Sci­ence toys with the ques­tion of which is the largest object in the uni­verse: a giant plan­et, a plan­et­ary sys­tem or a galaxy? A gigant­ic black hole or a cluster of galax­ies? The answer is simple: in the uni­verse, the largest thing is the uni­verse itself…

Of course, a vast sys­tem may have a mil­lion regions, parts and ele­ments, yet from a spir­itu­al point of view we can dis­tin­guish only three regions, three worlds. And let us not think here of the simple divi­sion into the under­world, the earthly world and the heav­enly world, which organ­ic­ally per­vades the think­ing of earthly man. Human men­tal­ity finds the spheres and worlds that suit it, that is to say, the envir­on­ment is shaped by thought.

First is the mater­i­al world, the world of exploit­a­tion. Here karma, the give and take, holds sway. Every deed has its ante­cedent and its after-effect, and like it or not, man is com­pelled to lead a respons­ible life, for soon­er or later life presents its bill for everything. Here everything is ambi­val­ent – who­ever is exploited today will him­self exploit oth­ers tomor­row; the beg­gar may become a prince, and vice versa.

Second is the state of nir­vana, the world of neut­ral­ity, where indif­fer­ence, the deni­al of the world, neg­at­ive immor­tal­ity reign. It is said that know­ledge is power, but who­ever knows too much also hates much…

Finally, third is the divine king­dom, the world of devo­tion, where rev­er­ence, har­mony, divine love reign. Here the emo­tion­al approach to the Abso­lute Truth holds sway, and this is the sphere of pos­it­ive and pro­gress­ive immor­tal­ity.

If we accept that the uni­verse is a great man and man a small uni­verse, that is, if we dis­cov­er the par­al­lel between mac­ro­cosm and micro­cosm, then we must also exam­ine how human exist­ence is made up of spheres. And just as we have iden­ti­fied three spheres of the uni­verse, so let us ana­lyse three lay­ers of the micro­cosm as well.

Man exists, first of all, on the bod­ily level. His body is bound by grav­ity, the most mass-like factor. Its pos­it­ive side is that even grav­it­a­tion­al inter­ac­tion is, in the end, divine in ori­gin. If it keeps the plan­ets in their orbits, then it is no bad thing that its bind­ing force keeps man as well. Applied to the soul, this means that, thanks to spir­itu­al grav­ity, the stray aster­oids or met­eor­ites – that is, souls – passing by a star may come with­in its pull, and then, turn­ing aside from a course that comes out of the end­less dark and heads for the end­less dark deep, they may take their place in a solar sys­tem. At the same time, to break free from the grav­it­a­tion­al pris­on of the body and from its bonds is very hard, but not impossible. The con­quest of grav­ity is lev­it­a­tion, a mys­tic­al power.

Man's men­tal exist­ence is lim­ited by the basic qual­it­ies of mater­i­al nature: mass, energy and light. These stand in con­stant, dynam­ic rivalry with one anoth­er, and now one, now anoth­er rules man's con­scious­ness, spurs his desires, drives him onward. These qual­it­ies influ­ence his motives, although man is at heart an emo­tion­al, instinct­ive being. The men­tal bond­age of these qual­it­ies is even harder to break free from than grav­ity, for the former fet­ters the body, the lat­ter, thought. Against grav­ity there is still the pos­sib­il­ity of mys­tic­al powers, but against the qual­it­ies of nature only spir­itu­al prac­tice helps: one must be pur­i­fied, and that is far harder.

Finally, man's spir­itu­al nature is lim­ited by illu­sion, from which it is almost impossible to break free. To lib­er­ate man's soul and to reach the state of full­ness, the most fit­ting means is faith, which is determ­ined by the divine touch. In rais­ing con­scious­ness, sur­render to the divine will is the most potent means, and it is this that leads to the spir­itu­al plane. Undoubtedly, it is hard­est of all to break free from the sway of illu­sion, and for this a spir­itu­al escape velo­city is needed, which faith and bless­ing provide. Even if all else is lost, faith still remains – it is the lan­guage of the heart and the soul. Faith is trust in the order of cre­ation – and con­vic­tion.