Chapter from the book by Vladimir Antonov
 Ecopsychology

Sanatana Dharma

Throughout the entire history of humankind, God has been teaching people the same thing: how man should develop oneself, seeking Divine Perfection and aspiring to Merge with Him.

These Divine Teachings are called Sanatana Dharma — the Eternal Law. God taught and continues to teach this through Avatars and prophets. But eve people tend to gradually forget the essence of the concrete Teachings given to them, distort something in it, sometimes to its exact antithesis, and start conflicting with those who perverted the Teachings in a different manner [1].

This is why God needs to incarnate Parts of Himself into human bodies again and again or to speak through new prophets — in an attempt to revive Sanatana Dharma. But people tend to consider His Envoys as enemies of their “true” faith, to taunt at Them and to kill Them.

Currently, the Avatar Sathya Sai Baba preaches these pure Teachings in this way.

The essence of Sathya Sai Baba’s Teachings as well as of the Teachings of all the Other Divine Teachers can be summarized in short as follows.

The Main goal of any man is to Merge himself — as developed consciousness — in the Consciousness of God. In order to realize this one has to study oneself and God as multidimensional phenomena, including cognizing the Abode of the Creator and migrating there with the consciousness.

In order to accomplish this one has to prepare oneself by spiritual practices — such as pranayamas, techniques of pratyahara, and meditative trainings.

But no trainings will be of use, if a person lacks steadfast faith and longing for the Creator, or does not have a developed ability to love. Love is a function of the spiritual heart, and one should start developing it through interaction with people and other incarnate beings. Basic principles here are compassion for every living being and serving every living being according to karma yoga postulates. Karma yoga is a practical expression of one’s love for God and for people; it is the best method of self-development. Faith without active service is dead.

One should also cultivate Faith by constant remembering about God. Religious conversations, various rituals, and public worships that involve praising God’s name, etc. can help one in this.

All principles of a person’s relationships with people and other creatures are summarized in the short precept of Vyasa: “Help ever (in everything that is good), hurt never!”

Sathya Sai Baba gives detailed explanation of this precept with reference to a great number of concrete earthly situations. He teaches that there are two major landmarks in every person’s earthly life: God — as the Goal, and the death of the body — as a reminder of our limited opportunity to improve. Let us remember this, let us cast aside all insignificant and unnecessary and devote ourselves totally to the realization of the meaning of our lives: to development of ourselves as consciousness — first qualitative, and then quantitative, as we have already discussed in this and other books.

“Neither cringing, nor irritation, nor profit will be the gates… But free service, heartfelt veneration and conscious ascent will bring one to the Threshold of Light.” [2] (Hierarchy:460).

Let us remember: this is the way to liberation from bonds of karma, from diseases, from the necessity to submerge into the world of sufferings again. This is — the way to Merging forever with our most Beloved!

Bibliography

1. Antonov V.V. — From the History of Religion.

2. Agni Yoga. Hierarchy, Naberezhnye Chelny, 1991 (in Russian).