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Chapter from the book by Dr.Vladimir Antonov
The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ
Love for God
The main ethical principle of one’s relationship with God has to be love for Him. “Love your God!…” — Jesus made this precept of the Old Testament the most important one in His Teachings (Mark 12:28-34).
Love for God includes attraction to Him: a desire for meeting, contact, Mergence. Mergence with the Heavenly Father is the Highest and Ultimate Aim. Without love-attraction to Him, it cannot be attained.
… But it would be wrong if everyone started to require from each other: “Love God! Love God!” and to read prayers and kowtow all day long. This would be an absurdity. However, there are people who behave exactly like this.
We have discussed already that only intellectually and ethically mature adepts are capable of cognizing God-the-Father. The task of the rest of people is to strive consciously for this maturity by receiving education, working for the good of God and people, and learning to love.
Moreover, God can be cognized only through meditative work, but if one involves immature people in such work, then they turn it into a childish game, which may cause gross ethical perversions. And this may even result in mental disorders.
Practical observations demonstrate that it is better to keep many people away from religious zeal: they can do nothing good there anyway. For example, in Russia there are many pseudo-religious groups and communities where the worldview of people is a mixture of urinotherapy (drinking urine), fascism, and astrology; they have Orthodox icons at home, paint eggs for Easter, and consider themselves Christians. If such people get engaged in spiritism or establish “telepathic contacts” with “representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations” and then develop mystical fear (it is quite easy in such cases), after that even psychiatrists are not able to help them.
The other typical Russian example of the way to developing schizophrenia is a situation when people incapable of understanding anything serious about God become immersed into a primitive religious environment where they learn only ideas about the world full of demons, vampires, warlocks, “zombies”… It would be much better for them to remain atheists than to accept such a “faith”!
No one explained to these poor people what God is, where to find Him, what He teaches us, and what we should do about it. And that we must inquire about Him, not about demons or devils, because we really attract with our attention that which we think about.
So, if there is God, what do we have to do then?
First, we should try, at least, to remember about His existence, to perceive Him as our Goal, the Goal of just our intellectual search at the beginning.
Second, to strive to perfect ourselves for the sake of fulfilling His Will: (“… Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect!” (Matt 5:48)). This implies, first of all, a) intellectual self-development through all possible means, and b) ethical self-transformation through studying His Will for us, through conscious development of positive qualities in ourselves and struggling with negative ones, and also through serving other people: helping them in everything good, trying to facilitate their earthly lives and spiritual growth.
By helping others we perfect ourselves, because we learn, under the guidance of God, Love, Wisdom, and Power — these three main aspects of Perfection. This process may be especially successful if we ask God to help us with our service and if we take heed of His advice and instructions, which may come to us in the form of Revelations, dreams, actions, and promptings given to us by Him through other people or books…
What should we do if we have no love for Him but want to have it?… If one can neither see nor experience God, then it is hard to fall in love with Him, for many people it is even impossible to do so in the near future… This is why Jesus suggested: first, learn to love each other, develop thus your ability to love!
Love is an emotion. An emotion is a state of consciousness. Love is also a state of God’s Consciousness…
Irritated angriness is the state of inhabitants of hell. On the contrary, if we have love, it can draw us to God. What should we develop in ourselves then?
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