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Rama StrongBear

Methodological Principles of Spiritual Self-Perfection

  • 4:1. The perfection of the Creator has three main aspects. They are — Love, Wisdom and Power. Therefore each human being in the course of his personal evolution should develop these three qualities.

    4:2. Everyone should begin with accepting the following main ethic principles:

    Do not do to others whatever you would not want them to do to you!

    and

    Help everyone in all that is good!

    Then it would be appropriate to begin mastering functions of the spiritual heart — an organ in the human multidimensional organism responsible for producing emotion of love.

    4:3. The spiritual heart is a bio-energetic structure located in the chest. The first step of spiritual heart development is mastered when it has filled the whole chest, which makes one capable of living in the state of stable concentration of consciousness in one’s spiritual heart, perceiving the outer world with it and acting “from it”, including speaking.

    When this is accomplished, and as long as one — as consciousness — abides in one’s spiritual heart, one is no longer able to enter into emotional states other than variations of cordial love.

    This radically changes one’s relationships with one’s environment, including other people. Also one’s health gets improved dramatically.

    Those, who have settled in this state, who got used to and will continue living in it until the end of their incarnation, after leaving the body are going to appear among other blissful souls in paradise.

    We have developed the methods of realization of what has been said above. Those methods are described in details in our books and also demonstrated on videocassettes.

    4:4. In order to succeed on the path of spiritual development one has to transform oneself into a soul consisting primarily of the spiritual heart.

    One should learn to live without leaving the emotion of Love, states of tender freshness, tactful care, willingness to help other people in everything good sincerely and selflessly, respect to all worthy ones, gratitude to anyone who helps, forgiveness of offenders, willingness to abandon himself and sacrifice himself for the sake of others. And even when fighting for the sake of others' good one should not leave the state of Love.

    Let everyone strive for ridding themselves of all kinds of arrogance, selfishness, greed, violence, and all kinds of anger emotions, including emotions of condemnation, revengefulness, irritation, envy and jealousy. The listed emotional states should be considered as opposing to Love.

    Gaining full control over one’s emotional sphere is possible through intellectual work on identifying and overcoming one’s vices and cultivating missing positive qualities. It is advisable to supplement these efforts with mastering of the methods of psychic self-regulation, which are based on working with structures of the human organism responsible for generating emotions (these methods are described in the books listed in the “Bibliography” section).

    4:5. “God is Love” — taught Jesus Christ. He was this Love Himself. And He invited us to join Him in becoming this Love.

    In order to be able to approach our Creator — Who is Love — we have to transform ourselves into Love. There is no other way.

    And this is not just a slogan made up of nice words, yet unfeasible. Behind these words there is a comprehensive system of knowledge and methods thoroughly tested for decades on numerous spiritual seekers.

    4:6. Development of intellect is a crucial element of one’s spiritual advancement. Children need to be given education of as high quality as possible. Adults should always seek ways to acquire new knowledge — preferably that, which will be useful on the spiritual Path.

    4:7. It does not make sense to devote one’s professional activity to earning money and to accumulating material wealth. What we need to aspire to is learning as much as possible in the beginning of our lives and then using the acquired knowledge and skills for serving God by serving other people.

    4:8. Doing good deeds by helping other souls in their evolution — let this be the major incentive of everyone’s social activity.

    Let it be sincere giving. Then other people — the best of them — will begin to respond by giving back. It is in this way that groups of true and reliable friends with common spiritual goals form. This is an optimal solution to the problem of loneliness for many people of modern society .

    4:9. Giving birth and proper upbringing of children are another ways of serving God.

    4:10. In educating children special techniques can be successfully used, which are quite helpful in preparing them for serious spiritual work they can engage in when they grow up (basic principles of the methodology of such work and examples of specific methods are described in our book “Spiritual Work with Children”).

    4:11. Marriage and educating children represent numerous excellent opportunities for self-perfecting, primarily for development of such aspects of love as tenderness, attention, and altruism. This experience also significantly contributes to the intellectual progress of an individual soul, by providing numerous psychological lessons in particular.

    God — as a Teacher — is the “Supreme Psychologist”. Thus we should master psychology as well.

    4:12. Prevailing opinion that the main task of man in relation to God consists in sole praying and that nothing else is necessary is deeply erroneous and harmful. One has to realize that God does not need our prayers, which are essentially nothing but begging. What God wants from us in the first place is righteousness expressed in ethically correct attitude toward all living beings, including other people, as well as toward Him. In particular, He wants us to seek Him, serve Him, learn to love Him and strive for developing ourselves to such extent when we could offer ourselves to Him as a gift, as perfect as possible.

    It is this gift that God will be pleased to receive as an offering from man.

    4:13. He does not need any killings of animals and plants as an “offering to God”. Those killings are just criminal acts and are not in any way “pleasing things to God”.

    4:14. Implantation of the ideas of irreparably sinful human nature, nothingness of man and his being destined to remain an eternal antipode to God is an error and transgression in the face of God. It contradicts the very Intention that the Creator has for us. It creates a huge obstacle for spiritual growth.

    4:15. The best foundation for development of the power aspect of a soul is engaging in physical work. If this is currently impossible, then various kinds of athletic training could be helpful.

    It is necessary to have a strong and healthy body in order to advance successfully on spiritual Path.

    Further development of the power aspect of consciousness can be made through special meditative trainings. But these trainings could be allowed only for those, who have attained the required subtlety of consciousness and ability to remain in the emotional state of love for a long time.

    4:16. The opinion that people attain paradise or end up in hell as a result of some particular action (or actions) is erroneous. Actions significant from the ethic standpoint determine one’s destiny only for the periods of embodiment — in the current or future incarnations.

    But what determines the place, where one abides after one’s body dies — be it hell, paradise or other spatial dimensions (including the Abode of the Creator) — is the state of consciousness one has accustomed oneself to during one’s life in the body.

    If a person got used to living in coarse emotional states, upon leaving the body he will continue to exist in these states.

    If he has lived (including the recent period before departing from the body) in subtle and pure cordial love — he will find himself in paradise.

    But in order to reach the Abode of the Creator from the “starting” point of paradisiacal state one needs to go through a long and difficult meditative practice guided by one or several Divine Teachers. This is a process one must devote all one's life to in order to succeed.

    Let us emphasize, that nobody can pass this part of the Path on their own. The errors here can have grievous consequences. For example, it is possible “to get lost” in spatial dimensions... Or to break down as a result of some stressing factor and to lapse into coarse emotional states... This can wipe out all one’s positive meditative achievements and lead to serious diseases.

    4:17. Spiritual work cannot be successful if it is performed by people using drugs, including alcohol and tobacco products.

    4:18. The human organism is multidimensional and in this respect it is similar to the multidimensional Absolute. Therefore, the process of self-cognition coincides with the process of cognition of the Absolute.

    In particular, everyone has their potential representation in the Abode of the Creator which is called Atman, or “Higher Self”.

    4:19. One of the main tasks of spiritual work is to transform a person’s egocentrism to God-centrism — both mentally and in meditative realization.

    4:20. The finishing steps up the ladder of spiritual ascent can be mastered only through monastic life.

    4:21. Monasticism is a unidirectionality of a spiritual seeker consciousness focused on only one Goal — full cognition of God and merging with the Creator in His Abode, and also helping all worthy ones walking the same Path.

    4:22. The tasks of a true monk cannot be accomplished by mere wearing special clothes, accepting new names, kowtowing and repeating standard prayers. All this has nothing to do with true monasticism.

    4:23. Leading a parasitic way of life which is sometimes extolled as a virtue by adepts of some degenerated religious schools is in fact a vicious practice that has a detrimental effect on the destinies of followers of this distortion.

    God considers panhandling as an indecent occupation.

    4:24. Celibacy (complete restraining from sexual contacts) is by no means a necessary attribute of true monastic life. It rather does harm than helps on the spiritual Path, creating a sexual “dominant” (a dominating idea of sexual dissatisfaction) — instead of having the Creator and care about people as a sole dominant. Celibacy hinders the development of such important variations of love as sexually colored tenderness, attention and care in relationships with one’s spouse and children.

    Celibacy also can be harmful to the one’s health, sometimes causing a prostatitis in men and neuroses based on sexual dissatisfaction in both men and women.

    4:25. Having sex is not a “sin” by itself, as long as no violence or doing any harm is involved, partners are adequate and sex does not overshadow more important aspects of life.

    A harmonious sexual life is absolutely normal for all healthy adults, even for those who have devoted their lives completely to the attainment of highest spiritual goals.

    But people entering into a marriage should be at similar stages of their spiritual advancement.

    4:26. Recent popularization of the idea that “the more sex — the more spirituality” is another extreme, no less harmful for spiritual development. In this case sex is brought into the center of attention, instead of the Creator, multi-aspect self-development and participation in the Evolutionary Process by serving God, which consists in helping other people in their earthly existence and facilitating their spiritual progress.

    “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also” — taught Jesus Christ.

1 comment
  • radar pangaean
    radar pangaean Rama, though i disagree with the REASON behind the statements in this post, i fully support the basic principles which it espouses. It is always a happy thing to me to know that many paths lead to the same endpoint.
    April 21, 2011