completely material, yet, “I need to baptize my children.” Why? Can you explain exactly why? Why perform that action? What specifically do you want to do? What specifically? This is where you need awareness. Awareness of your actual perception begins here: what you truly feel, know, and understand. Recognize that people perceive spaces and energies differently, even while using the same word. The same word. They may call it religious belief, initiation, or something else, while their impulses of perception are entirely different.

It is like knowing nature. One person looks and says, “A tree. They call that a tree.” Another sees the energy flowing within it, connections between trees, the etheric, and a passage into other worlds and spaces. They see it entirely differently, the source of its creation, its divine source. What do they mean? Someone says, “I believe in God,” or “in gods,” one, two, or three, or something divine, divine events that may occur. You need to lay this out for yourself and see where you actually stand. Of course, you need nothing to enter meditation. There is no zero or one here, so to speak. There is no such thing. Look, it does not exist. It is an illusion. A human being is a spiritual being, not a material being. When someone says, “I believe in the spiritual world,” they actually mean there is a physical world and a spiritual world, and they jump from the former into the latter. That is a deception. A deception.

You are already in the spiritual world, and so am I. Closing or opening my eyes, speaking or not speaking, does not remove meditation. That is the whole explanation. All of it. If I already live in the spiritual world, what difference will it make to that world if I sit cross-legged on an orange blanket and hold prayer beads? Will the spiritual world around me change? Can the surrounding spaces change? They are changing all the time. The question is what you perceive. You are alive and moving. Many spiritual spaces change around you as you interact with people and enter states, depending on your country, economic or political events, and events in your life or family. Enormous numbers of other worlds also affect you and can touch you at different times. But it is not because you sat on an orange blanket. Someone thinks sitting on an orange blanket will connect them with a particular planet.

“I sat on a black blanket and connected with Saturn.”

Come on. Come on. Sit, shout, recite mantras. Recite mantras. Or perhaps nothing needs reciting; it is simply an immersion. Are you sure you are ready to connect with Saturn, with that energy, to approach or see even a little of it? Are you sure? People speak abstractly about what they want to do. In 2012, I went to an event—the only event in my life that I attended and then left. Perhaps I needed the experience. Usually, events of a spiritual or esoteric kind became part of the foundation of how I lived. This time, I entered a room where a Buddhist initiation into one of the protectors was taking place. I listened, stood up, and left. I clearly recognized that I did not understand what I was doing or where I would be. More than that, I clearly felt I was entering into service, that I would have to serve and enter a restricted space.

I neither understood that restricted space nor wanted it. People arriving wanted protection, not service, without realizing that receiving protection meant entering into service. They did not understand the exchange. Simply did not understand it. When you connect with energies, do you understand what is actually happening? What does touching any planetary energy mean? Any one. Any. It completely reshuffles your life. Completely. Everything stops: all horoscopes, everything. Everything stops. The whole movement of your karma stops. Even physically coming into contact with a planet. That is why people do not fly to Mars or the Moon. Supposedly they flew there some years ago. Why not now, if they did then? Look how much progress has been made. Start flying. Let us see what happens to those people's lives afterward. I would not go under any circumstances. You enter a space, however interesting it might be. Look at the spiritual aspect of that experience.

Those spaces are not controlled by mental consciousness. You will fall apart. Simply fall apart. Even an incarnated avatar would probably fall apart; you would not fly there. Even if you did, you would disintegrate on approach, because the laws of the spiritual worlds and, consequently, the material world would change everything. Absolutely everything. Whether you need to believe in something is therefore an abstraction. I once heard something useful that I had not known: some religions accept your having other religions too. You may follow one and also others. Some oppose other religions and restrict your life. Essentially, every modern religion restricts perception and imposes boundaries, unless it simply offers a body of knowledge. In that case I would call it a teaching. Religion probably contains a space that limits perception.

Before approaching meditation, ask yourself what you really believe when you go to church. On Palm Sunday, you buy a branch and bring it home. Why? Is it the same as my buying daffodils and tulips at Trader Joe's yesterday, or something different? When you dye eggs and prepare Easter food—it becomes almost funny—what do you believe? Do you truly believe in the Resurrection, that it happened and was real? When you gather at Christmas, is it simply a family holiday? Or do you experience the energy of this sunlight being born for humanity, its movement over thousands of years, and how it lives everywhere now: in your physical body, etheric space, astral world, and “I”? What are you truly experiencing? Ask those questions. They move you forward powerfully. Galya, if someone comes to my meditations, it is all unexplored territory. Entirely unexplored. They enter meditation seven, fifteen, or twenty-four—

some numbers. Words are spoken, and the person experiences sensations, often related to their overall state and rhythm of life. They are told an event just occurred that will affect their next thirty years, or that an event will affect future incarnations, or their spiritual being. Right now, that has no relation to them as, say, Ivan Ivanov. Or energy is filling them and their own space is transforming. How do they perceive this? Is it natural and true to them, or do they simply hear information and return out of curiosity, because someone told them to, because they feel bad, or because of an inner impulse? Look at what brings you to it. What is it really?