Development Begins with Sacrifice

I am walking along the promenade of a small Israeli town, and the texts of the Old Testament emerge in my mind.

I think about how a person who practices monotheism will always defeat a polytheist because their inner energy is higher and broader.

All animals live by consuming the gifts of their environment. For them, the main goal is to receive, to seize, to chase, to eat. This is normal for animals. As the guide at the Red Sea said, «Here, fishing is good; all the predators are here, they all eat each other.»

Animals are focused on consumption and acquisition. But even they, when it comes to continuing life, have a mechanism of sacrifice and giving—parents happily die to save and nurture their offspring. This mechanism of sacrifice developed through evolution.

There are certain types of fish that spawn in rivers and then live for another 15-20 years. However, in the rivers of Kamchatka, there is no food base, and the water is crystal clear. Immediately after spawning, the fish begin to decompose before your eyes—parents die so that their young can survive. The mechanism of sacrifice is engaged—the offspring will live.

Sacrifice can exist not only on a physical level but also on a spiritual one.

Attention, care, songs that the male sings to his mate—these are sacrifices too, but in the form of energy.

I recently read that even flies exhibit something similar: to entice a female to mate, the male fly must bring her a gift, something edible.

Those who couldn't give energy and care for their offspring have long since disappeared from the Earth.

But every human interaction is also a form of sacrifice.

How does a person communicate? If they want to receive valuable information from another person and give nothing in return, communication won't happen.

We communicate to become richer, to share knowledge, exchange experiences, to offer advice, and to help others.

Moreover, this happens unconsciously. The more energy we can give and receive in communication, the higher our energy potential, and the more intensely we develop.

To be able to sacrifice, one must have an energy reserve. The more a person is willing to give, the greater their potential.

The same mechanism manifests in families. The primary purpose of a family is to bring children into the world, and this requires enormous energy. Most of us have this energy stored, biologically laid out in our reserves.

A greedy, envious, selfish, and resentful person’s reserves melt away, and their ability to procreate and create a family decreases accordingly.

I recall my advice to women who couldn't get married—learn to care and give, try to make happy those around you.

But at the same time, one must understand that true happiness is not material, not spiritual, and not sensory. True happiness is the ability to love.

Even in times when people were little different from animals, they already understood that without sacrifice, there is no successful hunt—if you gain something, you must give at least part of it away.

For a person to connect with the subtle planes, where the future is hidden, and to some extent manage that future, they must have a reserve of subtle energy, and to do this, they must be able to sacrifice.

No religion can exist without the concept of sacrifice. Only a person who connects with the future can influence it, and for that, one must detach from the physical world.

I remember an episode from the Old Testament: before going to the king with a request, the wise men fasted and prayed for a week, and the king met them halfway…

Any person always has the temptation to return to an animal state. It's much more pleasant to puncture a barrel and enjoy the stream of water than to patch it up and fill it with water. It's more enjoyable to spend than to earn.

Our desires, our well-being, and all pleasures are merely the expenditure of future energy. And this energy, in turn, is born from the energy of love, coming from the Creator.

To receive this energy, it is not enough to detach from the physical aspect of happiness; one must detach from spiritual and sensory happiness as well.

The commandments given to Moses raised people, who were in a semi-animal state, to a human level.

For a polytheist, sacrifice to one of the gods is a way to protect oneself and ensure prosperity, linked to fear in the subconscious, whereas in Judaism, sacrifice is one of the components of human happiness.

Giving energy can cleanse not only the body but also the soul from diseases. The concept of happiness in a person is primarily connected to the state of the soul.

A person experiencing physical pain can be happy. It is much harder to be happy with emotional pain.

But if love has left the soul, emotional pain becomes unbearable, and it is impossible for a person to be happy.

Lines from the Old Testament come to mind:

«And Tobit went out to meet his daughter-in-law at the gates of Nineveh, rejoicing and blessing God. Those who saw him walking marveled at how he had regained his sight. And Tobit confessed to them that God had had mercy on him» (Tobit 11:15-16).

Tobit's son, following the advice of the angel who was with him, applied fish gall to his father's cataracts. And when he wiped his eyes with the bitterness, he regained his sight.

The father turns to his son and tells him to give half of all his wealth to the stranger. In response, the stranger, who turns out to be an angel, says:

«Bless God, praise Him, acknowledge His greatness, and confess before all the living what He has done for you.

It is a good deed to bless God, to exalt His name, and to reverently preach about His works; do not be lazy in praising Him.

It is proper to keep the king's secret, but to announce the works of God is commendable.

Do good, and evil will not befall you. A good deed is prayer with fasting, charity, and righteousness.

Better is little with righteousness than much with unrighteousness; better to give alms than to gather gold, for charity saves from death and can cleanse any sin.

Those who do acts of charity and righteousness will live long. But sinners are enemies of their own lives. » (Tobit 12:6-10)

I turn off the promenade and walk along the green streets toward the house where the seminar will be held.

«What is sin?» I think. It is the loss of the Divine within oneself. It is the rejection of love in favor of sensual, spiritual, or material values.

If a person’s desire to spend money is much greater than the desire to earn it, they inevitably fall into large debts. Then they resort to forgery and theft to get the money they need, and eventually, they are fired from their job and end up in prison.

A sinner rejects the difficult, sometimes painful, but always joyful pursuit of love. They are only ready to spend, to receive. Therefore, it is quite natural that sin leads to diseases and crimes. And after them come incurable diseases or death.

However, if fate is kind to such a person, they will lose material happiness in the form of money and prosperity, they won’t be able to realize their abilities, their family will break apart, and their children will die.

But this process does not always occur quickly and obviously. For some, it is smoothed out and almost imperceptible, because the ancestors have accumulated a reserve of the energy of love. But sooner or later, this tendency will inevitably manifest.

A person consists of body, spirit, and soul. When the spiritual shell— the layers of consciousness— is destroyed, the soul leaves the body, which dies and begins to decompose rapidly.

And the weaker the soul, the more it is tied to instincts, the less love it has, the faster the body of the deceased decays and rots.

The main component of the human soul is connected with the subtle planes, that is, with the future.

A person who sins may take energy from the future for a long time, draining it from their children and grandchildren.

The principle of the absolute unity of the universe implies the absolute interconnection of all events and objects within it. We are responsible for our descendants and relatives, and they are responsible for us.

Our emotions in youth determine the health of our children and grandchildren. Years and decades pass— and it is no longer the children who are responsible for us, but we for them.

And we begin to get sick and die, involuntarily saving our children. Meanwhile, medicine, trying by all means to cure us and not our souls, takes away the chances for our descendants to develop.

The mechanism of retribution is universal. If society and the state wrongly raise their citizens, setting them up for spiritual or physical consumption, then this society is doomed to degeneration and collapse.

Socialism arose based on the idea of robbing the intelligent and the rich. For decades, socialist society constantly took something from someone. It was always necessary to find enemies and take money or life from them. So, the Soviet Union was doomed to destruction.

In China, elements of socialism in the form of collective consciousness and to some extent the priority of morality over money have probably survived only because the Chinese are an extremely hardworking people.

The idea of consumerism did not take root in China, and the famous phrase, «One year of work and ten thousand years of happiness» gradually lost its relevance because it contradicted the Chinese philosophy that has existed for several thousand years.

I remembered an interview that Soviet correspondents conducted in Tokyo. Our girls, ecstatic about being abroad, asked an elderly Japanese man:

— Tell me, are you really a billionaire?

— Yes, I am, — replied the gray-haired old man, nodding.

Then came a typically Soviet, communist question:

— If you have so much money, why do you work?

The Japanese man shrugged and smiled:

— Because I love working, because money is not the most important thing for me — it’s just a tool I use. I want to develop myself, strengthen my business, and I consider that normal.

For many hundreds, even thousands of years, happiness for most people was the absence of conflict and problems. Happiness was doing nothing, not working. Why?

Because the expenditure of energy was always forced. A person was constantly losing something, getting sick, or dying. Any sacrifice was compulsory, and it was very difficult to believe that sacrifice could make you happy.

But civilization developed, and several thousand years ago in India, the understanding emerged that happiness might not lie in fulfilling desires, but in giving them up.

In ancient Israel, the attitude toward wealth and human happiness changed. It turned out that the goal and meaning of life were not in accumulating money and property.

The main priorities became striving toward the Creator, love for God, and for this, sacrifices were necessary—not just sacrifices of goats, sheep, and bulls.

Holding back anger and hatred toward another person is also a sacrifice.

Not oppressing a widow, sheltering a foreigner, not mocking the blind or the disabled, paying a hired worker on time—these are also sacrifices.

The moral behavior prescribed by the 613 commandments of Judaism helped people tame their animal desires and instincts, overcome the tendency toward pure consumerism, and elevate their internal energy.

A moral person will always be stronger than an immoral one and will win in the struggle against them. They may lose today, but they will always win in the future.

The law of energy exchange is universal and applies to all living beings.

Recently, a woman from Japan told me an interesting story. One of the favorite Japanese dishes is eel, which is imported from China in large tanks of water.

But most of the eels died during transport. Experts spent a long time trying to figure out the cause of their deaths, studying the composition of the water, the presence of infections. Everything seemed normal. Out of five hundred eels, two or three hundred could die during transport.

Then someone suggested releasing piranhas into the tanks. They tried it. The piranhas started chasing the eels and ate a few. But none of the surviving eels died!

In simple terms, the eels were dying from lethargy, despondency, and depression. Their energy was low, and they were dying.

The emerging problem forced them to survive, to dodge. Energy returned, and death receded.

S. N. Lazarev, «The Man of the Future. Parenting, Part 1»