Spiritual Practice School

Illustration of the second: Consciousness determines being. For example, a person notices that it would be more convenient to sit not on the ground but on something higher. They form within their consciousness an image of something that could help them with this. The person creates the idea of a stool. Then they draw this image on paper and, by examining the drawing, check whether what they have imagined matches what they need. After confirming that the drawing fully matches the idea and the idea fully matches the desire, the person takes wood and tools and makes the stool. So, first there was no stool; then came the idea of the stool; then the stool appeared in reality. That is – consciousness determines being.

Materialism asserts that matter is primary and consciousness is secondary. Idealism, on the contrary, asserts that consciousness is primary and matter is secondary. On what basis do people take one side or the other? Anyone wishing to understand the essence of this debate would do well to first grapple with the “Law of Disappearance”.

“The Law of Disappearance”:

Everything that has a beginning also has an end

From this law follows a natural corollary:

Everything that has no beginning also has no end

This law is easily proven by the absence of any real‑life examples where something has a beginning but no ending. This dialectical law must be taken into account by any philosopher, regardless of whether they are a materialist, an idealist, or something else. That is, a thinker who rejects this principle should be considered an ignorant thinker, a layperson. All Abrahamic religions should also be considered such laypersons. In contrast, most Buddhist and Hindu schools recognise this principle. Science also acknowledges it.

As for the question of what is primary – matter or consciousness – most Buddhist schools hold that both matter and consciousness exist eternally and therefore have no moment of origin. Consequently, there is no need to ask “what came first”, since both were present from the very beginning.

In science, the most widespread view is that matter exists eternally, while consciousness is secondary – that is, consciousness emerges at a certain stage of the evolution of matter and disappears at a certain evolutionary stage.

Buddhism asserts that physical matter can transition from a state of global vacuum, global empty space, global absence of motion, and global absence of time into a state with motion and time. We all provide the beginning of this motion: we are souls who have chosen to live in this physical universe. This, in principle, can manifest in the physical world as a Big Bang (though not necessarily). The universe expands, stabilises, exists, then contracts, collapses, and returns to the state of global vacuum. And this pulsation repeats endlessly.

The philosophy of Buddhism recognises science and accepts Darwin’s theory – and this is correct.

The theory of predestination (fate, fatalism) is not true.

The past cannot be changed. A time machine cannot be created. The past cannot be altered due to the Law of Cause and Effect (and also because the Law of Cause and Effect is correct).

The Question of God’s Knowability

This world is given to a human through sensations and through sensations alone. However, scientists have agreed to assume that the world which is given to us through sensations – and only through sensations – actually exists. Although it is practically impossible to prove this.

In the same way, it is impossible to prove the existence of dreams. No instrument can directly register a person’s dream. Instruments can only detect various electromagnetic oscillations of the brain. Scientists have discovered that when a sleeping brain emits a strictly defined pattern of electromagnetic oscillations, and if the person is woken up at that very moment, they will say they just had a dream. There is no other way to prove the existence of dreams. Nevertheless, scientists have agreed to recognise that dreams exist and are an objective reality.

That is, for almost everything that is or is not considered objective reality, scientists reach an agreement.

Regarding the existence of God, the global scientific community has agreed to consider Him unknowable and His existence impossible to prove.

However, this is a mistake on the part of scientists. They have not noticed that the method of studying God is identical to the method of studying dreams. There are people called saints. Saints testify that they have experienced communion with God. They say this communion occurs in a particularly deep meditative state. As a rule, the testimonies about God from various saints are similar. The similarity of reports from a large number of saints strongly suggests that they are dealing with the same reality. It is quite easy to distinguish holy people from non‑holy ones using the same electroencephalography. When a holy person enters the required meditative state, their brain begins to emmit waves with a strictly defined pattern – one that can be objectively recorded by a physical instrument. The similarity and repeatability of physical indicators, together with the similarity and repeatability of the meditative experience described by saints, should be interpreted as proof of an objective factor: the existence of God.

There is another scientific proof of God’s existence: the biblical writing Apocalypse. This work was written two thousand years ago, yet it describes events that are unfolding in our time – especially at the beginning of the 21st century. Apocalypse describes current events with remarkable accuracy. Most predictions by various seers suffer from one flaw: excessive metaphoricality. Because of this, nearly all prophetic predictions have no practical value – it is nearly impossible to learn anything in advance from them. Apocalypse, however, differs fundamentally from such predictions. It provides clear answers to key questions:

● Will there be a Third World War?

● Will America perish?

● Will communism triumph throughout the world?

To have such a distant and highly accurate foresight, one must be truly God. That is, the existence of a writing such as Apocalypse, and the real‑world confirmation of everything it predicts, constitutes a real and fully scientific proof of God’s existence. Apocalypse is a real text, and the whole world knows it almost by heart. In this writing, God transmits through John the Theologian information about what will happen on Earth two millennia later. For example, He transmits that a Third World War will occur on Earth. And indeed, at the beginning of the 21st century, a Third World War is unfolding. If there exists a sufficiently accurate real prediction of the events of the Third World War, then there must also exist a source of these accurate predictions. And the source of these real predictions is God. What more real proof of God’s existence could you need?

What is Truth?

If a person lacks a sufficiently clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong; if their life is going awry; if they feel their life isn’t worth a penny; if they cannot grasp what in this life has meaning and what does not; if they do not know where to invest their energy and where not to; if they have the feeling that they fail to understand something very important in life – all this means that the person does not know Truth.

One should be able to distinguish between philosophical absolute truth, spiritual absolute Truth, and the Truth to which a Buddha awakens – the awakening to which gives the Buddha their title. One should also be able to tell apart the concept of Truth (with a capital letter) and truth (with a lowercase letter).

Truth with a lowercase “t” refers to the content of a thought about the essence of what is being known, once it has overcome the status of a hypothesis through verification procedures that check its correspondence to the known – the alignment of thought and reality, as opposed to error (a contradiction between thought and reality). This is also called scientific truth. The criterion of scientific truth is practice.

Truth with a lowercase “t” also refers to a person’s statement when it corresponds to reality (truth as opposed to falsehood).

The concept of truth is also used in logic, when a given logical statement contains no contradictions.

Absolute truth (with a lowercase “t”) is a philosophical concept. In philosophy, absolute truth is a true statement (philosophical or scientific) whose content does not allow for problematisation or correction. In other words, if a statement can be problematised and then corrected according to some criterion, then that truth is not absolute. Since it is impossible for any true statement to avoid problematisation or correction (unless the statement’s content is zero), absolute truth does not exist. From this, we can conclude that the essence of the original philosophical absolute truth lies in its absence. In Buddhist philosophical schools, this principle is known as the principle of emptiness: “Truth is emptiness”. “Nothing inherently exists”. Everything we think of as the essence of a phenomenon is merely our own thoughts that we “extract” from things or phenomena – thoughts that were not originally present in those things or phenomena

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Truth with a capital “T” usually refers to spiritual absolute Truth.

The essence of spiritual absolute Truth does not lie in the existence of a single God, nor in the structure (or universal interconnectedness) of the Universe, nor in the existence of an otherworldly realm, nor in the Law of Karma – but in the eradication of worldly desires.

Eradicating worldly desires means the same as liberation from dependencies, from samsara, from the bonds of samsara, from suffering, from illusions, from fetters, from karma, and from similar things. It means the same as attaining nirvana, the absence of disturbance, the state of the Absolute, the state of absolute peace.

Since the state of nirvana is described as a transparent emptiness in which nothing exists, the Buddhist principle of emptiness – “Truth is emptiness” – also applies to spiritual absolute Truth. In essence, there is no difference between spiritual absolute Truth and the Truth to which a Buddha awakens. They are one and the same. However, it is crucial to understand the difference between two related things. The Truth to which a Buddha awakens is the state of mahānirvāṇa, the experience of this state, and what remains for the Buddha as a result of this experience. This is personal experience – and therefore, it cannot be fully conveyed in verbal‑logical form. Spiritual absolute Truth refers to the part of this experience that can be conveyed verbally. The Buddha’s experience is reflected in this concept, but is not fully reducible to it.

Experience is not transmitted through words. Words can only convey knowledge. Knowledge and experience are different. When a teacher tells students something, they convey knowledge. When the teacher gives a task and students solve it, they gain experience – the experience of solving that task. There is no other way to transmit experience. Experience is a thousand times more informative than knowledge. This is why it is impossible to convey knowledge about nirvana or the experience of awakening in words, as ordinary knowledge. The only thing that can be conveyed in words are instructions – methods by which adepts can enter the correct meditative state and experience nirvana, liberation, awakening, or any required experience for themselves. Therefore, it is always a mistake to understand spiritual absolute Truth as only knowledge about the result of spiritual practice, rather than the result itself. The result of spiritual practice can only be represented as personal experience.

This is why the preservation of authentic Buddhist sutras has no meaning unless they are backed by a system of genuine spiritual practice. This applies to the Pali Canon and any other scriptures. Genuine Dharma (literally, Law) can only be called those sutras that are supported by a living system of spiritual practice: “To purify the eye of Dharma through ten wholesome deeds and three kinds of right action”. This is why the Eightfold Noble Path is not a path of knowledge, but a path of gaining personal experience. Gautama said – and his words remain true to this day – that genuine Dharma would last only five hundred years after his passing. This is exactly what happened: five hundred years later, Buddhist arhats first recorded the text of the Pali Canon, claiming they had “saved” Dharma. But genuine Dharma arises from direct realisation, not from reading.

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Practice, practice, practice! Spiritual practice – practice it yourself, yourself, yourself! There is no such thing as someone else’s experience. Without one’s own real engagement in spiritual practice that accompanies the Law, the Law ceases to be a Law. Without real practice, the Law (Dharma) becomes mere useless paper – a museum exhibit.

What a Buddha awakens to is mahānirvāṇa. The experience of mahānirvāṇa is what is called spiritual absolute Truth. For example, in the film Little Buddha, when the Buddha sits in the lotus position and begins to meditate, and the devil begins to assail him in various ways, this refers exclusively to the inner devil within the Buddha. It is just an image – an externalised and artistically shaped representation of the inner obstacles that arise before the Buddha just before attainment: the obstacles that appear before the Great Liberation. These obstacles have a precise name: worldly desires.

Sometimes one hears: “There is no need to seek Truth. Truth is Jesus Christ”. But if trust is used as the basis for defining Truth, this is a flawed foundation. The path to correct Truth must not include trust as an intermediate step. If the justification of true Truth relies on trust, then such Truth becomes doubtful – because it does not apply to everyone, but only to those in a state of trust, to those who believe in this particular instance of supposed Truth.

Another opinion is sometimes heard: “Truth is love”. Yes and no. It depends on what is meant by love. If love is understood as the Absolute – then yes: “our primordial unity”. But if love means some other kind of love – sensual attachment, the love of Sita and Rama, parental, human, familial, sexual, or similar – then no. Such love is not Truth, primarily because it is not eternal. It will end sooner or later, and in the absence of mutuality, it can cause great suffering, psychological trauma, or even mania.

Buddhism asserts that all problems stem from ignorance – and ignorance is, first and foremost, a lack of knowledge of Truth. There are no people who innately decide to be evil. No one thinks: “Since I was born as Hitler, I will now harm everyone, kill and torment them”. No. Such people do not exist. There are no inherently evil people. All so‑called evil people are simply those who lacked the wisdom to understand that they are being evil. And even if a person realises they are evil and committing a crime, they often lack the insight to see that their actions will lead them to hell. This is elementary human folly. How can this be proven? It is proven simply: look within yourself and ask: Have you ever had a moment when you suddenly thought, ‘I want to be evil. I want to bring suffering and harm to people. I am inherently harmful and evil’?

Levels of Achievement

● Hatha Yogi – purification of the right, left and central channels. Awakening of kundalini.

● Raja Yogi – ability to transcend attachment to the three gunas, and in particular, the energy of tamas. Tamas manifests in a person as laziness. This is why the first thing any practitioner should get rid of is precisely tamas. When a practitioner overcomes their tamas, a very strong willpower awakens. In meditation, the brain emits alpha waves.

●Samadhi Yogi – ability to stably enter samadhi. A kundalini yogi. Holiness. In meditation, the brain emits theta waves.

● Arhat – entering the state of nirvana. Solitary awakening. Solitary liberation and enlightenment (“enlightenment” refers to the mental aspect of liberation). A soul worthy of offering. A mahamudra yogi. In a calm state, the brain emits alpha waves; in meditation, it emits delta waves.

● Bodhisattva – savior. Mahayana Yogi.

● Bodhisattva in astral – savior in the astral realm. Astral Mahayana Yogi.

● Bodhisattva in Causal – savior in the causal realm. Causal Mahayana Yogi.

● Buddha – attainment of mahanirvana. Great Awakening to Truth. Great liberation. The spiritual level of a buddha surpasses that of any deity, with the exception of Shiva. In both meditation and a calm state, the brain does not emits any waves.

● Victor in Truth – attaining mahanirvana independently, without teachers.

● Departure of the Victor in Truth into Mahaparinirvana – attainment of the Absolute. Adi‑Buddha. The spiritual level of the Adi‑Buddha surpasses that of any deity, including Shiva.

Awakened Bodies – Buddha Bodies

As yogis advance in meditative practice and master ever‑deeper stages, they awaken dormant bodies within. The awakening of a body of another dimension – and a controlled exit into this other body – is also called the formation of this other body.

● Physical body – associated with the muladhara chakra and operates in the world of phenomena. To exit the physical body in another body, a yogi must bring the physical body into an altered state – for example, by achieving extreme relaxation, entering a drowsy (meditative) state, falling asleep, or attaining a state of artificial anabiosis (samadhi).

● Body of Apparition – associated with the svadisthana chakra. Operates in the lower astral plane.

● Phenomenal body (nirmanakaya) – associated with the manipura chakra. Operates in the lower causal plane. It can manifest in the world of phenomena as the body of apparition, seperated from the real physical body.

● Body of the Law (dharmakaya) – associated with the anahata chakra. Operates in the upper astral plane.

● Body of Essence (svabavikakaya) – associated with the vishudha chakra. Operates in the middle causal.

● Body of Reward (sambhogakaya) – associated with the ajna chakra. Operates in the upper causal.

● Vajra body (vajrakaya) – associated with the sahasrara chakra. True Ego. It represents the Atman. Abides in the state of nirvana.

In the course of the Six Yogas of Naropa, yogis progress sequentially from the lower to the higher chakras and work with the awakened bodies corresponding to these chakras. The Six Yogas of Naropa – performed in the following order – are:

● Tummo Yoga (Yoga of Inner Heat), which focuses on generating inner warmth and energy, often linked with the lower chakras and the awakening of kuṇḍalinī;

● Bardo Yoga, which deals with the intermediate states (bardo) between life and death and trains the practitioner to maintain awareness during transitions;

● Yoga of Dreams, which cultivates lucid dreaming and the ability to recognise dreams as illusory, using this insight to deepen spiritual awakening;

● Yoga of the Illusory Body, which trains the yogi to perceive all phenomena, including the body, as illusory and facilitates the formation and control of subtle bodies;

● Yoga of Light, which involves practices of visualisation and working with inner light and aims at realising the luminous nature of mind;

● Yoga of Transference of Consciousness (phowa), which teaches the method of consciously transferring one’s consciousness at the moment of death to a higher realm or state, ensuring a favourable rebirth or liberation.

Four Yanas

Yana. The path to achieving various spiritual levels proceeds through spiritual practice (sādhana). A wide range of interests is realised through spiritual practice. This may be simply love or attachment to the Supreme, or to some saint, or to a particular deity (or even just to its form). It may also be an attraction to saṃsāra, or it may be a material interest. Spiritual practice includes specific techniques such as āsanas, special physical exercises, walking (standing or running), and prāṇāyāmas. In Christianity, standing is a very important gymnastic component of spiritual practice (though its significance is little understood; for this reason, church officials who refer to officials holding candles at ceremonies merely for show as “candle‑holders” are wrong). Spiritual practice also includes mental exercises such as meditations, mantras, prayers, and reading sūtras. It also involves making changes to one’s lifestyle, as well as purification techniques and various ascetic abstentions – such as, for example, intermittent dry fasting. Spiritual practice further includes various ritual actions and the performance of ceremonies, as well as different ways of making offerings – of oneself, one’s actions, or one’s possessions. Spiritual practice is carried out either independently or under the guidance of various teachers, either individually or by joining like‑minded groups. The multitude of schools, approaches, paths, and methods of spiritual inquiry are traditionally systematised, categorised, and correlated with the four yanas. Each subsequent yana includes all the preceding ones.

● Hinayana (literally "lesser vehicle") is the path of individual, personal liberation. It has another name: Theravada. This path involves the adept leaving home, joining a monastic community, and becoming a monk by taking on the relevant monastic vows and precepts. Within this yana, the practice of retreat is also carried out – that is, when the adept abandons worldly life but lives outside the monastic community. Sometimes, retreat is carried out outside the community but under its supervision. If we compare the speed of spiritual growth within a community and outside it, progress within the community is an order of magnitude faster. Laypeople, meanwhile, should strive to become monks. If this is not possible, then a layperson should structure their life so that it is as close as possible to the monastic lifestyle. Among the recommended offerings that laypeople can make are donations to the monastic community. Through such an offering, a layperson accumulates karmic data so that in the next life there will be no more obstacles to monastic life. A marked feature of Hinayana is social seclusion, autistic tendencies, and self‑centredness. Since any interaction or social openness on the part of the adept brings their state back to the initial, worldly level – because in this case the adept becomes filled with data received from another person, and this foreign data is usually unbearable for them, causing them to fall back to the worldly level. The goal of Hinayana is small nirvāṇa. One who attains small nirvāṇa is called an Arhat. After personal attainment, having become an Arhat, the adept can choose what to do next: abandon life and enter small parinirvāṇa, or take up the path of Mahayana.

● Mahayana (literally "great vehicle") – is, in the strict, original sense, the continuation of the path of spiritual growth after attaining the level of an Arhat. It is the path of the Bodhisattva – Bodhisattvayana. The main task of a Bodhisattva is to lead all souls to spiritual awakening. The goal of Mahayana is mahanirvāṇa. One who ultimately attains mahanirvāṇa is called a buddha.