I walk along the promenade of a small Israeli town, and texts from the Old Testament come to mind. I think about how a person who believes in monotheism will always triumph over a pagan because their inner energy is higher, more expansive.
All animals live by consuming the gifts of the surrounding environment. Their main focus is to get, seize, chase, and eat. For animals, this is normal.
As a tour guide at the Red Sea said, «There's good fishing here, all the predators eat each other.» Animals are geared toward consumption and acquisition.
But even among them, when it comes to the continuation of life, a mechanism of sacrifice and giving kicks in—parents joyfully perish to save and nourish their offspring. This mechanism of sacrifice developed through evolution.
There are certain species 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. Right after spawning, the fish begin to disintegrate before your eyes—the parents die so that the offspring can survive. The mechanism of sacrifice is triggered—the offspring will live.
Sacrifice can exist not only on the physical level but also on the spiritual level. Attention, care, and the songs a male bird sings for his mate—this too is a form of sacrifice, but in the form of energy.
I recently read that even flies have something similar: to court a female, the male fly must bring her a gift, something edible. Those who didn't know how to give energy and care for their offspring disappeared from the face of the earth long ago.
But all human interaction is also a form of sacrifice. How does a person interact? If someone wants to get useful information from another person without giving anything in return, there will be no communication.
We interact to become richer, to share knowledge, exchange experiences, offer advice, and help others. And this happens unconsciously.
The more energy we can give and receive in communication, the greater our energetic potential and the more intensively we develop.
In order to sacrifice, one must have a reserve of energy. The extent to which a person is willing to give determines the scale of their potential. This same mechanism applies in the family.
The primary purpose of a family is to bring children into the world, and this requires tremendous energy. Most of us have this energy stored biologically.
In greedy, envious, selfish, and resentful people, these reserves diminish, and their ability to continue the family line and create a family decreases accordingly.
I recall my advice to women who couldn't find a husband—learn to care and give, try to make those around you happy. But it's important to understand that the greatest happiness is not material, not spiritual, nor sensory.
The greatest happiness is the ability to love. Even in times when people were hardly different from animals, they already understood that without sacrifice, there is no successful hunt—if you get something, you must give back at least part of it.
In order for a person to make contact with the subtle realms, where the future is hidden, and in some sense influence that future, they must have a reserve of subtle energy, and to gain that, one must know how to sacrifice. Without the concept of sacrifice, no religion can exist.
Only a person who touches the future can influence it, and for this, one must detach from the physical world.
I recall an episode from the Old Testament: before approaching the king with a request, the wise men fasted and prayed for a week, and the king met them halfway...
Every person is tempted to return to an animal state. It's much more enjoyable to poke a hole in a barrel and delight in the stream of water than to patch it up and fill it. Spending is more pleasant than earning.
Our desires, our well-being, and all pleasures are merely expenditures of the energy of the future. And this energy, in turn, is born from the energy of love, which comes from the Creator.
To receive this energy, it's not enough to detach from the physical aspect of happiness; one must also detach from spiritual and sensory happiness.
The commandments given to Moses elevated people who were in a semi-animal state to a human level.
For a pagan, a sacrifice to one of the gods is a way of protecting themselves and their well-being, subconsciously associated with fear. But in Judaism, sacrifice is one of the components of human happiness.
The giving of energy can cleanse not only the body of illness but also the soul. A person's concept of happiness is primarily connected with the state of their soul.
A person experiencing physical pain can still be happy. With emotional pain, being happy is much harder.
If love leaves the soul, emotional pain becomes unbearable, and it becomes impossible for a person to be happy. Lines from the Old Testament resurface in my memory:
And Tobit went out to meet his daughter-in-law at the gates of Nineveh, rejoicing and blessing God. Those who saw him walking were amazed at how he had regained his sight. And Tobit confessed before them that God had shown him mercy (Tobit 11:15–16).
Tobit's son, following the advice of the angel who was with him, applied fish gall to his father's eyes, and when Tobit wiped his eyes from the bitterness, he regained his sight. The father then turned to his son and told him to give half of all their wealth to the stranger.
In response, the stranger, who turned out to be an angel, said: «Bless God, glorify Him, acknowledge His greatness, and proclaim before all the living what He has done for you. It is a good thing to bless God, to exalt His name, and to reverently proclaim the works of God; do not be lazy in praising Him.
It is fitting to keep the king’s secret, but it is praiseworthy to reveal the works of God. Do good, and evil will not overtake you. It is good to pray with fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness.
Better is little with justice than much with injustice; it is better to give alms than to hoard gold, for almsgiving delivers from death and can cleanse every sin. Those who give alms and act justly will have long lives, 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 take place. «What is sin?» I think to myself. 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 their desire to earn it, they inevitably fall into great debt. Then they resort to deceit and theft to get the money they need, and eventually, they lose their job and end up in prison.
A sinner rejects the difficult, sometimes painful, but always rewarding journey of understanding love. They are only ready to spend, only ready to receive. So it is quite natural that sin leads to sickness and crime.
After that come incurable diseases or death. If fate is kind to such a person, they will lose their material happiness in the form of money and well-being, they will be unable to realize their potential, their family will fall apart, and their children will die.
But this process does not always happen quickly or obviously. For some, it is gradual and almost unnoticeable because their ancestors accumulated reserves of the energy of love. But sooner or later, this tendency inevitably manifests.
A person consists of body, spirit, and soul. When the spiritual shell, the layers of consciousness, are destroyed, the soul leaves the body, which dies and quickly begins to decompose. And the weaker the soul, the more it is attached to instincts, the less love it contains, the faster the body of the deceased decays and disintegrates.
The main component of the human soul is connected with the subtle realms, that is, with the future.
A person who sins may long continue to take and use the energy of the future, depriving it from their children and grandchildren. The principle of the absolute unity of the universe implies the absolute interconnectedness of all events and objects within it.
We are responsible for our descendants and relatives, just as 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 fall ill and die, unintentionally saving our children. Medicine, in trying to heal our bodies and not our souls, deprives our descendants of their chances for growth.
The mechanism of retribution is universal. If society and the state improperly educate their citizens, conditioning them for spiritual or physical consumption, that society is doomed to degeneration and collapse.
Socialism arose from the idea of robbing the intelligent and wealthy. For decades, socialist society was constantly taking something from someone. It always needed to find enemies and take away their money or their lives. So the Soviet Union was doomed to perish.
S. N. Lazarev, «The Man of the Future. The Education of Parents, Part 1»
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