|
Chapter from the book by Dr.Vladimir Antonov
The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ
His Evolution and Us
We, inhabitants of the Earth, are accustomed to measuring time by days (the period of Earth’s rotation around its axis), subdivided in hours, minutes, and seconds, also by years, (the period of Earth’s rotation around the Sun) subdivided in months and weeks.
He — universal — has a different type of chronology. It is measured by Manvantaras, which cover billions of years.
What part of the universe does a Manvantara embrace? — who knows it, except Him? And for us it is of no significance.
A Manvantara is a cycle of development that consists of two phases — manifest and non-manifest. The first phase begins with a creation of the world and ends with an end of the world. During the second phase, there is no Creation, there is only He and the “building material” for new Creations.
At the beginning of each cycle, He gradually creates (materializes) dense substrate — the matter of planets. Then miniscule particles of energy are “sowed” on some of them. They begin to evolve on the crystalline lattices of minerals, then continue developing by incarnating into material bodies of plants, animals, humans. In the end, they must achieve such a level of perfection that they become worthy to merge into the Creator and thus to enrich Him with themselves. He guides the process of their growth, grants them a certain degree of free will — i.e. the possibility to make a choice in educational situations created by Him, the possibility to choose their path. We even have the possibility to choose whether we walk the Path of Evolution or the path of involution.
He loves us as His children and constantly offers us new possibilities for making right choices; we either accept them or reject them.
He, for example, gave us Holy books containing instructions on how we should live. If we follow them, we become more and more perfect and closer to Him. If we do not comply with them, it may result even in becoming more distant from the Creator. Pain and suffering are the means that He uses to point out our errors. And the intensifying feeling of happiness, as we approach Him, serves as an indicator of our success.
We have to try to become “perfect as (our) Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48) and merge into Him as soon as possible: He calls us into His Embrace, to the supreme bliss of being in Him, in Mergence with Him.
“Blessed are you who have known temptations and flee from them! Blessed are you who are reviled and not esteemed on account of the love your Lord has for you! Blessed are you who weep and are oppressed by those without hope (for salvation), for you will be released from every bondage! Watch and pray that you do not come to be in the flesh (again), but rather that you come forth from the bondage of bitterness of this (earthly) life. … (And) when you come forth from the sufferings and passions of the body, you will receive rest…, and you will reign with the King, you joined with Him and He with you, from now on, for ever and ever! Amen.” (The Book of Thomas the Contender, 145)
To progress faster in our self-development in the direction to God, we can try to fall in love with Him. “… Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all the soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength…” (Mark 12:30). For it is the emotion of love that attracts and unites a human consciousness with a human consciousness, and a human consciousness — with the Consciousness of God.
* * *
In the year 553, the leaders of the Christian communities established by that time gathered for a “council” and decided “by a majority” to exclude from the Teachings of Jesus that part where the meaning of existence of humans and other living beings on the Earth was explained from the evolutionary standpoint. Thus the Teachings were deprived of their integrity and completeness. After that, people unable to find answers to many naturally arising questions began to fantasize. For example, they decided that the cause of our suffering on the Earth is the sins inherited from Adam and Eve, and therefore we are absolutely hopeless sinners, no efforts on self-perfection can help or are necessary, for it can only seduce us into the sin of pride… All we can do is to keep praying to “patron saints” and to Virgin Mary, begging them to beg Jesus Christ to have mercy on us, so that He sends us to paradise instead of hell…
But such beliefs cannot save anyone from hell, since they are directly opposite to the Teachings of Jesus Christ. He taught that people have to make efforts on perfecting themselves. He said: “… The Kingdom of God is being preached (by Me), and everyone is making efforts to enter into it” (Luke 16:16). He also never called us back to paganism.
We will continue discussing this subject in the following chapters, and now let us look at a few examples of what Jesus said regarding a soul’s development in the course of its consecutive incarnations.
Watching a performance of talented singers, He told His disciples: “Where do their talent and skills come from? They could not possibly acquire such a perfection of voice and knowledge of the laws of harmony in the course of just one short life. Is this a miracle? No. Everything arises from natural laws. Many thousands of years ago, these people mastered their harmony and (these) qualities. And they came again to learn more…” (Tibetan Gospel).
And when the disciples asked Him about John the Baptist, Jesus replied: “And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who was to come. They who have ears, let them hear.” (Matt 11:14-15). On another occasion, He said: “… Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him… Then the disciples understood that He was talking to them about John the Baptist.” (Matt 17:12-13).
In between incarnations, said Jesus, righteous human souls resurrect in the non-material world and “… neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Heaven” (Matt 22:30).
In a series of many incarnations, a human being develops in three main directions: intellectual, ethic, and psychoenergetic ones. The first line of development is the most difficult one, taking the longest period of time.
Differences between people in the level of intellectual development are well known not only in psychiatry, which classifies people into a number of categories: idiots, imbeciles, morons, physiologically feebleminded people, people with serious mental defects (partial dementia, schizophrenia, paranoia, etc.) — and the rest. The intellectual differences can also be clearly seen in the religious field.
For example, some people are only capable of performing “prayerful” bodily movements and panhandling “for God’s sake”. In Russian Orthodoxy the following verbal construction is widely used: “to pray at something”. This means to make standard bodily movements when facing an object of ritual value.
People of a higher intellectual level are capable of studying the Will of God for us and doing the necessary work on perfecting themselves, primarily from the ethic standpoint.
But there are people who are able to encompass the entire profundity of the knowledge about God; through self-sacrificial work such adepts achieve Godlikeness and merge with God, finishing thus the personal evolution.
The reason for these differences between people lies not only in peculiarities of the intrauterine development and childhood diseases, and not even in the upbringing or education, but primarily in the evolutionary age of the soul and the efforts on self-perfection which this soul has already made.
|
