Helena Blavatsky:

life before and after death

Gradually it dawned on me that this woman, whose brilliant achievements and remarkable traits of character, no less than her position in society, arouse deep respect for her, is one of the most remarkable mediums in the world.

G. Olcott

Blavatsky Helena - absent from the TSB.

Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was born in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnepropetrovsk, and comes from a well-born Russian-German family. Her maternal ancestors belong to the Dolgoruky family, which goes back to Rurik himself, the legendary Viking, the founder of the Kiev princely throne. Elena's mother was the famous writer von Hahn, whom Belinsky once called the "Russian Georges Sand"; Helen herself is now called the founder of the modern theosophical movement. “She lost her mother very early; Therefore, she was brought up by her grandmother, Elena Pavlovna Fadeeva, a very educated woman and extremely fond of the natural sciences. By the way, Cranston's book cannot be completely trusted: it connects Blavatsky with Peter the Great, the place of her birth, but the city of Dnepropetrovsk is named after the dictator of Ukraine, the Bolshevik Petrovsky, and has nothing to do with Peter. Helena Blavatsky, having received a brilliant home education and upbringing, was quite ready for secular life, that is, she knew foreign languages, played the piano, and wrote poetry. But she chose a different path. To gain independence, she married the old man Nicephorus Blavatsky at the age of seventeen, but soon divorced and went abroad. There she was attracted not by Paris and fashionable resorts, but mainly by Eastern countries, their religion and psychology.

“Her first journey began from Constantinople, then she went to the Far East. She spent ten years there, of which about two years - in Tibet. In 1860 Elena returned to Russia, but not for long. After spending two years with her relatives in the Caucasus, she set off again: Italy, Greece, Egypt, and finally New York. She arrived there in 1873. It was then that her literary activity began. She publishes articles in American newspapers, confidently enters into controversy with the Jesuits. Her descriptions of the Caucasus date back to the same time. She also sends materials for publication to Russian journals.

Elena visited India many times and lived there for several years, studying Indian religion and way of thinking. She herself refers to them as the main source of her ideas about the world.

She became an admirer of spiritualism, which challenged both basic modern scientific concepts and all religious dogmas. For example, as a child, when she arrived in Petersburg, she saw Pushkin on the street, that is, of course, the ghost of Pushkin, who had long since died by that time. Spiritualism, according to A. Conan Doyle (and the creator of Sherlock Holmes was also a sympathetic historian of this trend in public life), “with all its incongruities and manifestations of fanaticism, captured all countries in a surprisingly short time. Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, Czar Alexander, German Emperor Wilhelm I, and the kings of Bavaria and Württemberg were all convinced of his exceptional strength.

Many greeted Blavatsky's revelations with skepticism (remember L. Tolstoy's play "The Fruits of Enlightenment"), but there were quite a few (mostly outside Russia) who were ready to gawk at the appearance of dead people "from the other world" and listen to her argumentation of their presence. The theosophical movement appeared in the 19th century and now has a very large number of supporters, if you count all its many ramifications and small groups. But the essence of this teaching, as it is stated in Blavatsky's book The Secret Doctrine, is as follows.

The universe is based on three fundamental principles:

1) There is one unchanging reality in the world, which overlaps even the concept of God.

2) Everything in nature obeys the law of periodicity, which has the character of a universal scientific postulate. In accordance with this law, the birth of a being, maturation, the onset of maturity and death occur.

3) In the universe there is a universal "oversoul", identical to all souls. After death, the transmigration of souls occurs, which includes many cycles and is the embodiment of the religious principle of the immortality of the soul, without which no mass religion is inconceivable.

According to Blavatsky, this world order was known to Christ, Buddha and the Hindu Mahatmas, but they kept this knowledge to themselves. Finally, one of them became Elena's guru and passed this information on to her, and she began to disseminate it in human society. In 1875, together with H. Olcott and W. Judge, she founded the Theosophical Society in the USA, which immediately gained many adherents.

The aims of the Theosophical Society were:

1. To constitute the beginning of the universal brotherhood of mankind without distinction of faiths, races and origins; all members should strive for self-improvement and mutual assistance, both moral and material.

2. To spread the study of Oriental languages, literatures and philosophical and religious teachings, in order to prove that the same truth is hidden in all.

3. To make research in the field of the unknown laws of nature and to develop the supersensible powers of man.

This program arose from what Blavatsky studied during her wanderings in the East, in particular from the teachings of the famous yogi Arulprakazy Vallalar. He argued that the mysterious meaning of the sacred books of the East would be revealed by the keepers of secrets - mahatmas - to foreigners who would accept it with joy. He further said that the use of animal food would gradually come to naught; distinctions between races and castes will disappear and in time the principle of Universal Brotherhood will prevail (in India); what people call "God" is in fact Universal Love, which generates and maintains perfect Harmony and Balance in all nature; people, once believing in the divine power hidden in them, will acquire such extraordinary abilities that they can change the operation of the law of gravity, etc.

In the second half of his life, the yogi repeatedly exclaimed, addressing his students: “You do not listen to me. You are not following my teachings. It seems that you have decided not to part with your former beliefs. Nevertheless, the time is not far off when people from Russia, America and other states will come to India and preach to you the same principles of universal Brotherhood ... Soon you will know that brothers living far in the north will do many amazing deeds in India for the benefit of your countries".

This evidence is cited in his writings by a member of the Theosophical Society, Tholuvar Velayudham Mudeljar. He also comes to the conclusion that the arrival of Blavatsky from Russia, as well as Colonel Olcott from America, was the very event that the great teacher predicted.

The range of Blavatsky's interests is quite wide and complex. For example, her interpretation of what we call "transmigration of souls" is interesting. She argues that each personality leaves its own - highly spiritual - "imprints" on the divine Ego, whose consciousness returns at a certain stage of its development, even in an extremely vicious soul, which in the end is doomed to destruction. There is no such human soul, no matter how criminal and devoid of glimpses of spirituality, which would be born completely corrupted. This or that karma the human person accumulates in his youth, and it is this karma that is preserved and forms the basis of the future. No man, whatever his inclinations, becomes immediately immoral. He always has time to develop karma. Blavatsky also believes that, according to the Law of Retribution, appropriate measures are taken so that events that have not been realized in this life have taken place in another incarnation. That is, since each new attempt of nature to create something is always more successful than the previous one, then each new incarnation is always better, more successful than the previous one.

Lodges of the Society have been established in every major city in America and abroad. Some of them still exist today. Under her editorship, publications of the society began to appear, in which questions of theosophy were interpreted.

Theosophy is democratic in the sense that it does not allow any privileges or indulgences, everything is achieved by personal merits and merit of the individual.

The transmigration of souls is a very old theory, which is already represented in ancient Greek philosophy by the so-called "Pythagorean school". According to this theory, the soul can leave the body and move to another body or to an individual of a different species, and even to an inanimate object. According to the Upanishads, the Hindu spiritual book, the soul passes from body to body in a continuous cycle of birth and death.

The conditions of existence are determined by the behavior of souls during previous births, which form the karma of a given soul. At the same time, all the sorrows and joys of life are a retribution for previous sins and good deeds committed during previous births. The soul, on whose account there is a lot of good, falls into the universal ocean of souls, called Brahman.

Elena was a rather modest, even shy and silent woman who felt uncomfortable in the center of everyone's attention. Blavatsky's whole life was filled with work, which, according to Professor Corson, who knew Blavatsky well, proceeded as follows:

“She constantly filled me with wonder and curiosity – what else would she come up with? She had extensive knowledge in all areas, but her way of working was unusual. She usually wrote in bed from nine o'clock in the morning, smoking countless cigarettes. She quoted long paragraphs from dozens and dozens of books that I knew for certain did not exist in America, easily translating from several languages. Sometimes she would call me from my office to ask me how to translate into good English some idiom from the Old World, for by this point she had not yet reached the level of language that distinguishes her "Secret Doctrine". She told me that she sees pages of books with quotes and simply translates them into English. To many people of ordinary ability, this fact seems like a miracle.”

Blavatsky always carried out her experiments in a narrow circle, no more than six or eight people, since even in the purest experiments, she explained, there is a place for skepticism, which she tried to avoid. But this select circle included a large number of people who left their memories.

There are many testimonies about objects moved without touching - bottles, spoons, letters. The spoon overcame two walls, the letter ended up in the hands of Blavatsky, having got to her from another room, then in her hands was an exact copy of this letter. But all this served only as an introduction to the main miraculous operation of the materialization of the spirits of the dead. There were people whom those present sometimes did not know during their lifetime. For example, a Georgian often appeared - Elena's servant, who spoke with a characteristic accent. Nevertheless, comparing their impressions, people established the identity of the observed ghosts. And most importantly - everyone heard a sign of materialization - a soft tapping.

It must be said that already by the middle of the century there were many cases of exposing the fraud committed by mediums during the materialization of spirits. Mediums showed spirits and charged naive spectators for this display. So, by the time Blavatsky arrived in New York, there was published an exposure of a certain Edda, who spoke with public spiritualistic experiments. Therefore, Blavatsky had to agree to the binding of hands and feet and a number of other actions to prevent fraud. But she was never caught in it.

Blavatsky's life was not easy. They remember that in 1873 in New York, when her father stopped helping her, and traveling cost a lot of money, she earned money by making artificial flowers and leather goods. She admitted that not everything about the structure of the afterlife was clear to her. In particular, contradictions appeared in her due to the fact that the spirits of not only the dead, but also living people appeared, who, in theory, should not have left the body.

“In 1875, Blavatsky went to India with Olcott, established the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Bombay, and began publishing the newspaper The Theosophist in English. Then, already in 1882, she moved the apartment to Madras, on the outskirts of Adiar. Here Blavatsky amazed visitors with various miracles: at the wave of her hand, a bell rang and mysterious sounds were heard, roses fell from the ceiling, fireballs flew, it was not clear where the letters of the mahatmas - Tibetan brothers - appeared, which she read without opening.

In 1883 Blavatsky moved to Europe, to Paris. Followed her there and her students and assistants: Olcott, Judge, Brahmin Moshni, Duchess de Pomar and others.

In 1886 she moved again, this time to London, where she founded the main branch of the Theosophical Society.

Blavatsky spent her whole life traveling, having visited almost all corners of Europe, India, the Middle and Far East, and Central Asia. She also visited Russia, where she also had many adherents, but Russia was not too favorable to her, and after five years of living in the United States she became an American citizen. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the conditions of those travels were far from ideal.

Until Helena's death, her authority in the Theosophical movement was indisputable. She repeatedly proved that she had no other interests than the tasks of the movement. When Blavatsky was once accused of having an extramarital affair with a man, she underwent an authoritative medical examination which determined that she was a virgin. Many respected and influential people became members of the movement because they were not satisfied with the official religious dogma. In particular, the famous inventor Thomas Edison became an active participant in the theosophical seminar.

However, after the death of Helena, it was not easy to establish who the main Theosophist of the planet was, and the movement broke up into a number of competing groups. In particular, Dr. Steiner was followed by "anthroposophists", who sought to highlight in the movement not the religious, but the human side. Another activist of the movement, Anna Bezan, fell into atheism and socialism, while defending the ideas of the national liberation movement of the Hindus - in fact, it turned out unhealthy: the bearers of universal truth were under the colonial oppression of the British.

But Helena Blavatsky continues to be the highest authority for spiritualists, mainly in spiritualistic practice. She continues to be called upon in all cases where there is doubt about the behavior of mediums and summoned spirits. And if someone is interested in the author's opinion on this matter, then they will have to turn to some other publication: here something else is more important for us - the undoubted success that Blavatsky had in the USA in her chosen field of activity.

Note.

In fairness, it should be noted that, despite her fame and undoubted authority, Blavatsky had enough opponents. According to the information given in the Great Encyclopedia (St. Petersburg, printing house of the Enlightenment partnership, 1903), already during Blavatsky’s stay in Paris in 1883, a number of revelations appeared in the missionary magazine Madras Christian College Magasine, mainly revealing the secrets of her "phenomena" and the Madras apartment. The editors of the magazine argued that the purpose of all the "phenomena" and letters of the "Mahatmas" was to swindle money from gullible people, allegedly for the needs of the Theosophical Society. Almost simultaneously with the article in this journal, there were also revelations from the London Society for Psychical Investigation, which sent its member, Mr. Hodgson, to India to check the activities of Blavatsky. Godgson came to the conclusion that all the "phenomena" of Blavatsky are nothing but fraudulent tricks.

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When I sat down to write this article, I decided to first look through some materials that touch on this topic. Surprisingly, they seemed very interesting to me, that's why my thoughts ran faster and headed towards the cherished goal. It was confirmed that not only philosophy deals with this problem, but also philosophical psychology, a science that separated from a narrow psychological discipline and devoted itself to the study of man and his soul, joined it. Most psychologists did not want to be limited people, so they rushed to philosophical wisdom. They no longer perceive a person from the point of view of a pathologist, psychophysiologist, physiologist, geneticist, sociologist, and the like. Consider Andrei Bely. When he fell ill, he wrote to his friend that "psychology has "hardened" in me into physiology," these terms have penetrated into psychology. Such periods, says V.P. Zinchenko, every person has when he is not up to the soul, not to psychology, not even to wise thoughts, when his body hurts a lot and he wants to scream.

We also note that the human psyche is very often studied by non-psychological methods. A. Pyatigorsky spoke about this in his book on Buddhism, who recalled that in ancient Buddhism the thesis is substantiated that the psyche can be studied not only by psychological methods, but with the help of occultism and magic.

Finally, innovative psychologists came to a consensus that the human soul and its body deserve to become full-fledged and full-fledged subjects of psychological research. According to Zinchenko, the study of the human body is endless, because it, like Nature itself, is limitless and bottomless. Even Spinoza once said: "What the human body is capable of, no one has yet determined." (Spinoza. Ethics). That is why it makes sense to say that science will not determine everything soon.

Another philosopher, already from the 20th century close to us, the favorite of most of us, Merab Mamardashvili, wrote that the final body contains the perfect and the infinite. But this perfect and infinite in a finite body, we could not find for a long time. But Mamardashvili found, and not just anywhere, but in the flesh of Jesus Christ, and called him in Cartesian words: "metaphysical matter." It is in Christ that the perfect and infinite abides under the name - metaphysical matter.

Of course, you can define the human soul in different words. How many people - so many opinions. We have already talked about Plato's definition of the soul in our article "Blavatsky and Plato", now we would like to hear other opinions.

Named by us V.P. Zinchenko calls the soul "something like a symbol." "It's the kind of symbol that closes up holes in our imaginations, and where causal relationships aren't enough for us." (V.P. Zinchenko. About the soul).

To characterize the soul, the author cites Bakhtin's definition: "The soul is a gift of my spirit to another person." Of course, he ironically, there would be something to give. Although personally Mamardashvili’s definition is closest to him: “The soul is that which hurts for no reason.” Our opinion is this: the soul does not hurt without a reason.

Theologians argue that the soul is between the spirit and the body. And for such thinkers as Buber or Bakhtin, it is between us, i.e. between people. Sometimes they merge together. It's no secret that a body without a soul is dead. Only with the death of a person, the soul leaves him and rushes into the blue distances.

According to the logic of the philosopher Fyodor Stepun, the soul is between the present and the past. And according to Erich Fromm, it is between the present and the future. It turns out that, the author ironically, as one smart Odessa woman said: “Sho was, I saw, but what will be, I already said.”

It's no secret that many sages were looking for a place where our soul is. And such a place was found by Gustav Shpet. These are his words that "the whole soul is appearance". “She envelops us with a gentle, soft cover. And all the blows that are inflicted on the soul are reflected in the appearance in the form of wrinkles, scars. They are on our outer face. On this occasion, Mandelstam said that “the spiritual is accessible to the eyes, and the outlines live” ... If there was a projector, then it would be possible to show the face of Mandelstam himself and many other faces where this spiritual is undoubtedly.

The soul, as most of us understand it, is all-pervading, omnipresent, and in each of these places it performs its functions. For each philosopher they are completely different. For example, Fichte explained to us that the soul and consciousness assign organs to the formation, to the creation of these organs. This means that the soul molds the body, it rejoices, suffers, writes our biography. At the same time, she herself either develops or opens up. The main problem, Zinchenko notes, is the ontology of the soul. The author wants to know whether there is any reality behind the soul, including his own, that he is ready to offer as an ontology?

"The astral body is not the Spirit"

In the article "Spirit" and "Soul" Blavatsky tries to explain to the editor of the journal "Spirutalist" how she understands these concepts, and what they really mean for people. E.P. cites the words of one of the correspondents who sent his article to this journal, in which there are such words: “If theosophists fully comprehended the nature of the soul and spirit and their relationship with the body, they would understand that if the soul leaves the body, then it will not be possible to return maybe. The spirit may depart, but if the soul departs once, it departs forever.” (Ibid.).

Blavatsky considers such a statement vague and ambiguous. If by the term "soul" he does not mean the vital principle, she explains, then it can be assumed that he falls into a big mistake, calling the astral body spirit, and the immortal essence - "soul." Theosophists do quite the opposite.

In addition to the unfounded accusation of the Theosophists of ignorance, Blavatsky sees that the author of the article expresses the idea that the problem that has occupied the minds of metaphysicians of all ages has already been solved. She does not believe this statement. He also does not believe that Theosophists, other scientists "to the end" penetrated into the nature of the soul and spirit, and into their relationship with the body. This is possible only for the Omniscience, which they do not really have. Theosophists, following in the footsteps of the ancient sages, can only hope for an approximation to absolute truth. It is doubtful to her that Mr. Crowsher can achieve more, even if he is an "inspired medium" with experience in showing his miracles.

Modern dogmas, so dearly loved by spiritualists, she notes, cannot disappear from the world so quickly, as it was with the monster of Thebes, who threw himself into the sea from a cliff to disappear forever.

Blavatsky proves that the magazine's correspondents - Oxon and Crowsher - misunderstood Colonel Olcott, misinterpreted the views of the New York Theosophists on the problem of spirit and man. Olcott did not say or imply that the immortal spirit leaves the body for mediumistic manifestations, as these authors write about it. For them the word "spirit" means the inner, astral man, or double. Olcott, on the other hand, spoke of something else, of souls: "It is not pure spirits that produce mediumistic physical phenomena, but "souls" - incarnated or disembodied, and usually with the help of elementals."

By enclosing the word "souls" in quotation marks, Blavatsky emphasized an unusual meaning. As a theosophist, Olcott could have expressed himself more precisely and more philosophically, and would have called the "soul" the "astral spirit", "astral man", or double. Therefore, says EP, criticism is inappropriate here. “I am amazed at such sweeping blaming, built on such shaky foundations. After all, our president is only pushing the idea of triad man, as did the ancient and Eastern philosophers and their worthy disciple Paul, who believed that the bodily substance, flesh and blood, is saturated psyche(psyche) - the soul, or astral body, thanks to which life is maintained in it. This doctrine - that man is a triad: spirit, or nous (nous), soul and body - was taught by the apostle of the Gentiles much more widely and clearly than by his Christian followers (see 1 Thessalonians, 5, 23). But, obviously forgetting or not bothering to "thoroughly" study the transcendent views of the ancient philosophers and Christian apostles on this issue, Mr. Crowsher examines the soul (psyche) like a spirit (nous) and vice vers» . (In search of the occult).

To argue with Helena Blavatsky on such delicate issues to the correspondents of the Spiritualist magazine is senseless and naive. Her knowledge of Buddhist, Indian, ancient and European philosophy is limitless. All her testimonies are confirmed by authoritative sources and correspond to the truth. Blavatsky's knowledge is several epochs ahead of its time.

Not new to her is the Buddhist idea of ​​dividing a person into three entities, as a single whole on the way to nirvana. Moreover, she also divides the soul into several parts, naming each of them with a new name. This is what all Buddhists do so that there is no confusion in this matter. The ancient Greeks did the same, believing that psyche is an bios- physical life and at the same time thumosomes- the nature of passions and desires. This did not apply to the animal kingdom. In animals, in the first place is not the soul, but instincts.

“A man can gain the whole world, but lose his soul”

The soul-psyche, from the point of view of Blavatsky, is itself a union, consensus, or union bios- physical vitality, epithumia- natural inclinations and phrenos, mens- that is, the mind. Blavatsky includes animus among them. The latter consists of an ethereal substance that fills the entire universe with itself and comes from the soul of the world - Anima Mundi, or the Buddhist Svabhavat, which is not a spirit, although it is intangible and imperceptible. But, compared with spirit, or pure abstraction, it is objective matter. Due to its complex nature, the soul can descend and merge so closely with the physical entity that all moral influence of the higher life on it ceases. On the other hand, it may be so closely united with the nous or spirit that it becomes related to it. In this case, writes EP, its "bearer", a physical man, becomes a god even during his earthly life. Until the soul merges with the spirit - either during the life of a person or after his physical death - the individual person will not become immortal as an entity. Psyche, sooner or later, disintegrates . Man can gain "the whole world", but lose his "soul".

To confirm her thoughts, Blavatsky refers to the Apostle Paul, who preached anastasis- continuous existence of individual spiritual life after death. It was he who said that the corruptible is clothed with the imperishable. This means that the spiritual body is not one of those visible and tangible bodies that appear at spiritualistic sessions and are mistakenly called "materialized spirits." "When metanoia,- she writes, - the full development of spiritual life, raises the spiritual body from the physical (disembodied, perishable astral man, whom Olcott calls "soul"), it becomes, in strict accordance with the progress achieved, an ever greater and greater abstraction for bodily feelings. It can influence, inspire, and even communicate with people subjectively. It can be felt, and in those rare cases when the clairvoyant is absolutely pure and his consciousness is clear, even seen with the spiritual eye. This is the eye of the purified psyche - the soul. But there are no guarantees that it can manifest itself objectively. (Soul and Spirit).

Applying the term "spirit" to materialized eidols and spiritual "form manifestations" is completely unacceptable, she says. In this case, you need to change the situation, because scientists have already begun to discuss this topic. At best, these phenomena are, if not what the Greeks called fantasma, then at least - phasma i.e. ghosts. Plutarch taught, writes E.P., that at the moment of death, Proserpina separates the body and the perfect soul, and then the soul becomes free and independent demon (daimon). After this, the righteous undergo a second corruption: Demeter separates psyche from nose, or pneuma. The first eventually breaks up into ethereal particles, hence the inevitable dissolution and destruction of a person who, after death, is a purely psychic entity. Last, nous, ascends to its highest divine power and gradually becomes the purest, divine Spirit. Kalila, as E.P. knows, despised the psychic essence of man. “It is this accumulation of the grossest particles of the soul, the mesmeric secretions of human nature, saturated with all earthly desires and addictions, vices, shortcomings and weaknesses that form the astral body (which can become objective under certain circumstances), Buddhists call skandhas(groups), and Colonel Olcott dubbed "soul" for convenience. (In search of the occult).

Blavatsky, to clarify the concepts of man and his soul, points to the teachings of Buddhists and Brahminists. They teach that a person cannot achieve individuality until he is freed from skandhas - the final particles of earthly vice. Hence their doctrine of metempsychosis, ridiculed and not accepted by the greatest Orientalists. Even physicists teach, says EP, that the particles that make up the physical body, in the process of evolution, are transformed into many lower physical forms. Why, then, asks Blavatsky, is it considered unphilosophical and unscientific the Buddhist assertion that the semi-material skandhas of the astral man lead to the evolution of small astral forms as soon as he throws them off in his progress towards nirvana?

Her answer is as follows: “We can say that while a disembodied person sheds a particle of these skandhas, a part of him incarnates in the bodies of plants and animals. And if he, a disembodied astral man, is so material that Demeter cannot find the slightest spark of pneuma in order to elevate her to "divine power", then the personality, so to speak, gradually disintegrates and goes into evolutionary processing. .

More precisely, she says, as the Hindus allegorically explain, the soul spends thousands of years in the bodies of unclean animals. Blavatsky mentally paints a picture of how, in complete agreement on one side, the ancient Greeks and Hindu philosophers, Eastern schools and Theosophists line up. On the other side, an army of "inspired mediums" and "spiritual guides" stands in perfect disarray. “And although among the latter there are not even two who agree with each other on what is true and what is not, they all unanimously reject any of the philosophical teachings, whichever we cite!” .

Blavatsky is aware that her arguments do not at all mean that she or other Theosophists underestimate the true spiritualistic phenomena and philosophy, and that they believe less in communication between pure mortals and pure spirits than between vicious people and vicious spirits, virtuous people and vicious spirits under unfavorable conditions.

For E.P. occultism is the quintessence of spiritualism. For her, modern, popular spiritualism is falsified, unconscious magic. She will say more that all famous and great personalities, all the greatest geniuses: poets, artists, sculptors, musicians, philosophers and natural scientists, who selflessly worked to embody their highest ideals - they were all pure spiritualists. They cannot be called mediums, in the full sense of the word, as spiritualists call them. Rather, they are embodied, enlightened souls, working in cooperation with pure disembodied and embodied planetary Spirits, for the sake of perfecting and spiritualizing humanity.

Blavatsky and the Theosophists believe that everything in material life is intimately connected with the spiritual world. As regards psychic phenomena and mediumship, Theosophists believe that when the passive medium changes, or rather develops into a conscious mediator, only then will he be able to distinguish between good and bad spirits. As long as a person is embodied (not counting the highest Adepts), he cannot compete in power with pure disembodied spirits, who, having freed themselves from all their skandhas, become subjective to the physical senses. Although it may be equal, and even far superior, in the field of phenomena, both mental and physical, to the average "spirit" of modern mediumship. Following this, Blavatsky argues that theosophists are more spiritualists, in the true sense of the word, than the so-called spiritualists, who, instead of honoring the true spirits - gods, humiliate the very concept of spirit. They rank it among the impure or, at best, imperfect entities that produce most of the phenomena.

Mr. Crowsher is, for Blavatsky, a very insignificant figure in the spiritualistic world. Protesting against the two assertions of the Theosophists, that the child is a "duad" at birth and remains so until the age of six or seven, and that some vicious persons are annihilated some time after their death, he raises two objections: that mediums have described to him three of his children "who died at the age of two, four and six." And also that he knows people who were "very immoral" but still returned to earth. Crowsher calls them "beautiful beings" who have learned the invisible laws that govern the universe. By this they prove that they are worthy of the trust of their compatriots.

Sneering at the "genius" Crowsher, who learned the secret sciences, Blavatsky believes that this venerable Mr. "competent enough" to appreciate these "beautiful beings" and give them the palm of primacy over Kapila, Manu, Plato and even the apostle Paul. For that, she says, it's worth being an "inspired medium." In the Theosophical Society there are no such "beautiful beings" from whom one could learn something. “While Mr. Crowsher looks at things and evaluates them through the prism of his own emotions, the philosophers we study did not accept anything from any “beautiful beings” that was completely inconsistent with universal harmony, justice and balance on the manifested plane of the universe. (Ibid.).

Blavatsky explains that in her letter of December 7, 1876, Colonel Olcott aptly illustrates the question of potential immortality by referring to the generally accepted physical law of the survival of the fittest. This law applies to both large and small - from the planet to the plant. It also applies to humans. For example, an underdeveloped male infant, when placed in conditions for developed children, will live no longer than an imperfect plant or animal. In infancy, the higher abilities are not yet developed, they are in a rudimentary, rudimentary state.

The baby, for Blavatsky, is an animal, no matter how "angelic" he may seem to his parents. Even the most beautiful body of a baby is just a casket, preparing to receive its treasure. The baby, in her understanding, is an animal, a selfish creature, and nothing more. There is nothing in him even from the soul, psyche, with the exception of the life principle. Hunger, fear, pain and pleasure form the basis of all his concepts. The kitten and that one surpasses him in everything except opportunities. The gray matter of his brain is not yet developed. In time, he begins to show mental abilities, but they are related only to external objects. The development of the mind of a child can only affect that part of the soul which Paul calls the soul, and James and Jude - the sensual or soul. Hence the words of Jude (Jude 19): "natural, having no spirit," and Paul: "The natural man does not accept what is from the Spirit of God, because he considers it foolishness; and cannot understand, because this must be judged spiritually. (1 Cor. 2:14).

"Man's will weaves his fate"

Only an adult who has learned to distinguish between good and evil is called by Theosophists spiritual, rational, possessing intuition. Children, developed to such a level, would be a premature, abnormal phenomenon - a mistake of nature. Blavatsky thinks so.

“Why, then, should a child who has never lived a life other than that of an animal, who has never distinguished truth from falsehood, who does not care whether he lives or dies, for he cannot understand either life or death, should become individually immortal?” - asks E.P. And he explains that the human cycle does not end until a person passes through earthly life. Not a single step of testing and experience can be skipped. You have to be a human before you can become a spirit. A dead child is a mistake of nature - he must live again. The same psyche again returns to the physical plane through another birth. Such cases, along with congenital idiots, are, as stated in Isis Unveiled, the only examples of human reincarnation (the term "reincarnation" is used here only in relation to the soul). “If every child-duad is immortal, why should we deny such individual immortality to the duad of an animal? Those who believe in the trinity of man know that the baby is only a duad - soul and body. Individuality, which is inherent in the psyche, is, as we can see, delving into the evidence of philosophers, mortal. Full triplicity is acquired only by adults. After death, astral forms become an external body, inside of which another, more subtle one is formed. It takes the place of the psyche on the earthly plane. All this as a whole is more or less covered by the spirit. (E.P. Blavatsky. New Panarion. Views of the Theosophists)

Colonel Olcott failed to explain that not all human elementaries are destroyed. Some of them have a chance to be saved. With great effort they can hold on to their third, highest, principle and can ascend sphere after sphere, shedding their veils at each transition. Then, dressed in shining spiritual shells, move until triad, freed from all temporary particles, will not plunge into nirvana and will not become one - God.

The one in whom after death there was not a single spark of the divine Ruach [Ruach (Heb.) Air, also Spirit; Spirit, one of the "principles of man" (Buddhi-Manas)], or nous, which gives the last chance for salvation, is a real animal, says Blavatsky. Such unfortunate facts take place in our life, and not only among bad people, but also among respectable people who want to achieve their immortality. Only the will of a person, his omnipotent will, weaves fate, and if a person is firmly convinced that death is destruction, then he will receive it. After all, the choice of our life or death depends on the will of man. Some people managed to escape from the clutches of death only thanks to their will and a righteous life, while others, out of fear, raised their hands up. What a person does with his body, he can do the same with his disembodied psyche, or soul.

Blavatsky calls such people as Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Apollonius of Tyana and others as "mediators of mankind". All of them were adepts, philosophers, in a word, people who, having spent their lives in purity, righteousness and self-sacrifice, went through all the trials and achieved divine insight and superhuman abilities. They could not only revive phenomena, but cast out "demons" and demons from the possessed, considering this their sacred duty.

Despite the fact that Blavatsky's article was written over 230 years ago, it is still relevant today. How relevant are her words that in our time, the time of a more developed psyche, every hysterical sensitive fancies himself a prophet, and there are now thousands of mediums. Without any training, self-denial, or even simple mental training, they consider themselves experts in the secret sciences, psychics and occultists, heralds of unknown and unknowable minds and in their wisdom they want to surpass Socrates, the Apostle Paul - in eloquence, and Tertullian - in fiery and authoritative dogmatism. .

Theosophists are not of those who consider themselves infallible or holy. They want to be treated exactly the same as other people. Blavatsky believes that in the name of logic and common sense, before exchanging unpleasant words, it would be better if the differences were presented to the judgment of reason. Let's compare everything and, discarding emotions and prejudices, as unworthy of logicians and experimenters, stick to only what has stood the test of time, she says.

The human soul in "Isis Unveiled"

Blavatsky understood Plato's philosophy as a finely crafted compendium ( Compendium (lat.) - an abbreviated summary of the main provisions of philosophical systems), created to understand the philosophical systems of ancient India and the entire East. For her, Plato was a major interpreter of the laws of the world and nature. In his writings, the thinker faithfully conveyed the spirituality of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years ago. He assimilated their metaphysical subtleties and easily commented on them. It was clear that such ancient Eastern books as Vyasa, Jaimini, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati and many others, despite their antiquity, left their indelible stamp on his writings, and those of his philosophical school. This led to the conclusion that the same wisdom was revealed to Plato and the ancient sages of India. “And if this wisdom could survive such a blow of time, then what kind of wisdom could it be if not divine and eternal,” concludes Blavatsky.

Considering the human soul from the point of view of Indian philosophy, Plato found that justice exists in the soul of each of its owners, regardless of skin color, race, place of residence and confession, and it is also his greatest good. People, in proportion to their reason, recognize its transcendental demands as just. That is why, says Blavatsky, Platonic metaphysics is justified and stands on a solid foundation. Although its foundation is metaphysical, it is close to realistic principles.

Plato could not accept a philosophy devoid of spiritual foundations, all approaches to which constituted one essence. For the Greek sage, there was one goal - this is real knowledge. A real philosopher and seeker of truth, he writes, is one who has knowledge of the real-existing, who knows the laws of the world and man.

“Behind all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is MIND or MIND [νοΰς, nous, spirit], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea, on which all other ideas are based; Monarch and Legislator of the universe; the one substance from which all things derive their origin and essence, the root cause of all order and harmony, beauty, excellence and virtue that permeate the entire universe - who is called for exaltation the Supreme Good, God (ò Θεòς) "God over all", (ò επι πασι Θεòς)" . (Disassembled Isis, vol. 1. XI).

God is neither reason nor truth, but "their father." Such a truth is comprehensible to those who wish to know it. Understanding that Plato's philosophy rests on a metaphysical foundation, from which myths are their main building material, Blavatsky believed Plato's words, which he said in the Gorgias and Phaedo, "that myths are vessels-carriers of great truths, very worthy to they were looking for." And it is difficult to establish in them where the doctrine ends and where the real myth begins. Plato in his work excluded the use of magic and other secret sciences, expelled all the demons that were so popular in his time. Instead, he built his reasonable theories and metaphysical constructions. And although they did not at all correspond to the inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle, nevertheless, they satisfied everyone who comprehends the essence of things with inner vision and intuition.

Building his doctrines on the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato teaches that the nous, spirit, or soul of man, being "begotten by the divine Father", has family ties with the deity and is able to see eternal truths. This ability to contemplate reality, directly and directly, belongs only to God. Such an understanding of the soul by the philosopher, according to Blavatsky, testifies to his wisdom and insight, and corresponds to the vocation of philosophy - the love of wisdom. “Love for truth is an innate love for goodness; and, dominating over all other desires of the soul, purifying it and introducing it to the divine, and directing every action of the individual, it raises the person to participation and communion with the divine and restores in him the likeness of God. (Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, ch. Before the veil).

Plato's Theaetetus says that the soul cannot incarnate in the form of a human unless it has seen the truth. These are her memories of what she saw before, when she hovered with the deity, passing by herself things that were insignificant for her, although close to people. She looked only at what exists forever. This was the reason why the nous or spirit of man took wings. He did his best to keep these things in his mind, the contemplation of which exalted even the deity itself. Faithfully using the memories of a former life, perfecting himself in the mysteries, a person becomes truly perfect - initiated into divine wisdom.

Blavatsky understands why the most exalted scenes in the mysteries always took place at night. The life of the inner spirit, according to Plato, is the death of the outer nature. And the night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual world. The mysteries symbolized the conditions for the preexistence of the spirit and soul, the fall of the latter into earthly life and Hades, the hardships of this life, the purification of the soul and its return to divine bliss, and reunion with the spirit.

Plato recognizes man as a toy of the element of necessity, says E.P., into which he enters, appearing in this world of matter. It is influenced by external causes and these causes daimonia, the same ones that Socrates spoke of. A happy person is physically clean and with a pure soul. If his outer soul (body) is pure, it will also strengthen the second (astral body) or the soul called by it. supreme mortal soul which, although subject to its errors, will always be on the side of the mind against the animal needs of the body. Lusts in a person arise due to his mortal material body. Also his illnesses. And a person sometimes considers his crimes, as if involuntary for they arise, like illnesses of the body, as a result of external causes.

Plato clearly distinguishes these causes, and the fatalism he recognizes does not rule out the possibility of avoiding them, even if pain, fear, anger and other feelings were given to people by need, "if they overcome them, they will live righteously, but if they are defeated by them, they will live unrighteously." . (Isis Unveiled, vol. 1 ch. 8).

“The dualistic man,” writes Blavatsky, “is one who has been abandoned by the divine immortal spirit, leaving only the animal form and the astral body (according to Plato, the highest mortal soul), leaving him in the power of instincts, since he was defeated by all the sins inherited from matter; from that moment on, he becomes an obedient tool in the hands of invisible- subtle entities that rush about in our atmosphere and are ready at any moment to inspire those who justly left them immortal adviser, divine spirit, called by Plato "genius". . (Ibid.).

In the Phaedrus, Plato says that when a man has finished his first life (on earth), some go to places of punishment underground. Kabbalists understand this region under the earth, not as a place inside our earth, but consider it a sphere much lower in perfection in comparison with the earth and much more material. . (R.I. vol. 1 ch. 9).

"Secret Doctrine" about the Human Soul

In the second volume of Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky writes that, according to Plato, there was a Supreme God, Agathon, who created in his mind the paradeigma of everything. He taught that in man there is an "immortal principle of the soul", a mortal body and a "separate mortal kind of soul", which was placed in a container separate from the body; the immortal part was in the head (Timaeus, XIX, XX), and the other half was in the body (XLIV).

Plato considered the inner man as consisting of two parts - one is always the same, formed from the same essence as the deity, and the other is mortal and perishable.

“Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “divided the soul into two parts - rational (poetic) and unreasonable (agnoia); and that part of the human soul that is reasonable is eternal; for, although it is not God, yet it is the product of the eternal deity, but that part of the soul that is devoid of reason ( agnoia) - dies". . (Disassembled Isis vol. 2, part 2, section 6).

In The Secret Doctrine Volume 2, Blavatsky again spoke of Plato and his understanding of the soul, but in the light of the mental progress of the Universe, which is divided during each Cycle into fruitful and fruitless periods.

In the sublunar regions, writes Blavatsky, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with Divine Nature. But parts of them, due to their too close proximity to the Earth and their confusion with the earthly, sometimes agree with (Divine) Nature, sometimes they oppose it. When these circulations - which Eliphas Levi calls "the currents of the Astral Light" - in the universal Ether, which contains all the elements, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, then our Earth and all belonging to it enjoy a fruitful period. The occult forces of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize or agree with the "higher natures," and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect harmony with these "lower" natures.

“But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magical sympathy, and the spiritual vision of the majority of mankind is so blinded that it loses all conception of the higher faculties of its Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of skepticism was so rampant, gave rise to incredulity, which it transmitted, like a hereditary disease, to the nineteenth century. The divine mind is obscured in man, and only his animal brain “philosophizes”. And being engaged in only philosophizing, how can he understand the “Doctrine of the Soul”? . (Secret Doctrine, vol. 2 h. 2 ot. 8).

A philosopher's remark about the (Human) Soul or ego when he defines it as "the composition of the same oneself and another”, Blavatsky considers true and deeply philosophical. Although he knows that this hint was misunderstood by his contemporaries, who believed that the Soul was the Exhalation of God, Jehovah. This understanding is false, she says. For the Ego - the “Higher Self”, when it is immersed, merged with the Divine Monad - is a Man and, at the same time, it remains "same and different"; The angel embodied in him is identical with the Universal Mahat. . (TD 2. part I. Comments, Identity of the Forces incarnate and their differences).

According to E.P., Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise than as the Supreme God. This name corresponded to their understanding of the Higher Spiritual Force or Divine Mind. Plato, being an Initiate, could not believe in a personal God - a gigantic shadow of man. And his epithets given to God - "Monarch" and "Legislator of the Universe" have an abstract meaning, understandable to every occultist who, like a Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the World. As Plato says: "Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws of ideas and principles, there is Mind or Mind (νοΰς) primary principle of all principles. The Highest Idea on which all other Ideas are based............. ultimate substance, from which everything that exists has its being and essence. The primary and efficient Cause of all order and harmony and beauty and perfection and goodness that fill the Universe. (TD. vol. 2. art. 4).

This Reason, by virtue of its superiority and perfection, is called the "Supreme Good", "God" ό θεός and "God the Most High". These words refer, as Plato himself points out, not to the "Creator", not to the "Father" of our modern monotheists, but to Ideal abstract reason. For, as he says: "This θεός," the Most High God, is not truth or reason, but the Father of it" and its Primal Cause."

As we can see, Blavatsky illuminates the problem of the Soul not from the point of view of Orthodoxy, but from the point of view of Theosophy and Spiritualism. In The Key to Theosophy, written two years before her death, Helena Blavatsky shed more light on the subject in the form of questions and answers. In the book, Blavatsky speaks under the name of Theosophist.

What does the human soul mean?

Blavatsky was asked about the septenary structure of man: Is it the same as the division of man into spirit, soul and body? Her answer was: “This is the ancient division of Plato. Plato was an initiate, and therefore could not go into forbidden details; but those familiar with the ancient doctrine will find the seven in the various Platonic combinations of soul and spirit. Plato believed that a person consists of two parts, one of which is eternal and formed from the same essence as Absoluteness, and the other is mortal and subject to destruction, having received its components from lesser, "created" gods. As he shows, man consists of 1) a mortal body; 2) the immortal principle; and 3) "a separate mortal species of the soul." This is what we call, respectively, the physical man, the spiritual soul or spirit, and the animal soul (νους and ψσυχε). This division was also accepted by the Apostle Paul, another initiate, who argued that there is a spiritual body sown in frailty (astral body or animal soul), and a spiritual body that rises in incorruptible substance. Even the Apostle James asserts the same thing when he says that the "wisdom" (of our lower soul) "is not wisdom descending from above, but earthly, spiritual, demonic" (III, 15) (see the Greek text), while the other there is "wisdom from above". (Key to Theosophy, VI).

Blavatsky explains what Plato teaches:

Plato, she answers, speaks of domestic man as consisting of two parts. One of them is unchanging and eternal, and consists of the same substances, which is the Deity. The other part is mortal, it is subject to destruction. Such a correspondence to the two parts is also found in the theosophical higher triad, and in the lower four, as shown in the table in the book Key to Theosophy. Plato explains that when the soul, or psyche, is in union with the nous (divine spirit or substance), it does everything correctly and intelligently. But everything turns out differently for her when she becomes attached to the anoia (reckless, or unreasonable animal soul). Then we see the manas (or the soul in general) in its two aspects: by becoming attached to the anoya (called in "Esoteric Buddhism" the kama-rupa or "animal soul"), it moves towards complete annihilation, as far as the personal ego is concerned. Connecting with the nous (atma-buddhi), it merges with the immortal, indestructible Self, and then the spiritual consciousness of the person who was, becomes immortal.. (Ibid.).

Plato believes that "The soul arose before the body, and the body - later and is secondary, in accordance with nature, led by the ruling soul." "The soul governs all that is in heaven, on earth and on the sea, by means of its own movements, the names of which are: desire, discretion, care, advice, right and wrong opinion, joy and suffering, courage and fear, love and hate. ... Herself, being a goddess, having also taken on the truly eternally divine mind (nous), she nurtures everything and leads to truth and bliss. Having met and converged with unreason (anoia), she leads everything in the opposite direction. " (Ibid.).

"Spencer's philosophy is written for savage tribes"

This article was published by Blavatsky in The Theosophist, No. 3, 1879. Its purpose was to explain to its readers the idea of ​​a human afterlife. This problem has covered all segments of the population of America, Europe, other countries and continents. Everyone wants to know if there is another life, does the soul die with the death of a person, or is it eternal?

E.P. writes that the greatest minds of mankind have pondered over this problem. Even primitive savages, not knowing any Deity, believed in the existence of spirits and idolized them. “If in Christian Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria and Greece, the Eastern Church prescribes on the day of “All Saints” laying rice and drink on the graves as a sacrifice, and in “pagan” India the same pacifying gifts in the form of rice are presented to the dead, then so is the poor savage New Caledonia sacrifices food to the skulls of people he once loved. (In search of the occult. M. Sfera, 1996).

According to Herbert Spencer, she says, the Soul is present both in the fully preserved body of the deceased, and in its separate parts. Hence the belief in relics. Such a statement of the philosopher, Blavatsky disputes. She, like most theosophists and Christians, does not believe in the dogma of priests: what is presented by priests in golden crabs as the relics of a saintly saint, believers do not perceive for their souls. Skull, arm or leg bones cannot have the soul of the deceased. People do not worship these parts, but only venerate these relics as something that once belonged to those who are considered holy. Touching these relics is considered a charitable deed, and they have a miraculous effect.

Therefore, Spencer's definition for Blavatsky is incorrect. In the same way, Professor Max Müller, in his "Introduction to the Science of Religion", proves by numerous examples that the human brain from the very beginning harbored "a vague hope of life after death." Such a message plays into the hands of Spencer. Without reporting anything new on this issue, he indulges in various nonsense. "He only points to the inherent uncivilized peoples ability to turn the forces of nature into gods and demons. He ends his lecture on the Ural-Altaic legends and the universality of belief in ghosts and spirits with the simple remark that "worship of the spirits of the dead is, possibly, the most common form superstition worldwide . (Ibid.).

Thus, Blavatsky writes, wherever we turn for a philosophical solution to this mystery, either to theologians who themselves believe in miracles and teach the supernatural, or to the schools of modern thought - opponents of everything supernatural in nature, or to the philosophy of extreme positivism, we have not received a satisfactory answer from anyone. E.P. believes that Spencer's philosophy was written for savage tribes who do not understand anything either in philosophy or in religion or science. Spencer is unable to resolve the contradictions in science and religion. “Today we are dealing with the convictions of twenty million modern spiritualists,” she writes, “of our brethren, living in the blinding splendor of the enlightened nineteenth century. These people do not neglect any of the discoveries of modern science; moreover, many of them are themselves among the eminent scientists who made these discoveries. On the other hand, are they less subject to the same "form of superstition", if we consider it superstition, than primitive man? At least their interpretations of physical phenomena - whenever they were accompanied by accidents that led them to believe that the physical force moves the mind - are often exactly the same as those that arose in the imagination of ancient, pre-civilized times. (Ibid.).

Blavatsky read from Herbert Spencer that the savage and the child think of the shadow of a man as his soul. And that the Greenlanders believe that a person's shadow is "one of his two souls, the one that leaves the body at night." The inhabitants of the island of Fiji call the shadow "a dark spirit, different from the other, which every person possesses." All this convincingly shows, she says, that however incorrect and contradictory the conclusions may be, nevertheless the premises on which they are based are not fiction. The object must exist before the human mind can think about it. She also obtained interesting information from Professor Muller. Depicting the development of the idea of ​​the soul, and showing how mythology penetrates into the realm of religion, he says that when man first wanted to put into words the difference between the body and what is inside it, he called it breath. First, it meant a vital principle, different from the body itself, and then the ethereal, immortal part of a person - his soul, his mind, his "I". When a person dies, we also say that he gave his soul to God, but the soul originally meant the spirit, and the spirit meant the breath.

In one of her many works by Andrew Jackson Davias, once considered the greatest American clairvoyant and known as the "Poughkeepsie Seer," Blavatsky found an excellent illustration of the faith of the Nicaraguan Indians. His book Death and Life after Death contained an engraved frontispiece showing an old woman on her deathbed. The illustration was called "The Formation of the Spiritual Body." From the head of the deceased rose a luminous outline - her own transfigured form.

Some Hindus believe, writes Blavatsky, that the spirit sits on the ledge of the house in which it parted from the body for ten days. Since he can bathe and drink, the Hindus make two bowls from plantain leaves and put them on the ledge. One of them is filled with milk and the other with water. "It is believed that on the first day the deceased receives the head; on the second day - ears, eyes and nose; on the third - arms, chest and neck; on the fourth - the middle parts of the body; on the fifth - legs and feet; on the sixth - vital organs On the seventh, bones, marrow, veins, and arteries; on the eighth, nails, hair, and teeth; on the ninth, all the missing limbs, organs, and physical strength; on the tenth day, the new body is tormented by hunger and thirst. (Ibid.).

The ancients and idolaters, Egyptians and Peruvians, writes Blavatsky, not only thought that the spirit or soul of the deceased lives in the mummy, but the corpse itself is conscious. A similar belief is common in our time among Orthodox Christians of the Greek and Roman churches. It will not be true to reproach the Egyptians for putting their embalmed dead on the table, and the pagan Peruvians for carrying the corpse of their parent through the fields so that he can see and evaluate the state of the crop.

Blavatsky gives an example from the life of Mexican Christians. Under the guidance of a priest, she writes, they dress the dead in magnificent outfits and decorate them with flowers, and if the deceased is a woman, they even blush her cheeks. Then the body is seated on a chair standing on a large table, from where the terrible dead presides, as it were, over the mourners who sit around the table, who eat and drink all night, play cards and dice, asking the dead man about his chances.

And another example from Russia. “In Russia, there is a custom to put on the forehead of the deceased a long strip of gilded and ornamented paper, called a Venchik (crown, crown), on which a prayer is inscribed in bright letters. This prayer is something like a letter of recommendation with which the parish priest sends the deceased to his patron saint, placing the deceased under his protection. (Parting words to the immortals).

And Catholic Basques write letters to their deceased friends and relatives, addressing them to heaven, purgatory and hell. The name of the deceased is indicated on the envelope and, having put them in the coffin of the deceased, they ask him to deliver letters to the afterlife, promising the messenger, as a reward, to order masses for the repose of his soul.

Together with the apostle Paul, Blavatsky exclaims; "Oh death, where is your sting? Oh hell, where is your victory!" And he says that the belief in the afterlife of the ancestors is the most ancient and most time-honored of all beliefs.

Among educated people, Blavatsky believes, only modern spiritualists strive for constant communication with the dead. She cites some nations as an example. Hindus, for example, believe that the pure spirit of a person who has died reconciled to his own fate will never return in the flesh to annoy mortals. They believe that only bhutas - souls who have left their lives unsatisfied, who have not satisfied their earthly desires, these are vicious men and women - become "tied to the earth." Unable to ascend to moksha, they are forced to remain in the earthly spheres either until their next incarnation or until their complete annihilation. Thus, they use every opportunity to persecute people, especially weak women.

However, the return or appearance of these spirits is considered so undesirable that the Hindus use every possible and impossible method to prevent it. Even when it comes to the most sacred feeling - the love of a mother for a child, they do everything to prevent this. There is a widespread belief among some that a woman who dies in childbirth will definitely return to protect her child. Therefore, returning home from the ghat, after putting the body on fire, all participants in the funeral thickly sprinkle mustard seeds on the road from the funeral pyre to the house of the deceased.

Summing up her article, Blavatsky asks: how could the belief in an afterlife be so ingrained in each of us, and over the centuries, if it is only a vague and unrealistic concept of intelligence that arose in primitive man? Of all the scientists she knew, the only correct answer to everything came from Professor Max Müller. In his work - "Introduction to the Science of Religion", he did not spare anyone, even their faith, calling it a great superstition. With one blow, he cut the Gordian knot that Herbert Spencer and his school had tied so tightly under the chariot of the Unknowable. He showed that "there is a philosophical discipline which investigates the conditions of sensualistic or intuitive knowledge" as well as "another philosophical discipline which investigates the conditions of rational or conceptual knowledge", and then defines the third faculty: to comprehend the Infinite not only in religion, but in all things. Neither feeling nor reason is able to overcome this force, while it is capable of defeating both reason and feeling.

Soul and Spirit of Apollonius of Tyana

In fact, Blavatsky has more than a dozen articles that deal with the problem of the soul, spirit and body of man. And all of them are aimed at one thing: to enlighten a person in matters of life and death, to inform about Karma and reincarnation, about the immortality of the soul, about the Spirit and another side of his life. You can talk about these articles ad infinitum. We decided to dwell on one more of them - this is "The Magical Evocation of the Spirit of Apollonius of Tyana", in which Blavatsky came close to the problem of the soul and spirit and told about all the secrets of the spiritualists. Including about the astral light, in which images of people and objects are stored. Blavatsky reveals the so-called sacraments of necromancy, which are just as real, as contested. This topic is very close to Kabbalists and necromancers, who are able to call the souls of dead people. Her article was based on the testimony of two people: Isaac ben Solomon Loria, and Eliphas Levi Zahed, a Jewish Kabbalist, a specialist in secret knowledge, who called and saw the soul of the deceased Apollonius of Tyana. The named persons call their sessions "visions", "intuitive insights" and "glory light".

First, Blavatsky considers the Jewish book "On the Cycle of Souls", from which it is clear that souls are of three kinds: the daughters of Adam, the daughters of angels and the daughters of sin. There are also three kinds of spirits: these are spirits enslaved, wandering and free. Souls are usually sent in pairs. There are also the souls of men who are born bachelors, and their couples are held captive by Lilith and Naemah, queens of strigs, (undeveloped elemental spirits) These are the souls who must atone for their recklessness with a vow of celibacy. For example, when a man from childhood refuses the love of a woman, then the spouse destined for him becomes a slave to the demons of lust. Souls grow and multiply in heaven just as bodies do on earth. Sinless souls are the offspring of the union of angels. The author says that only what descended from heaven can ascend to heaven. Therefore, after death, only the divine spirit that revived man returns to heaven, leaving two corpses on earth and in the atmosphere. One is earthly and elemental; the other is airy and stellar; one - already lifeless, the other - still animated by the universal movement of the soul of the world (astral light), doomed to die gradually and be absorbed by the astral forces that produced it. The earthly corpse is visible to everyone. Another dead man - invisible to anyone. It can be seen only with the help of astral or translucent light, which transmits its images to the nervous system. Then the signal is given to the eyes, allowing us to see the images and read the words preserved and imprinted in the book of living life.

“If a person has lived well, his astral corpse or spirit evaporates like pure incense, ascending to higher regions; but if he committed atrocities, the astral body, holding him captive, again seeks the objects of passions and longs to resume his life. It torments young girls in their sleep, bathes in the vapors of spilled blood, circles around the places where the pleasures of its life flowed; guards the treasures he has buried, exhausts himself with fruitless attempts to create material organs for himself and live forever. But the stars draw him in and absorb him; he feels how his mind is weakening, how his memory is fading away, how his whole being dissolves ... his vices appear to him and pursue him in the form of monsters; they pounce on him and devour him ... The unfortunate one loses, one after another, all his limbs, which served to satisfy vicious appetites; then he dies a second time - and already forever, because now he loses his individuality and memory. Souls called to live, but not yet completely purified, remain for some time in captivity at the astral body, in which they are purified by the odic light, which seeks to assimilate them in itself and dissolve them. And so, in order to get rid of this body, suffering souls sometimes enter the bodies of living people and are kept there, in a state that Kabbalists call embryonic» . (Another side of life. M. Sfera, 2005).

These are the air phantoms that are called during necromancy. Blavatsky calls them dead or dying entities with whom mediums come into contact during evocations. They can only speak to us through the ringing in our ears produced by the nervous trembling. They reflect our own thoughts or dreams.

But in order to see these strange forms, the author of the book suggests that we put ourselves in a special state that borders on sleep or death. One must magnetize oneself in such a way as to achieve some degree of clear and awake somnambulism. Then necromancy achieves real results, and magical evocations are able to show real ghosts.

In the magical medium, which is the astral light, according to the author of the book "On the Cycle of Souls", all imprints of things, all images created either by their radiations or reflections, are preserved. It is in this light that dreams appear to us. It is this light that intoxicates the nervously ill and causes their feeble minds to display the most fantastic chimeras. In order to get rid of illusions in this light, it is necessary to discard the reflections with a powerful effort of will and attract only the rays to oneself. To daydream means to see in the astral light the orgies of the coven of witches, which the sorcerers told about during the trials. The preparation itself and the supplies needed to achieve the result were terrible, but the visions were real. People saw, heard and touched the most disgusting, fantastic, simply incredible figures.

“In the spring of 1854,” writes another author, Eliphas Levi, “I went to London to avoid some family troubles and devote myself entirely to science. I had letters of recommendation to famous people who were interested in supernatural phenomena. When I met with some, I found in them a lot of courtesy and just as much indifference and frivolity. They immediately demanded miracles from me, like a charlatan. I was a little discouraged, because, in truth, having nothing against initiating others into the secrets of ceremonial magic, I myself was always afraid of illusions and overwork; in addition, these ceremonies require very expensive supplies that are difficult to find.

So, I plunged into the study of the higher Kabbalah and completely stopped thinking about the English adepts, when one day, entering my room, I found a letter addressed to my name. In the envelope were: half of the card, on which I immediately recognized the mark of the seal of Solomon, and a small piece of paper on which was written in pencil: "Tomorrow, at three o'clock, near Westminster Abbey, you will be shown the other half of this card." I went on this strange date. The carriage was at the appointed place. I held my half of the card in my hand with visible indifference; a servant approached and, opening the carriage door, gave me a sign. In the carriage was a lady dressed in black; her hat was covered with a thick veil; she gestured for me to sit down beside her, at the same time showing the other half of the card I had received. The footman closed the door, the carriage moved off; the lady lifted her veil, and I saw a person with extremely lively and penetrating eyes. “Sir,” she said to me in a thick English accent, “I know that the law of secrecy is strictly observed by adepts; Sir Bulwer-Lytton's friend, who has seen you, knows that experiments were demanded of you, but you refused to satisfy this curiosity. Perhaps you do not have the necessary items: I will show you a complete magical study; but I demand from you in advance the strictest observance of secrecy. If you do not give me such a promise, then I will order the coachman to take you home.

I made the promise required of me and do not mention the name, rank, or place of residence of this lady, who, as I later learned, was an initiate, although not the first, but still of a very high degree. We had long conversations several times, and she kept insisting on the need for practical experiments in order to complete the initiation. She showed me a collection of magical robes and tools, even lent me a few curious books I needed - in short, she decided to try to perform an experiment in summoning the spirit, for which I had been preparing for twenty-one days, conscientiously performing all the rites indicated in the thirteenth chapter " Ritual."

"I am recounting this event as it happened"

“Everything was ready by July 24; our goal was to call the ghost of the divine Apollonius and ask him about two secrets - one concerned me, the other interested this lady. She originally intended to participate in the evocation along with her close friend; but at the last moment her courage let her down, and since magical rituals necessarily require the presence of three or one, I was left alone. The office prepared for the evocation was set up in a small tower; it contained four concave mirrors and a kind of altar, the upper part of which, of white marble, was surrounded by a chain of magnetized iron. The sign of the pentagram was carved and gilded on white marble; the same sign was painted with various colors on a fresh white sheepskin lying under the altar. In the middle of the marble table stood a small brass brazier with coals of elm and laurel; another brazier stood in front of me on a tripod.

I was dressed in a white dress, similar to the attire of our Catholic priests, but more spacious and longer; on my head lay a wreath of vervain leaves woven into a golden chain. In one hand I held a drawn sword, in the other the Ritual. With the help of the necessary substances prepared in advance, I lit two fires and began - at first quietly, then gradually raising my voice - to pronounce the evocations of the Ritual. The smoke spread, the flames flared up, causing the objects it illuminated to dance, and then went out. White smoke slowly rose from the marble altar; it seemed to me that I felt a slight shock of an earthquake; ringing in the ears; heart was beating hard. I threw a few branches and fragrances into the braziers and, when the fire flared up, I clearly distinguished a human figure in front of the altar - more than natural size - which began to dissolve, and then completely disappeared. I again began to pronounce evocations and stood in a circle, previously drawn between the altar and the tripod; then I saw that the disk of the mirror facing me, which stood behind the altar, gradually began to be illuminated, and a whitish figure was outlined in it, gradually increasing in size and, it seemed, gradually approaching.

Closing my eyes, I called Apollonius thrice, and when I opened them, a man stood before me, completely wrapped in something like a shroud, which seemed to me more gray than white; his face was thin, sad and beardless, which did not at all correspond to my idea of ​​Apollonius. I felt extremely cold, and when I opened my mouth to question the ghost, I couldn't make a sound. Then I put my hand on the sign of the pentagram and pointed the point of the sword at him, mentally ordering me not to frighten me and obey. Suddenly the image became less clear and suddenly disappeared. I ordered him to return, after which I felt something like a breath near me, something touched my hand, which held the sword, and immediately the whole hand went numb. It seemed to me that the sword offended the spirit, and I stuck it in the circle beside me. Immediately the human figure reappeared; but I felt such weakness in all my limbs, such exhaustion, that after taking a couple of steps, I sat down. Once in the chair, I instantly fell into a deep slumber, accompanied by visions, of which, when I came to myself, only a vague memory remained.

For several days my arm remained numb and sore. The ghost did not speak to me, but it seemed to me that the questions that I was going to ask him, resolved themselves in my head. To the lady’s question, my inner voice answered: “He died!” (it was about the person she wanted to hear about). As for myself, I wanted to know whether a reconciliation of the two persons I was thinking of was possible; and the same inner echo ruthlessly answered: “Dead!”

I am recounting this event exactly as it happened, without forcing anyone to believe in it. This experiment had an absolutely inexplicable effect on me. I was no longer the same...

I repeated the experiment twice within a few days. As a result of subsequent evocations, two Kabbalistic secrets were revealed to me, which, if they became known to everyone, could change the foundations and laws of the whole society in the shortest possible time.

I will not explain by what physiological laws I saw and touched; I only affirm that I really saw and felt, that I saw quite clearly and clearly, in reality - and this is enough to prove the effectiveness of magical ceremonies ...

Before I close this chapter, I must mention the curious belief of some Kabbalists who distinguish between apparent death and real death and think that they rarely coincide. In their opinion, most people are buried alive - and, conversely, many who we think are alive are actually dead. So, incurable insanity, in their opinion - incomplete, but real a death in which the earthly body, quite instinctively, is ruled by the astral or stellar body. When the human soul experiences the strongest shock, not being able to overcome it, it separates from the body and leaves instead the animal soul, or, in other words, the astral body, which makes such finished people something that is in some way even less alive than an animal. . Such dead men can be easily recognized by their lack of heart and morality, for they have completely died out; they are neither bad nor good - they are dead. These creatures - poisonous mushrooms of the human race - absorb as much as they can, the life forces of the living - that's why their approach paralyzes the soul and freezes the heart. Such dead-like creatures are in every way like vampires, those terrible creatures that are said to rise at night and suck the blood from the healthy bodies of sleeping people. Indeed, aren't there people around whom we feel less intelligent, less kind, and often even less honest? Do not their approach kill faith and enthusiasm, do they not bind you to themselves by your own weaknesses, do they not enslave you to your own bad inclinations and force you to slowly, in constant torment, morally die? These are the dead we take for the living; these are the vampires we regard as friends!” .(Magical evocation of the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana).

Helena Blavatsky Explains...

In our time, writes Blavatsky, so little is known about ancient magic, its meaning, history, possibilities, its results and adepts, that it cannot leave without explanation all of the above. The ceremonies, with all their paraphernalia, described in such detail by Levi, are in fact designed for dupes and incompetent people. Levi, as an experienced occultist and unsurpassed spiritualist, driven by the desire for fame, of course, exaggerates the significance of minor details, and speaks only in passing about the most important thing. In fact, Eastern Kabbalists do not need any preparations, no costumes, no devices, no diadems, no weapons: all these are attributes of the Jewish Kabbalah, which has the same relation to its humble Chaldean prototype, what the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church have to humble rites. Christ and his apostles. In the hands of a true adept of the East, a simple bamboo wand with seven knots, says Blavatsky, supplemented with unspeakable wisdom and iron willpower, is capable of summoning spirits and performing miracles, confirmed by numerous witnesses. On the session, described by Levy, at the reappearance of the ghost, the brave researcher saw and heard something about which he is completely silent in his report on the first experiment, and which is only hinted at in his story. E.P. knows this from people whose veracity she does not doubt.

Touching on the subject of reincarnation, Blavatsky confesses that she is often asked: how can she prove that a person really lives many lives, and that there is such a thing as reincarnation at all? Her answer is: “1) the testimonies of soothsayers, sages and prophets throughout the endless series of human cycles; 2) a mass of conclusions that would seem convincing enough even to the layman. Of course, the evidence of this category cannot be called absolutely reliable, although many people were sent to the gallows on the basis of inferences. As Locke says: "To draw logical conclusions means to conditionally recognize some assumption as true and, on its basis, declare another assumption to be true." Therefore, everything depends on the nature and persuasiveness of the first assumption. Fatalists, for example, can offer their doctrine of Predestination as an initial truth - a creed dear to their hearts, according to which each person is prepared in advance by the will of our "Merciful Heavenly Father" either to writhe in hellfire or play the "golden harp", becoming an incorporeal feathered principle ".. (Karma, or the law of causes and effects).

What is the human soul like?

The doctrine of the soul is also discussed in detail in the book "Orthodox Anthropology" by priest Andrei Lorgus. It is an irrefutable fact of the creation and immortality of the soul. The Teaching covers psychological, bodily-physiological and mystical reality. This fact is not only endowed with a soul, but has itself become a "living soul", transferring its essence from ontology to the realm of existence. The Bible has several meanings for the concept of the soul. The soul in it is understood as human life and is the antipode of death.

To be alive means to have a soul and to be a soul. And vice versa, to "give" the soul, to "lose" the soul, means to die.

Gen.19:17: ...save your soul, -says the Lord to righteous Lot, lest you perish; Gen.35:18: ...the soul went out of her, for she was dying; Tov.14:11: ... his soul left him on the bed; ...and the son buried him with honor; Job 9:21: ...I do not want to know my soul, I despise my life. In the Bible, we often see variations on the theme of death in terms of the separation of the soul from the body:

Job.33:22: And his soul draws near to the grave, and his life to death; Job. 33:28: He delivered my soul from the grave, and my life sees the light. And we see that the soul, as it were, "dies", it approaches death, to its grave. But this does not mean at all that we are talking about the complete death of the soul. Approaching death does not deny the immortality of the soul. There are many allegories and parables in the Bible. But what is important in understanding the term "soul" is that it mainly includes the earthly existence of a person. Therefore, when "soul" is said, it means "to live", "to be alive". Here are some examples: Ps.21:21: ... Deliver my soul from the sword; 30:14: ... they plan to pluck out my soul; 62:10: ...seek the destruction of my soul. We meet the same meaning in the New Testament: Mt.2:20: ...those who sought the soul of the Child died;

Luke 12:20: ... this very night your soul will be taken from you; Acts 15:26: Men who gave up their souls for the name of the Lord.

In the Bible, the understanding of the concept of the Soul is very different. Sometimes the person himself is said to be a soul. Most often, this meaning is conveyed in quantitative terms: Gen.46:15: All the souls of his sons and his daughters are thirty-three; Num.31:28: ... one soul out of five hundred; Deuteronomy 10:22: With seventy [five] souls your fathers came into Egypt; Numbers 31:28: ...take tribute to the Lord, one soul out of five hundred" (i.e. out of five hundred souls).

This meaning of the soul is understood by the majority of Orthodox nations. In particular, in Russia, serfs and soldiers were considered souls. Even Chichikov bought "dead souls", not people. Yes, and among the people such expressions have become a habit: "Five souls fell into my house."

It is not difficult to see that the word soul, in a purely existential sense, occurs most often when it comes to the death of a person, when the soul must leave its mortal body.

As a separate entity, the soul is known through death. This is our experience in this matter. Where life is in full swing, where everything is good, and the human person is satisfied with his life, there the soul permeates the whole being of human nature. It is impossible to separate it from the body, to imagine it separately. And only when a person has died, when he is no longer in this world, then a terrible picture appears before us: a lifeless body and an anxious, restless soul that has left it. Gen.35:18: And when her soul went out, for she was dying; Deuteronomy 4:15: Hold fast in your souls that you did not see any image that day; Deut.10:12: ...with all your heart and with all your soul; Ps.6:4: ... my soul is greatly shaken. The author of "Orthodox Anthropology" distinguishes the entire sphere of the human soul and his very soul, as an ontological entity, created and immortal. And, indeed, we see that the soul is sometimes associated with the breath of a person, which is related to his soul. Gen.2:7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. In this case, the word "breathed" is associated with the word "created". He did not create with his hands, but “breathed”, “created”, gave him the “breath of life” and man became a “living soul”.

The Bible contains expressions such as "The Soul of the Lord", "The Soul of Christ" and "My Soul".

Biblical commentators attribute these meanings to metaphorical anthropocentrisms that describe the actions of God and interpret human actions. The metaphors "the soul of the Lord", "My soul" are understood as an expression of the relationship between the Lord and man, as an evaluative attitude towards man. Isaiah 1:14: ...my soul hates your feasts; 6:8 Take heed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from you.

“In the Bible, Christ is a perfect man and a perfect God. According to the Chalcedonian dogma, He has a human soul, that is, a created essence. Therefore, where we are talking about the soul of the God-man, Christ, the soul is always concrete, real and has nothing to do with myths. It is a concrete anthropological concept. It has the same meanings as "human soul". (Ibid.).

If we want to define the concept of the soul, according to the Bible, then it will stretch in breadth and depth. And the soul will begin to be understood by us as a complex kingdom, as "the city of the inner man" and as a created essence. Sometimes it acts as a substance with all its properties; like breathing, as a complex unity of abilities, forces and parts.

The soul, says the Bible, is a created entity, in contrast to the body. It is "breathed" by the breath of the Creator and its essence is different from everything else. In all of Creation, we will not find another entity like the soul. Therefore, it is unique and unrepeatable. " The soul is not a body and not a property ... it is an incorporeal essence "(Nemesius of Emesa); "The soul is in itself a completely non-material substance" (Origen; "The soul ... has life not only as energy, but also as an essence, for it lives on its own" (Gregory Palamas); "The soul is a created entity, a living, rational entity" (Gregory of Nyssa).

In definitions of the essence of the soul, its non-materiality is often affirmed. This is emphasized by all the ancient chroniclers. The essence of the soul, says priest Andrei Lorgus, means the affirmation of several categories of human existence - the soul lives independently, i.e. can live independently of the body, the soul is of a different origin than the body, the soul is immortal by creation. The soul is understood as movable, the breath of life, the essence of God and other definitions. Church historians write about it in different ways: "The soul is God's breath" (St. Gregory the Theologian); "The soul is the breath of God" (Tertullian); "The soul itself is not a certain part of the essence of God; but that inspiration denotes its nature, since the rational soul is the spirit" (Blessed Theodoret of Kirr); "The soul is a STREAM of the infinite light of the Divine..." (Grigory Palamas).

Thus, comparing the soul with breath reveals its origin, "breathing", its spiritual essence, easily mobile and fluid.

What do the properties of the essence of the soul mean, and what are they? Priest Andrey Logrus refers to them non-materiality, immateriality, immortality, or indestructibility, rationality and literature. The Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa finds in the soul many god-like properties: “In our soul we can see: the trinity of Hypostases, the unity of nature, simultaneity, inseparability, impregnability, unchosenness, incontemplation, unbornness, birth, procession, creativity, industry, judgment, inviolability, incorporeality , incorruptibility, indestructibility, immortality, eternity, inexplicability, magnificence". In another place, the same theologian speaks of the properties of the essence of the soul in a completely different way: "The spiritual and immortal essence of your soul, unnamed and unknown..."

And Theodoret of Kirr calls the soul of man - immortal: " We say that the soul is simple, intelligent and immortal"(Theodoret of Kirr). Thus, the essence of the soul is original, immortal, rational, spiritual and not material. Non-materiality, as we know, is close in its meaning to the most complex problem of the corporality of the soul. Although on this issue - the immateriality of the soul, its corporality and incorporeality, there are endless discussions. This question is further complicated by the fact that there are a lot of different concepts about it. In addition to corporeality and incorporeality, incorporeality, immateriality, image and form are also used. Let's demonstrate this with specific examples.

About incorporeality: "Souls, in comparison with mortal bodies, are incorporeal" (Irenaeus of Lyons); "All souls and all intelligent natures ... are by nature incorporeal" (Origen); "... The soul, as something immaterial and incorporeal ..." (Gregory of Nyssa

Soul image: "The souls themselves have the image of the body" (Irenaeus of Lyons); "... The eyes... of the enlightened see the image of the soul, but few Christians contemplate it" (Macarius of Egypt); "... Does the soul have a form [var.: appearance]? Has a form [appearance] and an image similar to that of an angel" (He); "... Souls ... have the image of a person, so they can be recognizable" (Irenaeus of Lyons)

One can consider the image or form of the soul as a kind of "subtle" or "intelligent" body of the soul. "Body" - in the sense of some "shape", "portrait". Indeed, two questions arise in connection with image or form. First, does the soul have a place of residence, and is that place limited? Secondly, if the soul has an image, then whose image is the image of God or the image of man, i.e. individual nature?

Where does the soul reside?

In the Old Testament, the word Soul occurs 471 times: 20 times as a person, 17 times as a Spirit, 15 times as a Mind, and the same number of times as a heart. The New Testament speaks of the Soul 58 times. And about the Spirit - 280 times. There is no consensus on where the Soul resides in the books of either the Old or the New Testament. Most scientists and thinkers believe that it resides throughout the body. Psychologists are trying to prove that our soul is a network that entangles the entire human nervous system, from the brain to the spinal cord and beyond. Everything important is located in certain (mostly subcortical) parts of the brain. Through the nerve pathways of the spinal cord, the soul emotionally responds throughout the body, in its various parts and organs, including the heart - it is it that aches when it’s bad, and rejoices when something turns out and when it’s good. Christian thinkers have their own opinion on this matter. But even among them there is no unity, as such. Here is the opinion of Tertullian and other religious historians: "The soul has an invisible body, has its own appearance, border" (Tertullian);; "The angel and the soul, being incorporeal, do not occupy a place, but are not omnipresent either ... therefore, they are in the containing and embracing everything, being accordingly limited" (Gregory Palamas); "The soul is connected with the body at certain points, but it penetrates the whole body, has its form, and therefore is called the subtle body in ancient church anthropology" (Ignatius Brianchaninov).

Defining the concept and meaning of the Soul, we deliberately show a different point of view on such a burning problem, and it is purely Christian.

In the 19th century, a dispute arose in Russian theology between Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov and Bishop Theophan the Recluse about understanding the soul. Theophan the Recluse in his work “Soul and Angel” criticized Ignatius Brianchaninov’s book “Word about Death”, which contains the following words: “Bishop Ignatius wanted to prove that the soul really suffers torment for sins after death. But for this he had to prove that these torments are real, sensual. And if the soul is completely immaterial and incorporeal, then how does it feel these torments? And the saint unfolds before the reader a detailed argument from the arguments of reason and the testimonies of the fathers and the lives of the saints that the soul has its own subtle, but material body. According to the consciousness of that time, he called it "the ethereal body".

In response, Theophan the Recluse, no less reasoned, but relying more on Orthodox theology, argued the opposite: "Angels are invisible, incorporeal spirits that make up the intelligent world ... Souls are also spiritual and rational beings, invisible and immaterial ... Materiality is resolutely denied in the nature of souls and angels".

As you can see, in Christianity this complex issue has remained unresolved, and it has not been resolved to this day. We are not entirely sure that it will be solved in subsequent generations, although, as always, there are exceptions. Nevertheless, let us continue our story about the image of the soul. The soul, according to Irenaeus of Lyons, Macarius the Great and other church thinkers, has the image of a body, or the image of a person. But there are other points of view: "Our invisible soul, created in His image..." (Anastasius of Sinai); "In our soul we can see: the trinity of Hypostases, the unity of nature, simultaneity, inseparability<...>and many more properties, as we have seen before, which indicate not at all the body, but the image of God" (Gregory of Nyssa); This means that the image of the soul cannot be understood unambiguously. In creation, the soul receives the image of God, the likeness of heaven, heavenly angels, and other images, but in the process of life, its features acquire the image of a living person. This image is constantly changing, due to the very life of a person: he gravitates towards either good or evil.

To summarize what has been said about the corporality and essence of the soul, it should be noted that, despite the ambiguity of this concept, there is something in common between them that unites them and gives hope that this problem will be solved in the future.

Origin of the soul

In the vast subject of the soul, says Lorgus, two questions must be distinguished. The first is the doctrine of the origin of the souls of the first people - Adam and Eve. The second is about the origin of all human souls, regardless of race and skin color, in a word, all the descendants of Adam. The book of Genesis, which is considered the main revelation about the creation of man, says: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2-7). We draw the attention of readers to the fact that the soul of a person and his body are created differently. The body is “from the dust of the earth”, and the soul is from the breath of God. In this difference, the holy fathers saw a distinctive feature of the human soul, its divine originality.

"God breathed into man's face the breath of life, and man became a living soul, and the breath of life was incorporeal" (St. Irenaeus of Lyons); "Don't you find it absurd that you, people who have become God's creation and received a soul from Him ... are slaves to another master?" (Clement of Alexandria); "Moses says that the body was created from the earth ... but the rational soul was blown into the face from God"(He) As you can see, the following of the holy fathers of the Book of Genesis, almost verbatim. But here two questions arise: are the soul and body created simultaneously, and if not, what is the meaning in this - hierarchical or some other? St. John Chrysostom believed that the soul was "breathed in" later:

"... In ... the formation of a person, the body first appears, then the soul, which is more precious ... "

And Theodoret of Kirr considered them to be a simultaneous creation: "The soul is created together with the body..."

Isaac Sirin expressed the same idea: "It is impossible for the soul to come into being and be born without the perfect formation of the body with its members"; and Gregory of Nyssa: "... It is wrong to think that the soul originated before the body, or that the body was created without a soul."

According to the tradition of ancient philosophy, the soul was understood as a quality and as an essence. If we decipher these concepts, then we can assume that as an entity, the soul was created earlier and enters the body later, and as the life of the body appears with it. Therefore, the concepts of "later", "together" or "before" in the Holy Fathers have a hierarchical meaning.

The hierarchy of human structure, writes A. Lorgus, can be traced in both biblical and patristic anthropology. The superiority of the soul is not just essential, but also functional, it includes such qualities as the owner has in relation to his property, the master has to the slave.

As for Adam, all anthropology is unambiguous in that his soul was created by God. The Bible does not say anything about the soul of Eve, but the entire patristic tradition relates her soul to the same creative act of the Lord as that of Adam.

The origin of the souls of ordinary people

Quite different is the situation with the solution of the question of the origin of the souls of ordinary people. It contains a lot of unclear points. There are three hypotheses for the origin of souls in the Bible. The first is the pre-existence of souls, the second is their creation by God, and the third is their birth from the souls of their parents.

To resolve the issue of the origin of human souls, neither biblical science nor the science of the 21st century has sufficient knowledge. The question remains open to new generations. Some guesses, assumptions, fortune-telling on the coffee grounds. Neither we nor Lorgus have any desire to waste time on empty hypotheses.

We now turn to the key issue of the books of the Old and New Testaments - the antecedence of souls and their life after the death of a person. Let us inform you that the problem of the pre-existence of souls is directly related to the Alexandrian scientist Origen, who proved in his books that the soul finds a place for itself in other generations. For such audacity, his teaching was rejected by Orthodox anthropology and the Church, as hostile and planting heretical thoughts on Christians. For his bold statements and independence of thought, Orthodox clergy were afraid of him more than a fierce beast. It turns out that they were not afraid in vain, because his teaching is inextricably linked with Eastern wisdom, with theosophy and religious systems of the East. Origen did not himself bring out the doctrine of the preexistence of souls. The Greek philosophy of Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and their followers asserted that souls exist before bodies, and that their countless multitude is enclosed in some unknown place, from which they are sent to different bodies. Gnostics, Carpocrates, Caians, Antitants and Eutychites, as well as Pradik, Epiphanes and other thinkers joined this doctrine with great joy. But the main authority for such a teaching was Origen himself:

"Before [the beginning] of time, all were pure minds - both demons, and souls, and angels. There were souls who sinned not so much as to become demons, but, moreover, not so insignificantly as to become angels. So, created [God] who is world, and united the soul with the body for punishment ... It is clear that everyone is punished according to how he sinned: the demon did one thing, the soul - another, the angel - the third. ], then why, then, among newborns there are blind people, although they did not sin, while others were born without any flaw? the body is "body" (demas), that the soul is attached to the body. There is one interesting feature in this paragraph. This is "... All were pure minds - and demons, and souls, and angels." Everything is accurate and according to Orthodox scripture. Christian historians liked it. Isaac the Syrian, who mastered the writings of Origen well, wrote: "Souls ... see these three ranks, i.e. the lower rank of them [demons], the higher rank of them [angels] and each other." The saint clearly saw "three ranks" in a homogeneous being. "Angels are invisible, incorporeal spirits that make up the intelligent world ... Souls are also spiritual and rational beings, invisible and immaterial." The kinship of souls, angels and demons, became not only for Origen, but also for the holy Christian ascetics, an ontological affirmation of the human soul. But the essence of Origen's teaching was different. This is the existence of the soul of man, the fall of his soul before its incorporation into the body. This is where the break happened.

“In a kind of state, a certain tribe of souls lives, living according to the [laws] of bodily life in a subtle and movable [quality] of its nature when communicating with everything around. Signs of [recognition] of evil and good are established there. And the soul that resides in souls that, due to some inclination to evil, lose [their] plumage, find themselves in bodies: first in human, [but] then, due to so much communication with dumb animals of passions, they become dead. . and further fall down to the most natural and insensible life ".

And further: “If the human soul, which, being human, of course, is lower than [angelic souls], does not appear to be created together with the body, but is embedded [into the body] in a special way and from the outside, then this applies even more to animated creatures called heavenly. As for human beings, how can one count the soul of his brother, who was still in his mother's womb, i.e., Jacob, simultaneously with the body, or how the soul of the one who was filled with the Holy Spirit while still in the mother's womb was created along with the body. How was the soul created with the body... of the one about whom it is said that he was marked by God before being formed in the mother's womb? He sanctifies [them] unmeritedly, and how can we escape from the voice of the one who said: “Is there any unrighteousness with God? No!" [Rom. 9:14] But it is precisely this [i.e., the conclusion about the unrighteousness of God] that follows from the argument that asserts the eternal existence of the soul with the body."

“Among the souls that are in the body, there are those who, before being born [in the human body], were taught by the Father and listened to Him; it is they who come to the Savior.”

Moreover, Origen established that souls have the freedom of moral behavior, often falling outside of human life, in the angelic world and the world of demons.

“Since we have compared the souls that rush from this world to the underworld with those who, descending from the highest heaven to our dwellings, turn out to be in a sense dead, it is necessary to find out by careful research whether the same can be established with regard to the birth of individual [souls] In other words, how do the souls that are born on this earth of ours either ascend to higher [places] and take on human flesh, striving from hell to a better place, or descend to us from better places? the places that are higher in the firmament are owned by other souls, who pass from our dwellings to better ones; others [of them], who fell from the heavenly [mansions] to the firmament, did not commit such sins as to be cast out to lower places, inhabited by us."

Souls can "descend" and "ascend", turn into "spirits" and into demons. The "descent and ascension" hypothesis, much like the Gnostic wanderings of the aeons of the descending creative emanation of the deity, has been developed even to the point of applying it to Christology. Let's see what kind of counterargument has been established in Orthodoxy.

“This opinion ... is itself revealed in the fact that it does not contain anything solid. For if the soul from a heavenly life is attracted by vice to a tree life, and from it, through virtue, again ascends to heaven, then this teaching seems doubtful, [since it is not clear] what to prefer - tree life or heavenly. But there is [they say] some kind of circular movement in the same places, because the soul, wherever it is, is always fickle ... For even heavenly in bliss is not persists if depravity penetrates to those who live there, and the trees of virtue will not be deprived if the soul from there again moves towards the good, and there it returns to the vicious "(St. Gregory of Nyssa) A special place in the criticism of traditionalism, Lorgus assigns Lactantia, Here are the words of this church historian: “If the soul, by virtue of its simplicity, excluding divisibility, cannot give from its being a new beginning of life, then it cannot be assumed that the souls of the parents have the ability to simply produce creatures similar to themselves.”

Further, Lactantius writes: “I take the liberty of resolving this question by saying that the soul does not come from either one or the other, or from both together, and the basis of such a solution is the concept of simplicity and spirituality of the soul itself, excluding the possibility of any kind of If the soul is born by parents through the separation of certain parts from the souls belonging to them, as if from some spiritual seed, which is then revealed in the born, then there is only one conclusion that the soul by nature is a complex and divisible being, and, consequently, destructible "But it is possible to reason in this way only about material and material objects, and not about the spiritual and simple essence, which is the soul. The body can produce another body, giving it a part of its essence, but the soul has such a subtle essence that it cannot separate from itself any parts".

Such a statement, according to priest Sergei Lorgus, seems to reject the creative possibility of creation given to the soul by God. The new man is not only born from his parents, but the parent gives birth to a son. In the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, we everywhere meet "begotten", and not "begotten to them.

What happens to the soul after death?

The modern psychologist and materialist Igor Gerasimov has his own opinion on this matter. He writes: “Since I consider the soul as a material phenomenon consisting of nerve cells, it dies with the death of the whole organism. And during life, the soul “flies away” into its children (they are the heirs of both mental, and physical, and social, and material), into their creations and creations, into human affairs, actions, relationships ... This is the true continuation of life ... human a memory that is passed from father to son, from mother to daughter... And that is why, unconsciously, people tend to continue their family or do something, invent, create, invent... And to die once and for all, losing their own " trace”, few people want to… realizing this, people are upset when they cannot give birth to children, or when children do not grow up as they would like, or when life is wasted, without a trace, not finding its meaning, benefit, joy. So, if at one time Carl Gustav Jung said that "the time for global theories in psychology has not yet come", then I think that in the 21st century it has already come ... - it's time to "deal" with the human psyche as a whole, and with all its systems, and first of all with what determines the human essence, with the soul.

Of course, the psychologist Gerasimov does not invent anything. He talks about what most of us talk about. But there are two glaring contradictions in his statements. First, the soul dies with the death of the body. Only one person would agree with such a statement - an atheist. And the second; “It is believed that during life, the soul “flies” to its children.” The soul cannot leave its body prematurely. Such a statement is absurd. The soul leaves its "master" only when his poor heart stops beating. And she incarnates, according to the laws of Karma, into another body prepared for her by the law of Karma and reincarnation.

In the article "Misconceptions Concerning the Doctrines of the Theosophists", Blavatsky tries to prove that the American press, and above all, the spiritualist newspapers, are constantly criticizing and making a mockery of Theosophists, not for their cause, but because of a misunderstanding of their teaching. They absolutely do not want to listen to the Theosophists' explanations. After all, for all Theosophists, including those in New York, man is a triad, not a duad. He is even something more. Including the physical body, man is Tetractys, or quaternary. And, despite the fact that the doctrine of the Theosophists is confirmed by the greatest philosophers of antiquity - Greece and Rome, the Theosophists did not borrow it from Pythagoras, or from Plato, or from the famous theodiacts Alexandrian school.

Blavatsky completely disagrees with critics that “plastic and unconscious"intermediaries, or ethereal fluids, enveloping the spirit itself. It is also not true that the spirit and the soul are identical, and that the spirit can incarnate like the soul. An isolated Soul cannot be a perispirit, as critics believe. How can the "unconscious", and therefore irresponsible, be rewarded or punished in a future life for acts done while unconscious? How can the spirit - the highest primordial essence, this uncreated and eternal Monad, the spark emanating from the "spiritual sun" of the Kabbalists, be only a third element, and be subject to the same errors as the perispirit? Can he, like the vital soul suffering from a chronic illness, become unconscious even for a time? Can an immortal Spirit degrade to the level of an animal? Of course, this is nonsense, says E.P. Such a critic has no idea of ​​the doctrines of the Theosophists. He does not understand at all what the Theosophists mean by the word "spirit." For him, spirit and soul are synonymous; he does not distinguish between them. Theosophists reject such ideas.

References of critics to Plato contradict the philosopher himself. After all, according to the "divine" philosopher, the soul is a duad. It consists of two primary components: one is mortal, the other is immortal. First created creature gods, creative and intelligent forces of nature. The second is an emanation of the higher Spirit. The critic argues that the mortal soul, taking possession of the body, becomes "irrational." But every Theosophist knows that there is a huge difference between irrationality and unconsciousness. In addition, Plato never confused the perispirit with the soul or spirit. He, like other philosophers, never called him either nous - soul, nor ψυχη - spirit, but called it ειδωλον, sometimes imago or simulacrum. Blavatsky sees that the author has mixed up the terms, so she swims in these issues. His question: "Can the separation of the spirit, ψυχη, from the soul, nous, or perispirit be the cause of complete annihilation? .." gives us a clue to the misinterpretation. He simply interprets the words "spirit" and "soul" as the same.

Blavatsky is sure that none of the ancient philosophers ever defined them in this way. To confirm her words, she quotes two respected personalities.

The first she calls Plutarch, a pagan, but a conscientious historian. The second - the Christian authority, St. James, "brother of the Lord." Speaking about the soul, Plutarch says that while ψυχη is enclosed in the body, nous, the divine mind, hovers over mortal man, pouring out on him a ray of light, the brightness of which depends on the personal merits of a person. And he adds that nous never descends, but remains motionless. Saint James is even more outspoken. Speaking of worldly wisdom, he calls it "earthly, sensual, mental" (demonic) and adds that only wisdom from above is divine and "reasonable". (noetic- adjective from nous). "Besovsky" the element has always been in disfavor with holiness, both among the saints of Christianity and among the philosophers of paganism, says Blavatsky. Since St. James considers ψυχη as a demonic element, and Plato considers it something irrational, can it be immortal per se?

Blavatsky wants to bring her thoughts to the end, therefore she explains to her critic that there is a big difference between the concrete and the abstract, between "trinity" and " tetractysom". Let's, she says, compare this philosophical quaternary, consisting of the physical body, perispirit, soul and spirit, with the ether, which science foresaw, but could never discover, and denote their relationship. The ether will symbolize the spirit, the vapor formed inside the soul, the water the perispirit, and the ice the body, Ice melts and loses its form forever, water evaporates and disperses in space, vapor is freed from denser particles, and finally reaches a state in which science cannot detect it. Purified from all impurities, he completely merges with his first cause and, in turn, becomes the cause. With the exception of the immortal nous, the soul, perispirit, and physical body, all of which were once created and had a beginning, must also have an end.

Does this mean, Blavatsky asks, that individuality is lost in such a dissolution? Not at all. But between the human ego and the divine ego there is a gap which the critics fill with their confusion. As for the perispirit, it is no more a soul than the thinnest skin of an almond itself, or its husk. Perisprit, there is a simulacrum of man. Theosophists understand this hypostasis in the same way as the ancient philosophers, but quite differently from the spiritualists.

It is not difficult to see that for Theosophists the spirit is the personal god of every mortal, he is also his only divine element. The dual soul, on the other hand, is only semi-divine. Since it is a direct emanation of the nous, everything that is in it from the immortal essence, at the end of its earthly cycle, must return to its original source as pure as at the moment of its separation. It was this spiritual essence that the Christian church recognized in the good daimon and turned it into a guardian angel. At the same time, blaming the "irrational" and sinful soul, the real human ego (from which the word "selfishness" comes), she called him an angel of darkness and subsequently made him a personal devil. Her only mistake was that she anthropomorphized him, turned him into a monster, with a tail and horns. And this devil is really personal, because he is absolutely identical to our ego. It is this elusive and inaccessible personality that the ascetics of all countries punish by mortifying the flesh. (33) (Misconceptions about the doctrines of the Theosophists).

Soul Immortality

The human soul has been studied over the centuries by ancient thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, church historians, Orthodox thinkers, theologians, specialists in the visible and invisible sciences. And they all came to a common denominator that the soul is immortal, reasonable, incorruptible and obeys its own laws and the laws of the Heavenly Creator. The soul cannot be seen, touched, hugged or invited to visit. It is not visible, not tangible. Most of all, church historians and theologians have worked on its solution. We have already talked about Theosophists. Let us cite a few statements about the soul, said by various Orthodox thinkers, in order to make it clear what a difficult problem this is for all ages, peoples and countries.

"We say that the soul is simple, intelligent and immortal...". (Theodoret of Kirr); "Christ clearly teaches the immortal state of our soul" (ibid.); "The soul, being simple, and not composed of different parts ... as a result, it is imperishable and immortal" (Maxim the Confessor); "The spiritual and immortal essence of your soul..." (Gregory of Nyssa); And here are the words of Tatian the Assyrian: "The soul itself is not immortal ... it is mortal, but it may not die."

We see that among some Christian ascetics the theme of "death of the soul" arises. However, their "death" of the soul does not mean its "annihilation". In this, in their opinion, lies the whole meaning of the term "immortality of the soul." "Just as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. It is the death of the soul that is death in the true sense of the word." (Gregory Palamas). The immortality of the soul has two meanings. The first is ontological immortality, in the sense of the indestructibility of the soul. On this issue, the holy fathers and scientists are unanimous. The second is immortality, as a spiritual state of co-existence with God, in contrast to spiritual death - the rupture of the soul with God.

Soul after death

Many legends about this issue are walking around the world. But, there is only one truth: none of the dead returned to us on earth in their guise. We have only the written testimonies of the ancient Fathers of the Church, whom, by virtue of necessity, we can trust or not trust. Let's hear what they have to say about the afterlife of the human soul. We will again go through "Orthodox Anthropology" by Andrey Lorgus.

The fate of the soul after separation from the body is connected with its spiritual and moral state. The sinful, vicious soul does not see God, it is deprived of the communion of the Holy Spirit, and this is called the “death” of the soul: “Just as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. It is the death of the soul that is death in the real sense of this words" (Gregory Palamas).

On the contrary, sanctified, purified souls partake in the contemplation of the Divine Glory, draw nearer to God, to bliss, to lordship; “Every good and God-loving soul, when, having renounced the body combined [with it], departs from here, immediately comes both feeling and contemplation of the good that awaits it” (Gregory the Theologian).

Immediately after bodily death, the soul goes to the spiritual world, and not by itself, but by the will of God and with the help of angels. So say the holy fathers. The soul comes out of the body and approaches the angels. The angels, seeing the outgoing immaculate soul, rejoice and, stretching out their clothes, receive it. Then the angels bless her, saying: "Blessed are you, soul, for the will of God has been fulfilled in you" (Abba Zosima); "Then the soul comes out of the body, and the angels greet her...". If the soul is vicious, demons take possession of it. Saint Macarius of Egypt says this on this occasion: “Every time a soul leaves a human body, a great mystery is performed there. part must understand that this is the case ... when [the righteous] come out of the body, their souls are received by hosts of angels ". No matter what we think about it, but after the death of the body, the soul arrives near it for a short time, it sees the relatives of the deceased, and only after that it moves away from the body from earthly life and flies away to the Higher powers. Here is what Origen says about it:

“[Jesus] knew that He had been heard [by the Father], for in the spirit he felt that the soul of Lazarus had returned to his body, released from the land of souls. who called Jesus... If anyone admits this with regard to the soul of Lazarus and considers the removal of the soul from the body absurd, since it [de] is placed near the body, let him say how Jesus was heard by the Father, when the body of Lazarus was still dead, and the soul, although departed... was, however, near the body.To reconcile this [contradiction] one would have to say that Jesus was not heard [by the Father] when He should have been heard, for the soul settled in the body... He asked that the soul return and again inhabit the body.

"No one's soul, being freed from the body, wanders here any longer ... for [the souls] and the righteous, and children ... and sinners immediately depart away. And from the parable of Lazarus and the rich man it is clear ... that it is impossible for a soul that has left the body roam here... [Otherwise] how does the soul, torn away from the body and from all [with him] communication gone away, know without a guide where it should go? ], does not stay here".

Orthodox priests claim that near the deceased in his house, near the grave, there is the soul of the deceased. Then she goes where the Lord directs her. Only He, the Judge of the World, determines for the soul the place of its stay until the Universal Judgment. "The souls retire to the place determined by God for them, and are there, waiting for the Resurrection. After that, those who have taken on the body and completely, that is, bodily resurrected, will go into the presence of God." (Irenaeus of Lyon). It follows from this that the soul, after the death of the body, loses power over itself, which means the loss of the will and its passivity. Although some souls are able to show their will to act. And let's say that this is not without the will of God. They are able to serve people, they are the souls of saints. Church history knows many saints who became famous for their great deeds. These are St. Nicholas, Archbishop of the World of Lycia, St. Barbara, Mary, Mother of God and many others. Holy fathers, secular science treat such examples with understanding and respect.

According to the Holy Fathers, the soul, because of freedom and rationality, cannot be subject to evil. However, it is strange that she voluntarily, of her own free will, obeys him. She chooses evil. And our body is subject to the soul and is not a source of sin for the soul.

This means that the soul is sinful for our internal reasons, i.e. it is not burdened with evil from without. No one and nothing can force the soul to sin. The soul itself is responsible for the actions of a person. Our body is a partner in sin, but the source of sin, however strange it may seem, is not the body, but its soul.

For man, Freedom is a royal, God's gift. And this same gift makes a person responsible for his misdeeds, both on earth and in heaven. “The soul of each person is also the life of his animate body, and, as related to another, has the ability to animate another, that is, his animate body. But it has life not only as energy, but also as an essence, for it lives by itself. It can be seen that it has a rational and spiritual life, clearly different from the life of the body ... ". (Gregory Palamas).

As you can see, the Soul is life and essence that has being. It is also the life of the body, or life as such. Soul and life are one, they are in constant struggle and eternal search. In other words, the soul is the harmony of the body and the tuning fork of the sounds that the body pronounces. The actions of the soul are life itself. “The soul,” says Andrey Lorgus, “is an essence for itself and for God, as the last, objectively existing in the Universe, due to the fact that the Creator Himself introduced into the universe a similar created essence, a soul equal to angels and conquering demons at its own will” .

"Ego, there is the breath of life"

Blavatsky has delved so deep into the theme of the law of reincarnation, immortality, the human ego, soul and spirit, that the reader gets the impression that she had before her a textbook from the life of souls in the next world. So easily, professionally, she analyzes every question, the topic of the stay of our soul in the afterlife, that readers around the world recognize her as brilliant.

Francesca. The soul of a baby.

The ego, she says, is but the "breath of life" which Jehovah, one of the elohim, or creative gods, breathed into Adam's nostrils. And as such, unlike the higher mind, it is only an element of individuality, which is possessed by both a person and any other living being. And only by merging with the divine mind, the ego, stained by earthly imperfections, can achieve immortality.

Blavatsky says and modern science admits that even our thought is material. And no matter how fleeting a thought may seem, its origin and subsequent development require some expenditure of energy. Even the slightest movement of thought, reflected in the ether of space, produces a movement that reaches infinity. Therefore, it is a material force, although invisible.

If this is so, then who dares to assert, she writes, that a person whose individuality consists of thoughts, desires and egoistic passions that are inherent only in him and make him an individuality, can live forever with all his distinctive features, without changing?

“But if it changes during endless cycles, then what remains of it? What happens to this special individuality that is so highly valued? It is logical to assume that if a person incarnated on earth, forgetting about his precious "I", was ready to sacrifice himself for the good of others; if, out of love for humanity, he tried to be useful already in this present life and become useful for the great and endless work of Creation, Preservation and Rebirth in the life to come; if, finally, striving for infinity and spiritual perfection, he merges with the essence of his divine mind and, thus, is drawn into the stream of immortality, it is logical to hope, we say, that he will live in the spirit forever. But that another person, who during his probation-exile on earth viewed life as a long series of selfish acts and was as useless to himself as to others, and even harmful, should become as immortal as the previous one, is simply impossible. introduce!" (Blavatskaya E.P. Another side of life. M. Sphere, 2005).

In nature, everything changes, everything must either move forward or backward - there is no other way. Man must be the master of his own destiny. Every soul wants truth and a meaningful life. A person should not be cruel, he should spend his life in goodness, in the fight against evil. Evil souls, emphasizes Blavatsky. do not go unpunished. For them, suffering is prepared for many centuries and such a punishment is well-deserved.

Blavatsky is aware that not everyone will believe the Theosophical doctrines and that it will not be easy to prove their correctness. But believing in them, Theosophists know what they have been taught by the Masters and the Himalayan Mahatmas. And this teaching is based on the philosophy and system of Indian yogis, on the results of research for many centuries. The Theosophists' teaching is based on the esoteric wisdom of ancient Egypt, where Moses, like Plato, studied under the Hierophants and Adepts. It was developed with the help of reliable methods and strict analogy, based on the immutability of universal laws and induction.

Elena Petrovna criticizes the Bible, which does not mention the human soul in a single word, and if it does, it compares it with cattle. In "Ecclesiastes" (III, 19) it is said that a person has no advantage over cattle: both of them die, since the breath that revives them is the same. As for Job, this sufferer only declares that a man, having died, "flees away like a shadow, and does not stop"(Job, xiv, 2).

Blavatsky turns to the New Testament, maybe she will find the Truth in it? But even this book offers a choice between a philharmonic heaven and a hell far from reality. It does not give any irrefutable evidence, forbids a person to think and insists on blind faith.

You say, she continues, that the doctrine of the Theosophists "was invented for base and vulgar souls." But the Theosophists are able to prove with numbers in hand that these "low and vulgar" souls dominate civilized and Christian countries where immortality is promised to all. “We refer you to America, puritanical and pious, which promises eternal paradise to every criminal hanging on a rope if he believes, and moreover immediately, since, according to the Protestant faith, there is only one step from the scaffold to Eternity. Open any New York newspaper and you will find that the front page is full of reports of atrocious, hitherto unheard-of crimes committed by a dozen daily, year after year. Let someone try to find something similar in pagan countries, where people do not trouble themselves with concerns about immortality and only strive to merge forever with eternity. Isn't immortality, then, as a "universal law" for every "low and vulgar soul" more a stimulus than a deterrent from crime? (Blavatskaya E.P. Another side of life. M. Sphere, 2005).

In concluding her article, Blavatsky hopes that she has answered all the accusations of the critic.

Note: The article uses religious paintings by Cimabue (1240-1302), a Florentine painter, one of the main representatives of the Italian Renaissance.

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32. Maxim the Confessor, reverend. Creations in 2 books. M. Martis, 1993.

Over the centuries, thousands upon thousands of works have been written on the subject of life, death, and reincarnation. Among the works created on this topic in the last two centuries, the works of the great Russian philosopher Helena Petrovna Blavatsky stand out - the one whom contemporaries called the "Sphinx of the 19th century." They are considered the most vivid and complete overview of the secret knowledge about the Universe, Nature and Man. At one time, her works caused a real turn in the minds of many of her contemporaries, provoking a storm of controversy, emotions and accusations, most of them unfair, but many prominent philosophers and scientists in both the 19th and 20th centuries took the teachings presented in her works, as a basis for their own theories and hypotheses. For example, it is little known that her The Secret Doctrine was one of Albert Einstein's favorite books. Perhaps the most valuable thing about H. P. Blavatsky's books is that they do not give her own assumptions, not her own philosophy. They are the fruit of a careful comparative study of a wide variety of philosophical and religious systems, traditions and cultures.

As the writer herself states, they are an attempt to convey the main provisions of the “Universal Divine Wisdom” or “Theosophy”, which from time immemorial, from generation to generation, was transmitted through initiations into the Mysteries and through the Brotherhood of the Great Sages, the keepers of this secret knowledge. It is known that Madame Blavatsky herself studied for several years in one of the innermost centers in Tibet. Much in the doctrine of reincarnation is not served by stereotypical logic and seems too difficult to understand, because it involves a completely different view of things and a deep study of such metaphysical issues as, for example, the structure of a person, the difference between Soul and Spirit and the concept of "Ego", existence " other" plans in Nature and man, the role of the law of Karma in reincarnation, and much more. But all this makes our study even more exciting, and it is quite possible that it will lead us to truly amazing discoveries. Talking about the mystery of life, death and reincarnation, we will give a brief overview of the main ideas set forth by H. P. Blavatsky in her book The Key to Theosophy, in the form of a dialogue about eternal truths.

Why is it impossible to understand the theory of reincarnation without understanding the ancient teachings about the structure of man himself?

The answer is simple: because then it will be very difficult for us to understand which part of ourselves is perishable and dies with the body, and which part continues to exist. According to ancient teachings, the human being is not limited to the physical body. It consists of seven principles, or “planes”, or “shells”, and apart from the physical body, all the rest cannot be perceived by physical sensations, because we are talking about the finest substances and states unknown to modern science.

In different cultures, we meet them under different names, and in his book, HPB (as her students called her) gives their Sanskrit names:

1. Shtula Sharira - the physical body.

2. PRANA - the "vital principle", or the energy of life, providing with its flows the impulse of life on the plane of matter.

3. LINGA SHARIR - the astral plane, the receptacle of feelings, including emotional states.

4. KAMA RUPA or KAMA MANAS - "Lower Mind", or, in literal translation, "Mind of Desires", a receptacle of thoughts and logical processes that work only within the limitations of the material plane and physical life; therefore it is subjective and subject to erroneous conclusions and illusions. It is also and above all the receptacle of desires and "passions" born from illusions.

5. MANAS - the Higher Mind, the plan and receptacle of "pure" Ideas, long-term memory, working far beyond the material plane and physical life. In the limitations of physical life, this principle, as a rule, exists only as a “hidden potential” in a person, but if it awakens, this makes it possible to gain true knowledge, reveal the deep essence and hidden meaning of all things and phenomena.

6. BUDDHI - "Divine Soul", "conductor of pure Divine Light." This principle also exists in a person as the deepest “hidden potential”, but if it awakens, then its manifestation cannot be described in any words - this is the great power of Intuition, pure Love and Wisdom of Love.

7. ATMA - The Greatest Sacrament, "Divine Spirit", "Higher Self", "God within ourselves", "Silent Observer", eternal and omniscient. Any, even the smallest manifestation of it can be described as a powerful, purest force of Will, as a manifestation of the Secret Inner Law that governs our entire existence.
If the structure of man is septenary, then where is the “Spirit” in all this, and where is the “Soul”, and which of them is immortal?

Before answering this specific question, let's ask one more philosophical and metaphysical "puzzle": how do you feel about the statement of ancient teachings, according to which we can divide the seven principles of man into two, three or even five parts - depending on the criteria?

We quote HPB: “...First of all, we find in Man two different Beings - spiritual and physical; a person who thinks and a person who only captures as many of these thoughts as he can perceive. Therefore we subdivide him into two different natures - a higher or spiritual being, composed of three "principles" or aspects; and the lower or physical Quaternary, "consisting of four, - seven in all."

The four lower principles, namely: the physical body, vital energy, the astral body and the lower mind, were called “personality” or “person” in ancient times (translated from Greek, “persona” means “mask”, which, in fact, explains its essence ). The “personality” of a person is perishable and transient. Not only the physical body, but also the other three principles of our "personality" decompose and disappear after death. This is just a tool that a person manages throughout his earthly life, just a mask with which you should not identify yourself. This mask hides the "True Man", our spiritual essence, the "Divine Triad" - Atma-Buddhi-Manas - and its secret forces of pure Will, Love-Intuition and Higher Reason. Our Divine Triad is immortal and after the death of the body continues to exist in other dimensions. With each new birth on earth, she receives a new personality, as if putting on new clothes.

In ancient times, it was believed that three parallel worlds or planes coexist in a person:
1) the physical world - the physical body and prana, what Plato calls "SOMA", and Christian mystics - "BODY";
2) the psychic world - astral and kama-manas, what Plato calls "PSYCHE", and Christian mystics - "SOUL";
3) the spiritual world - Atma, Buddhi and Manas, what Plato calls "NOUS", and Christian mystics - "SPIRIT" or "IMMORTAL SOUL" (the Immortal Soul should not be confused with the "psyche" - astral and mind, which in their connection is often also called "soul".)

Are there similar plans or principles also in Nature?

Of course, because in the man-Microcosm nothing could exist that would not already exist in Nature and the Universe.

To quote the HPB: "What I mean by the word Chsloy" (plan) is that plane of infinite space, which by its nature is not accessible to our perception, mental or physical, in the waking state, but which exists in Nature outside our ordinary thinking or consciousness, outside of our 3D space and outside of our time scale. Each of the seven major planes (or layers) in the Cosmos has its own objectivity and subjectivity, its own space and time, its own consciousness and sensory complex.”

Which of the principles of man is reincarnated in the chain of lives and deaths?

In a long string of lives and "deaths", MANAS, the principle of the Higher Mind in man, reincarnates. In ancient times, he was called "Spiritual Ego", "Divine Man", in Sanskrit he is referred to as Manas-Taijasi ("radiant"). It is in him that our real INDIVIDUALITY lies, and our various and countless "personas" are only his masks. HPB compares our Spiritual Ego to an actor, and his many and varied incarnations to the roles he plays.

On the eternal "theatrical stage" of evolution, during numerous incarnations, you and I play the most diverse roles: actions and epochs change, scenery, masks and costumes change, but our Individuality, our Spiritual Ego always remains the same. We quote HPB: “The Spiritual Ego of a person moves in eternity between the hours of birth and death, like a pendulum. But if these hours, marking the periods of earthly and spiritual life, are limited in their duration, and if the very number of such stages in Eternity between sleep and wakefulness, illusion and reality has its beginning and end, then the Spiritual Wanderer, on the contrary, is Eternal.

It is our Spiritual Ego that is responsible for all the thoughts and actions of each new personality, throughout a long chain of incarnations.

There is another great mystery of our existence, which is not explained by the logic of the mind, and is very difficult to understand. Let us recall that in man there are two more Divine, Higher and Immortal Principles. And if Manas (the fifth principle) is our Individuality, our Ego and it is it that reincarnates, then what role do Atma, our Divine Spirit (the seventh principle), and Buddhi, our Divine Soul (the sixth principle) play, which can be said, that they are truly immortal?

As HPB explains, Atma - the "Divine Spirit", the "Silent Observer" or our "Higher Self" - should not really be called a "human" principle at all, it is not an individual property of any person. This is the Divine Essence, “God within ourselves”, this is a ray of the omnipresent Divine Light that overshadows mortal man, penetrates into him. Buddhi is the carrier of Atma, the conductor of its Divine Light, just as the Moon conducts the light of the Sun: without its mediation and help, our Ego - Manas - could never realize either its Immortality or its connection with the infinite Universe.

Atma and its vehicle Budhi, described as two separate principles, are actually a single whole, and this single whole was called in antiquity the Immortal Monad of man.

Throughout all its incarnations on Earth, our Ego, limited in its perception by the bonds of matter, constantly strives to reunite with its Immortal Monad in order to regain consciousness of its own immortality and restore the lost memory of the Eternal.

It turns out that death is actually a rebirth on other planes of existence?

It really is. For our Spiritual Ego, death always comes as a friend and liberator: freeing itself from the bonds of matter and from its old shells, it again becomes “itself” and can continue its journey in other worlds closer to its own nature. In ancient times, death was always perceived as a well-deserved "rest of the Soul" after a painful earthly life overflowing with suffering and trials, as a "return home", which our Immortal Soul has been waiting for so long.

HPB recalls what all the philosophers of antiquity spoke about: the state after death is not only likened to, but also identified with the state that we experience in a dream. In fact, death is sleep! After death, our Immortal Soul, at its level, makes, in fact, the same journey that it made during life in a dream. Her experience in the dream and her experience after death are very, very similar, much more than we can imagine. It is no coincidence that in ancient times "Life" and "Death" were called only "Great Day" and "Great Night", two sides of a single "Great Life".

Where does our Spiritual Ego go after death?

After death, our Spiritual Ego continues to travel on other planes of existence, those that were inaccessible to its perception during life and in the waking state, existing outside our three-dimensional space and outside our time scale (we should not forget that these are not certain "areas" in our stereotyped understanding, and above all the state of consciousness).

In this journey, the Ego must pass through two main stages, planes or states of consciousness, known by their Sanskrit names - "Kamaloka" and "Devakhan".

When a person dies, his two lower principles or shells - "body" and "life energy" - leave him forever and begin to decompose almost immediately after physical death. Then our Divine Triad, together with the remaining shells of the "person" - their combination is called "Kama-rupa", or "Animal Soul", - finds itself in Kamaloka, an astral "region", somewhat reminiscent of the "purgatory" of Christian scholastics. Kamaloka continues until the final separation of the lower principles - Kama-rupa - from the higher ones - the Divine Triad. This moment is also called the “second death”, because the lifeless “shell” of Kama-rupa remaining in Kamaloka begins to decompose, while the Atma-Budhi-Manas triad, freed from its shells, passes into the state of Devakhan - spiritual bliss and happiness.

We quote HPB: “And here is our doctrine, which shows that Man is septenary during life, fivefold immediately after death, in Kamaloka, and becomes a threefold Ego: Spirit-Soul and Consciousness in Devachan.”

What is Kamaloka?

We quote HPB: Kamaloka is “an astral region, a purgatory in scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients and, strictly speaking, is a region only in a figurative sense. It has neither a definite area nor definite boundaries, but exists within the subjective space, that is, it is outside our sensory perception. Nevertheless, it exists, and it is there that the astral phantoms of all beings that have lived, including animals, await their second death."

In Kamaloka, the Ego undergoes a kind of “purification” of addictions, base passions and vices that have accumulated in his Kama-rupa - the Animal Soul - during his life, so strong that they still attract the Ego to the Earth and prevent him from reaching the state of Devachan.

After the Ego has already reached its well-deserved bliss in Devachan and is freed from this shell of its own, the decaying remains of Kama-rupa remain in Kamaloka, and they are very, very dangerous. EPB calls them "phantoms of Kama-rupa", or "astral larvae", or "astral shells". The problem is that, left without his Divine Soul, which spiritualized him, the Kama-rupa phantom still retains certain psychic and mental "programs" of the former person, which automatically start to work if this "larva" is attracted back to earth. It is these lifeless ghosts that materialize in the rooms of mediums during sessions and pretend to be the souls of the dead, who in fact have long since left them. HPB says that the "astral larva" can be compared to a jellyfish, which has a disembodied, gelatinous appearance while in its own element. But as soon as she is magnetically and unconsciously attracted, she temporarily “comes to life”, begins to “think” and “speak” through the brain of the medium or others present at the session. This is very dangerous - the consequences of such "games" can be terrible: a split personality, insanity and obsession for the rest of your life and the corresponding consequences after death ...

What is the bliss of Devachan?

"Devachan" is translated as "Land of the Gods", and some philosophers compare it to the Christian concept of "paradise", although they have little in common. HPB describes it as a place of bliss and supreme happiness, a mental state like the most vivid dream, only much more alive and real. Devachan is the highest posthumous state of most mortals.

We quote HPB: “As for the mere mortal, his bliss is perfect there. This is an absolute oblivion of everything that in the last incarnation brought him pain and suffering, and even oblivion of the very fact that such concepts as pain and suffering exist at all. “The one in Devachan lives in his intermediate cycle between two incarnations, surrounded by all that he vainly aspired to, surrounded by those whom he loved on Earth. He achieved the fulfillment of all the strong desires of his Soul.

And thus, for long centuries, he leads a life full of unclouded happiness, which is the reward for his suffering in earthly life. In short, he bathes in a sea of ​​uninterrupted happiness, eclipsed only by episodes of even greater happiness.

Then it turns out that the state of Devachan is nothing more than a dream, an illusion?

Not certainly in that way. For, as HPB explains, Devachan "is an idealized continuation of the earthly life just left behind, a period ... of reward for undeserved insults and suffering endured in that particular life."

In fact, life in Devachan is much more real than any of our existence on Earth. We should not forget that our Spiritual Ego is immortal. Consequently, in a state where it has already been freed from the shells of its perishable person, it can “carry away” with it not only to Devachan, but also to its subsequent incarnations, only that from its previous life that has become worthy of immortality. Everything petty, temporary and transient dies with the old personality. That is why Devachan is an ideal continuation of the last earthly life and, in a sense, the fulfillment of all her loftiest dreams and aspirations, for everything is the purest and highest that has ever sounded in the heart of a living person, such eternal qualities as love, compassion, striving for the beautiful, true, good, for wisdom and knowledge - all this after death joins the Ego and follows it to Devachan.

Thus, liberated from the bonds and limitations of matter, in Devachan we live the fullest and happiest life that we could dream of on earth and that we could aspire to in a past life, but no more and no less than that. As HPB explains, “In a sense, we can acquire some more knowledge there; that is, we are able to develop some gift or some ability that we valued and tried to develop during life, if only it was connected with abstract and ideal spheres, such as music, painting, poetry, etc. ".

It is the understanding of the essence of the devachanic state that once again confirms the ancient truth: all life is a great preparation for death. For, depending on what he dreamed about, what he believed in and what a person aspired to during his lifetime, he will continue to live after death. What was his highest idea of ​​happiness in life, such happiness will come to him after death.

According to HPB, “According to what kind of life after death a person believed and expected, such a person will have. He who did not expect a future life in the interval between two births will receive an absolute emptiness, tantamount to annihilation.

What happens before a new birth, before returning to a new life?

What actually happens is something similar to what happens immediately after death. We quote HPB: “At the solemn moment of death, even if death was sudden, each person sees his whole life lined up in front of him in all the smallest details. For a brief moment, the personality becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this moment is enough to show him the full chain of causes set in motion during his life. He sees and immediately recognizes himself as he is, not embellished with flattery and self-deception. He reviews his life as a spectator looking down at the arena he is leaving. He feels and realizes the justice of all the suffering that befell him. It happens to everyone without exception. HPB goes on to say: “We have been taught that very good and holy people see not only the life they are leaving, but even some of the previous lives in which they created the causes that made them who they were in the life they are now. ends. They comprehend the law of Karma in all its greatness and justice.

When asked if there is anything similar to this before the new birth, HPB replies: “Yes. Just as a person at the moment of death sees in retrospect the life he led, so at the moment of a new birth on earth, the Ego, awakening from the state of Devachan, has the prospect of a life ahead of it, and it is aware of all the reasons that led to it. It understands them and sees the events of the future life, because it is between Devachan and rebirth that the Ego regains its full manasic consciousness and for a short time again becomes God, which it was before, in accordance with the law of Karma, it first descended into matter and incarnated. into the first man of flesh. The “Golden Thread” sees all its Pearls, without missing a single one of them ... "

USA, 1878. In his many years of practice, Dr. Robert Heriot saw this for the first time. He was called to treat the sick, but the woman lying in front of him on the bed was dead. To make sure of this, he felt the pulse on her hand and did not feel the beating, put a mirror to her lips - the glass did not fog up. Only one thing confused the doctor - the woman's gaze was meaningful. She stared straight ahead, like real people. And yet, by all formal indications, Helena Blavatsky was dead. The doctor picked up the phone and started calling the morgue to order a hearse. But as soon as he uttered the first words, someone's hand snatched the receiver from him.

The patient, to whom the doctor was called, was an unusual woman. Her name was known all over the world - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Tens of thousands of people believed that she was able to work miracles. And the American doctor Robert Heriot believed only in the power of science and his own mind. He was convinced that miracles had a place in the pages of children's books, but not in real life. However, that day he had to reconsider his views. Colonel Henry Olcott snatched the tube from the doctor's hand. He introduced himself as a friend of the patient. “I asked you to raise her to her feet, and not take her to the morgue,” the colonel shouted, “Elena is alive, she simply could not die!”

The doctor tried to argue with the enraged colonel, but Olcott stood his ground. Robert Hariot served as the county's health inspector. He was obliged to take the dead body from the apartment building. But before the doctor could take a step towards Blavatsky's bed, he suddenly felt a cold blade on his neck. “I’ll cut you down…” the colonel hissed. Dr. Hariot forgot about the call of duty and thought only about how to quickly get out of this crazy house. Men did not even notice what was happening behind them. Finally, the colonel turned around and saw that Elena was sitting on the couch and calmly drinking tea.

This miracle forever turned the life of Robert Heriot. He gave up medical practice and instead of medicine began to study the occult sciences. Soon the doctor realized that at that time Blavatsky was not dying, but plunged into a deep trance, and her open eyes saw other worlds. The American doctor was not the first and not the last person whose life was turned upside down by the meeting with Helena Blavatsky. By the end of the 19th century, she had tens of thousands of followers.

And today, more than a hundred years later, Blavatsky's books are published in huge numbers, and the Theosophical Movement she founded annually attracts hundreds of new followers. Theosophy first revealed to the inhabitants of the Western countries the secret wisdom of the East. The most surprising thing was that at the origins of Theosophy was not a man with a university education, but a Russian woman who had not even graduated from a gymnasium.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born on August 12, 1831 in the city of Yekaterinoslav in the family of officer Peter Alekseevich von Hahn. Her father belonged to a well-known aristocratic family. Mother came from the ancient Russian family of Rurikovich. The mother of Helena Blavatsky, a famous writer, died very early, and her last words were: “Maybe it’s for the best that I’m dying. You don't have to see Elena's bitter fate. I am sure that her fate will not be female, she will have to suffer a lot ... ”.

The prophecy came true, Elena really had to suffer a lot. But her childhood was happy. Grandmother, Elena Pavlovna Dolgorukova, brought her up in the best traditions of aristocratic families. Elena was an unusual child. Kind, smart, with strong intuition, sometimes bordering on clairvoyance. Once she was found in the attic with pigeons. And all the pigeons were in some kind of cataplexy state and did not fly anywhere. Elena said that she was putting them to bed according to Solomon's recipes. People were afraid of her sincerity, she always spoke only the truth. And in a decent society, this was considered a sign of bad taste. Indeed, how many people in the world are capable of telling only the truth? Even fewer are those who are able to perceive the truth.

The most original trick of the young lady was her marriage. In 1848, a 17-year-old girl told her family that she was marrying 40-year-old Nicephorus Blavatsky, who had been appointed vice-governor. Elena moved to Tiflis. She confessed to her relatives - she married Blavatsky in order to get rid of the control of her relatives. The girls of that time simply had no other option to leave the family. The marriage remained fictitious, but all attempts to divorce were unsuccessful and she runs away from her husband.

On horseback, Elena escapes from Tiflis, crosses the Russian-Turkish border and "hare" on the ship gets to Constantinople. She forever left Russia and loved ones. For eight whole years after the escape, she did not let anyone know about herself - she was afraid that her husband would track her down. I only trusted my father. He realized that she would not return to her husband and reconciled. Thus began a new free life. Elena gave music lessons, performed as a pianist, wrote books and articles. The young aristocrat risked everything. And for what? It is clear that some higher power led her. Many years later, she confessed that a certain mysterious friend, a spiritual teacher, was always invisibly present next to her.

The appearance of the teacher never changed - a bright face, long black hair, white clothes. He taught her in her sleep and, as a child, saved her life more than once. And the relatives were amazed, what miracle saved their child? Much later she wrote: “I have always had a second life, incomprehensible even to myself. Until I met my mysterious teacher."

This happened in 1851 at the first world exhibition in London. Among the Indian delegation, she suddenly saw the one who had been appearing to her in a dream for a long time. Elena was shocked, her teacher is a real person. She had a conversation with him, in which he explained which way she should go further, about the matter related to the transfer of knowledge to mankind.

He told her that she had an important job ahead of her. But first, she must prepare for it and spend three years in Tibet. Blavatsky is only twenty years old and she understood what future was prepared for her - the path of discipleship and service to the truth. Elena knew that the task set before her by the teacher - to penetrate into Tibet - was extremely difficult. Of course, she completed the task, but it took her 17 years to do this.

During this time, she makes two unsuccessful attempts to enter Tibet and makes two trips around the world. She faces deadly dangers, but every time someone helps her, protects her and, most importantly, teaches her. She described two trips to India in the most interesting book "From the caves and wilds of Hindustan." Several times Blavatsky falls seriously ill and, without outside help, is miraculously healed. With each illness, her supernatural powers grow.

What abilities did Blavatsky possess? According to eyewitnesses, she predicted the future, freely read sealed letters, answered questions that were asked to her mentally. She could move seals and drawings from one sheet to another, and, at the request of people, she could communicate with their deceased relatives. She was able to evoke wonderful music with a wave of her hand, which literally poured from heaven. In her presence, things began to move, and for some this caused delight, and for others, fear. She always saw the dead on the day of their death, saw how it would happen. She wrote to relatives about what awaits them, and accurately guessed this date.

The amazing skills of Blavatsky made a lot of noise in Pskov, where she returned to her family after ten years of absence. After living in Pskov for a year, Blavatsky left for Tiflis. On the way, she met His Grace Isidore, Exarch of Georgia, later Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Novgorod. His Grace questioned her, asked questions mentally and, having received sensible answers to them, was amazed. At parting, he blessed her and admonished her with the words: “There is no strength except from God. You never know the unknown forces in nature. It is not given to man to know all the forces, but he is not forbidden to recognize them. God bless you for all the good and kind."

Blavatsky lived in the Caucasus for another four years. In order not to depend on anyone, she tried to earn money herself. A great craftsman in needlework, she made artificial flowers. At one time she had a whole workshop, and it went very well. She even came up with a cheap way to get ink and subsequently sold it. But the main business of life was ahead, and she knew it.

1868, Blavatsky is 37 years old. One of the most mysterious periods in her life begins - studying in Tibet. She spoke little about it, but in her letters there are such lines: “Those to whom we wish to open ourselves will meet us at the border. The rest of us will not find us, even if they moved to Lhasa with a whole army. In these words there is a clue why no one can still find the country of great teachers - Shambhala. It is only open to a select few. The rest have no access.

Now a great number of magicians and initiates have bred. But it is not at all difficult to distinguish them from the disciples of Shambhala. The truly initiated will never talk about it. Initiates have no titles, they are simple in their lives and never boast of their knowledge. The truly initiated are under the influence of high rays of energy, and this happens only when their consciousness is ready to receive them. The old truth always remains unshakable - the teacher comes when the student is ready.

Blavatsky never talked about the three years she spent in Tibet, and only once wrote: “There are several pages from the history of my life. I would rather die than open them. They are too secret…” It is authentically known that she lived not far from the residence of the Tashi Lama and became a student of two teachers. Much later, Blavatsky wrote: “Teachers appear among people at turning points in history and bring new knowledge to the world. Such teachers were Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus. Jesus descended to earth without the consent of others, driven by a desire to help humanity. He was warned that he chose not the best time. But he still went and was executed because of the intrigues of the priests.

Blavatsky also wrote: “Beyond the Himalayas there is a core of adepts of different nationalities. They act in concert, but their essence remains unknown to ordinary lamas, who are mostly ignorant.” No one knows how Blavatsky was trained. She kept a secret, because secret knowledge can be used for selfish purposes.

Three years have passed, the training is over. Blavatsky leaves Tibet and begins her service to humanity. Teachers set before her an important task - to reveal to people the secret teachings about the structure of the Universe, about nature and man. Eternal human values ​​must resist materialism, cruelty and hatred.

In 1873, following the instructions of her teachers, she went to New York. There is a meeting with a future friend, student and colleague, Colonel Henry Olcott. This well-known lawyer, journalist, highly educated and spiritual person, became her support for the rest of her life. On November 11, 1875, the Theosophical Society was organized by Elena Petrovna and Colonel Olcott. It set itself three goals: 1) brotherhood without distinction of religions, races and nationalities; 2) comparative study of religions, science and philosophy; 3) the study of the unknown laws of nature and the latent abilities of man.

A great spiritual movement within a few years quickly spread throughout the world and made a real revolution in the minds of people. In India and what was then Ceylon, the Theosophical Society contributed to the revival of Buddhism. Mahatma Gandhi fully shared the idea of ​​society, and it had a great influence on the Indian independence movement. The activities of the society significantly influenced the pragmatic Western culture.

In Russia, Blavatsky's ideas were brilliantly continued by the Roerich couple and Russian cosmic scientists Tsiolkovsky, Chizhevsky, Vernadsky. Members of the Theosophical Society became many people of various nationalities and religions. After all, faith should not divide people.

What is a god? Blavatsky wrote that God is the mystery of cosmic laws, he cannot belong to only one people. Buddha, Christ, Mohammed are the great teachers of mankind. Religious wars are the gravest crime against the laws of the cosmos and against all people. Remission of sins is impossible, they can only be expiated by merciful deeds. Blavatsky's first work, Isis Unveiled, written in 1877, was a resounding success.

Since 1878, Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Olcott have been living and working in India. In the city of Adyar they found the world-famous headquarters of the Theosophical Society. It still remains the center of philosophers all over the world. But it was in India that the persecution of Blavatsky began. It was deployed by Christian missionaries, whom Elena Petrovna criticized more than once.

Blavatsky suffered from this, she was constantly ill and more than once was close to death. But Elena Petrovna was not afraid of death - she had not yet done everything for which she was sent to Earth. “There is no death,” Blavatsky wrote, “man continues to be the same. After death, the soul plunges into sleep, and then, waking up, goes either to the world of the living, if it is still attracted there, or to other, more developed worlds ... ".

Blavatsky is declared the swindler of the century. This is due to the verdict issued by the London Society for Psychical Research, published in 1885. Blavatsky was accused of being a complete fabrication of her great teachers. They were accused of many other, equally ridiculous sins. Upon learning of all this, the Indians bombarded her with letters. There was also a message from Indian scientists with seventy signatures: “We are surprised to read the report of the London Society. We dare to say that the existence of the Mahatmas is unthinkable. Our great-great-grandfathers, who lived long before the birth of Madame Blavatsky, communicated with them. And now there are people in India who are in constant contact with the teachers. Society has made a gross mistake by blaming "Madame Blavatsky".

But it took a whole hundred years for this mistake to be corrected. It was not until 1986 that a report was published by the London Society for Psychical Research on Blavatsky's activities. It began with the words: "According to the latest research, Madame Blavatsky was condemned unjustly ...". However, for a hundred years there have been enough fabrications on the subject of Blavatsky. Surprisingly, her Russian opponents did their best. It even got to the point that she was accused of murder, witchcraft and deviation from the foundations of Christianity.

She left India in 1884. Morally tired and terminally ill. She found her final resting place in England. Here in London, Blavatsky completes the main work of her life, The Secret Doctrine. This book gives such a synthesis of the teachings of different peoples, presents such a scope of knowledge that scientists of that time did not possess. Amazingly, two huge volumes of The Secret Doctrine were written within two years. Only a large team of researchers can do such work, and these books were written by a woman who did not even have a special education.

Published in 1888, The Secret Doctrine became the reference book of the most progressive scientists. Students and faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and professors at the New York Harvard Club have been researching The Secret Doctrine for decades. The fact is that in this book Blavatsky predicted many discoveries in astronomy, astrophysics and many other sciences. Here is an example of a confirmed revelation: “The sun contracts as rhythmically as the human heart. It takes 11 years for this solar blood alone.” In the 20th century, this solar pulse was discovered by Alexander Chizhevsky.

Blavatsky's popularity in Russia, unfortunately, is not great. Although in America and Europe she is much more respected. Her works were studied by Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and many other scientists. Blavatsky explains the riddle of humanoid aliens and their mysterious appearances and disappearances as follows: “There are millions and millions of worlds invisible to us. They are with us, inside our own world. Their inhabitants can pass through us as you pass through empty space. Their dwellings and countries are intertwined with ours, and thus however, do not interfere with our vision.

“No great truth has ever been accepted by contemporaries, and it usually takes a century, or even two, before it is accepted by scientists. So my work will be justified in part or in whole in the 20th century ... ”, Blavatsky wrote prophetically in the second volume of The Secret Doctrine. Indeed, what Blavatsky wrote about found understanding a hundred years later. Elena Petrovna died in England in 1891, having almost completed work on The Secret Doctrine. This extraordinary woman fulfilled her mission. She conveyed the great ideas of Shambhala to the pragmatic consciousness of man.

On the structure of the inner man and its division
M. Of course, it is very difficult and, as you say, "mysterious" to correctly understand and see the differences between the various aspects that we call the "principles" of the true Ego. This is all the more difficult since there is a significant difference in the number of these principles in different Eastern schools, although in general they all have the same substrate for learning.
X. Do you mean the Vedantists? I assume that instead of our seven "principles" they distinguish five?
M. Yes, it is; but though I would not dare to discuss this matter with learned Vedantins, I can still say as my own opinion that they have an obvious reason for doing so. For them, only a complex spiritual aggregate, consisting of various mental aspects, is called the Man as a whole, while the physical body is something despicable, and just an illusion. Vedanta D is not the only philosophy that holds this opinion. Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching mentions only five principles because, like the Vedantins, he avoids including two more principles, namely the spirit (Atma) and the physical body, the last of which he also calls the "corpse". Then there is the Charaka school of Raja Yoga. This teaching regards only three principles as really existing; but then, in reality, their Sthulopadhi or physical body in its jagrata or state of awakened consciousness, their Sukshmopadhi, the same body in swapna or sleep state, and their Karanopadhi or "causal body", or that which passes through one rebirth to another, they are all dual in their aspects, and thus there are six of them. Adding to them Atma, the impersonal divine principle, or the immortal element in Man, inseparable from the Universal Spirit, you get the same seven, again as in the esoteric division.
X. Then it looks almost the same as the division of Christian mystics: body, soul and spirit?
M. Exactly the same. We could more easily make the body the carrier of the "vital Pair"; the last D by the bearer of Life, or Prana; Kamarupa, or (animal) soul D by the bearer of higher and lower intelligence, and thus obtain the six principles, crowning them all with one immortal spirit. In occultism, each qualified change of consciousness provides a new aspect to a person, and if it spreads and becomes part of a living and active Ego, a special name can (and is) given to it, distinguishing a person who is in this special state from a person who places himself in other state.
X. This is exactly what is very difficult to understand.
M. On the contrary, it seems very easy to me since I understood the important idea, that is, that a person acts on this or another plane of consciousness in exact accordance with his mental and spiritual state. But such is the materialism of our age that the more we explain, the less people become able to understand what we say. You can divide the corporeal being into three main aspects if you like; but although you make a pure animal out of it, you cannot make it smaller. Take your objective body; the sensuous principle in him M which is only a little higher than the instinctive element in the animal M or the vital elemental soul; and that which places him so immeasurably beyond and above the animal D, that is, his conscious soul, or "spirit." And if we take these three groups or characteristic entities and redistribute them according to the occult teaching, then what do we get?
First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and thus the indivisible ALL), or Atma. Since it cannot be placed anywhere, nor conditioned by anything within the framework of philosophy, because it is simply that which IS in Eternity, and since THE ALL cannot be absent even in the smallest geometric or mathematical point of the material universe or substance, it really shouldn't be called a "human" principle in a general sense. It is better to say that this is the point in the metaphysical Space, which the human Monad and its carrier-man occupies during each life. This point is as imaginary as the man himself, and is in fact an illusion or maya; but for ourselves and for other personal egos we are a reality during this fit of illusoryness called life, and we must take ourselves into account, at least in our own imagination, even if others do not. In order to make this more comprehensible to the human intellect and the solution of all human mysteries, occultism calls it the seventh principle, the synthesis of the six, and offers it as the vehicle for the Spiritual Soul, Buddhi. The latter hides a secret that has never been given to any people, except those bound by an eternal promise, at least to those who can be safely trusted. No doubt there would be less confusion if it were only talked about; but since it is directly associated with the power of advancing one's couple, consciously and voluntarily, and since this gift, like the "ring of Hygiea", can be fatal for people in general and for its owner in particular, it was carefully guarded. Only adepts who have been tried and never lacked have held all the keys of the mysteries... May we avoid discord and thus remain true to "principles." The divine soul, or Buddhi, is the Carrier of the Spirit. Together the two are one, impersonal and attributeless (on this plane, of course), and create two spiritual "principles." If we move on to the Human Soul (manas of people), everyone will agree that the human intellect is at least dual: for example, a highly intelligent person is unlikely to become a person with a poorly developed mind; a highly intellectual and spiritual person is separated by a whole abyss from a dull, stupid and material, if not to say, thinking like an animal, person. Why, then, cannot such a person be characterized by two "principles," or rather two aspects? Every man contains these two principles, one of which is more active than the other, and in very rare cases one of them completely stops its development; then he is, so to speak, paralyzed by the power and predominance of the other aspect during the life of the man. Thus there is what we call the two principles or aspects of Manas, the higher and the lower; the first, or the thinking, conscious Ego, is drawn towards the Spiritual Soul (Buddhi); and the last or instinctive principle tends towards Kama, the seat of animal desires and passions in man. Thus we have explained the four "principles"; the last three are: (1) the "Couple", which we have agreed to call the Proteus or Plastic Soul; the bearer of (2) the life principle; and (3) the physical body. Of course, no physiologist or biologist will accept these principles and be able to understand them And that is probably why none of them still understands the functions of the spleen, the physical carrier of the Proteus Pair, or the functions of some organ on the right side of the person, the seat of the above desires, or does not know something about the pineal glands, which we describe as calloused. glands containing fine grains of sand, and which are the key to a higher and divine consciousness in man D. to his all-powerful, spiritual and all-pervading mind.This seemingly useless appendage is a pendulum which, as soon as the clockwork of the inner man is wound, transfers the spiritual vision of the ego to higher planes of perception, where the horizon that opens before him becomes almost limitless ...
X. But scientific materialists say that nothing remains after the death of a person; that the human body simply breaks down into its constituent elements, and that what we call the soul D is simply a temporary self-consciousness created as a joint product of organic behavior that will evaporate like vapour. Isn't this statement strange?
M. Not quite strange, as it seems to me. If they say that the self-consciousness disappears with the body, in this case they are simply uttering an unconscious prediction. For if they are firmly convinced of what they claim, no consciousness after life is possible for them.
X. But if human self-consciousness usually survives death, then why can there be exceptions?
M. In the fundamental law of the spiritual world, which is immortal, no exceptions are possible. But there are rules for those who see and for those who prefer to remain blind.
X. Quite right, I understand. There is a distortion of vision in a blind person who denies the existence of the sun because he cannot see it. But after death, his spiritual eyes will make him see?
M. They won't force him, and he won't see anything. Having previously denied existence after death during this life, he will not be able to experience it. His spiritual senses, whose development was retarded, will not be able to develop after death, and he will remain blind. When you say that he must see something, you obviously mean one thing and I mean another. You talk about spirit from Spirit, about fire from Fire, D in short, about Atma, D and confuse it with the human soul D Manas… You don't understand me, and let me try to explain it. The essence of your question is to understand how it is possible in the case of a notorious materialist, the complete disappearance of self-consciousness and self-perception after death? Is not it? I say: It's possible. For, firmly believing in our Esoteric Doctrine, which considers the Post-mortem period of time, or the interval between two lives or births, as merely an intermediate state, I say: Whether this interval between two acts of the illusory drama of life lasts one year or a million years, it is post-mortem the condition may, without violating any fundamental law, be the same condition as that of a person who is in a mortal faint.
X. But if you said just now that the fundamental laws of the post-mortem state do not allow for exceptions, how can this be?
M. I did not say that they allow exceptions. But the spiritual law of continuation is applicable only to those things that actually exist. For one who has read and understood the Mundaka Upanishad and the Sara Vedanta, all this becomes clear. I must say more: it is enough to understand what we designate as Buddhi and the duality of Manas to have a clear understanding of why a person may not have self-consciousness that persists after death: because Manas, in its lowest aspect, is the receptacle of the earthly mind, and therefore, it can provide only such a perception of the Universe, which is based on the basis of this mind, and not on our spiritual vision. In our esoteric school it is said that there is really no more difference between Buddhi and Manas, or Ishwara and Prajna, than between a forest and its trees, a lake and its water, as taught by Mundaka. One or hundreds of trees that have died from loss of vitality or from uprooting are not able to prevent the forest from remaining a forest. The destruction or posthumous death of one personality disappearing from a long series will not cause even the slightest change in the Spiritual divine ego, and it will always remain the same Ego. Only, instead of experiencing Devachan, it will have to reincarnate immediately.
X. But, as I understand it, the ego-Buddhi here equally represents both the forest and the personal minds of the trees. And if Buddhi is immortal, how can that which is similar to it, that is, Manas-taijasi,53 completely lose its consciousness until the day of a new incarnation? I can't understand it.
M. You cannot do this because you are confusing the abstract representation of the whole with its conditional changes in form; and therefore you confuse Manas-taijasi, the Buddhic light of the human soul, with the latter, i.e., the carnal soul. Remember that if it can be said of Buddhi that it is unquestionably immortal, the same cannot be said of Manas, much less Do of taijasi, which is an attribute. No post-mortem consciousness or Manas-Taijasi can exist apart from Buddhi, the divine soul, because the first (Manas) D is, in its lowest aspect, the characteristic attribute of the earthly individuality, and the second (taijasi) is identical with the first, and that it is the same Manas itself, only with the light of Buddhi reflected from it. In turn, Buddhi could only remain as an impersonal spirit without the element it borrows from the human soul, which conditions and makes of it in this illusory universe something, as it were, separate from the universal soul during the whole period of the cycle of incarnation. It would be more correct to say that Buddhi-Manas can neither die nor lose its self-consciousness in Eternity or the memory of its previous incarnations, in which both D, that is, the spiritual and human souls, were closely connected with each other. But this is not so in the case of the materialist, whose human soul not only receives nothing from the divine soul, but even refuses to acknowledge its existence. You can hardly apply this axiom to the attributes and characteristics of the human soul, for that would be like saying that since your divine soul is immortal, the flush on your cheek must also be immortal; although this blush, like taijasi or spiritual radiance, is just a transient phenomenon.
X. Have I correctly understood your words that we should not confuse in our minds the noumenon with the phenomenon, the cause with the effect?
M. I say this and repeat that, being limited to one Manas or human soul, the radiation of taijasi itself becomes nothing more than a matter of time; because immortality and consciousness after death become for the earthly individuality of a person simply a conditioned attribute, since they completely depend on the conditions and beliefs created by the human soul itself during the life of his body. Karma acts incessantly; we reap in our later life only those fruits that we ourselves have sown, or rather created, during our earthly existence.
X. But if my ego, after the destruction of my body, can plunge into a state of complete unconsciousness, then where will the punishment for the sins of my past life be?
M. Our philosophy teaches that karmic retribution comprehends the ego only in a subsequent incarnation. After death, it receives only a recompense for the undeserved suffering it endured during the existence just past. i54 The full punishment that comes after death, even for materialists, thus consists in the absence of any reward and in the complete loss of conscious bliss and peace. Karma D is the child of the earthly ego, the fruit of the activity of the tree, which is an objective personality visible to everyone, as well as the fruit of all thoughts and even impulses of the spiritual "I"; besides this, karma D is also a tender mother who heals the wounds inflicted on her in a previous life before she begins to torment this ego by inflicting new wounds on it. If it can be said that there is no mental or physical suffering in the life of a mortal man that was not the fruit and consequence of some sins in this or a previous existence, and on the other hand, since he does not retain the slightest memory of this in his present life and feels undeserving of such punishment, but sincerely believes that he suffers through no fault of his own, D then this alone is absolutely enough to give the human soul the right to complete comfort, peace and bliss in its posthumous existence. Death always comes to our spiritual egos as a liberator and friend. For a materialist who, despite his materialism, was not a bad person, the interval between two lives will be like the undisturbed peaceful sleep of a child, either completely dreamless, or with dreams of which he has no clear idea. For the believer, it will be a dream as vivid as life itself, full of real visions and bliss. As for a bad and rude person, whether he is a materialist or anything else, he will immediately be reborn and will suffer on earth as in hell. The possibility of entering Avicii D is extremely rare.
X. As far as I remember, successive incarnations of the Sutratmya55 are likened in some Upanishads to the life of a person, periodically fluctuating between sleep and wakefulness. This doesn't seem very clear to me, and I'll explain to you why. For a person who wakes up, a new day begins. But the man himself remains the same, mentally and bodily, as he was the day before; while at each new rebirth there is a complete change not only of his outer shell, sex and personality, but even of his mental and psychic faculties. Thus, this comparison does not seem entirely correct. A person who gets up from sleep remembers quite clearly what he did yesterday, the day before yesterday, and even several months and years ago. But none of us has the slightest recollection of a previous life or of any fact or event connected with it ... I can forget in the morning what I saw in a dream last night, but still I know that I slept, and I have confidence that I was alive while sleeping; but what recollection do I have of my last rebirth? How can you reconcile all this?
M. Still, some people do remember their last rebirths. This is what the arhats call Samma-Sambuddha, or the knowledge of a whole series of successive rebirths.
X. But mere mortals like us, who have not attained Samma-Sambuddha, how could they understand this comparison?
M. By studying this issue and trying to better understand the features of the three states of sleep. Sleep D is a general and unchanging law that both man and animals obey, but there are different types of sleep, and an even more diverse set of dreams and visions.
X. Let it be so. But this takes us away from our subject. Let us return to the materialist who, without denying dreams, which he certainly could hardly do, nevertheless denies immortality in general, and the preservation of his own individuality D in particular.
M. The materialist is right in at least one thing, because for someone who does not have inner perception and faith, immortality is also impossible. In order to live in the world of consciousness, a person must first of all believe in such a life during his earthly existence. On these two aphorisms of the Secret Science the whole philosophy of posthumous consciousness and the immortality of the soul is built. The ego always gets what it deserves. After the destruction of the body, either a period of perfectly clear consciousness sets in, or a state of chaotic dreams, or a dream completely devoid of dreams and indistinguishable from destruction; and these are the three states of consciousness. Physiologists see the cause of dreams and visions in the unconscious preparation for them that occurs during wakefulness; why can't the same be said about dreams after death? I repeat that D's death is a dream. After dying begins, a representation takes place before the spiritual eyes of the soul, corresponding to what was unconsciously created in advance by ourselves; the practical completion of correct beliefs or illusions that we have created ourselves. A follower of the Methodist church will be a Methodist, a Muslim D a Muslim, of course, only for a while, D in a perfect illusory paradise created by each person. These are the posthumous fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our belief in the immortality of consciousness, or the absence of such a belief, is unable to affect the unconditional reality of this very fact, since it exists; but belief or disbelief in immortality, concerning the continued existence or disappearance of individual entities, D cannot but affect each of these entities. Well, how do you begin to understand this?
X. I think so. A materialist who does not believe in anything that he cannot be convinced by his five senses or scientific reasoning, and who denies any spiritual manifestations, accepts life as the only thing that has consciousness. Thus, according to their faith, this is exactly what will happen to them. They will lose their personal egos and fall into a dreamless sleep until a new awakening. Is it so?
M. Almost so. Let us recall the universal esoteric doctrine of two forms of conscious being: earthly and spiritual. The latter must be regarded as real from the fact that it is the realm of the eternal, unchangeable, immortal cause of everything; while the reincarnating ego dresses up in new clothes, quite unlike those of the previous incarnation, in which everything but the spiritual prototype is condemned to such a profound change that no trace is left of it.
X.Stop!.. Can the consciousness of my earthly egos perish not only for a while, like the consciousness of a materialist, but also to such an extent as not to leave any trace?
M. According to the doctrine, it must perish, and in its entirety, D everything, with the exception of that principle, which, united with the monad, thus becomes a purely spiritual and indestructible essence, one with it in Eternity. But in the case of an undoubted materialist, in whose personal "I" there is no reflection of Buddhi, how can he transfer even one particle of this earthly personality to infinity? Your spiritual self is immortal; but from your present ego, it can carry into the afterlife only that which is worthy of immortality, namely, only the fragrance of a flower that death has mowed down.
X. Well, what about the flower, the earthly "I"?
M. The flower, like all past and future flowers that bloom and die, and will bloom again on the mother plant, that is, the Sutratma, like all children of one Buddhi root, will turn into dust. Your present Self, as you yourself know, is not the body that is now sitting in front of me, and not what I would call Manas-Sutratma, but D Sutratma-Buddhi.
X. But this does not explain to me at all why you call life after death immortal, infinite and real, and earthly life E just a ghost or illusion, since even this afterlife has boundaries, although much wider than those of earthly life.
M. Without a doubt. The spiritual ego of man moves in Eternity like a pendulum, in the hours of life and death. But, if these hours, marking the periods of earthly and spiritual life, are limited in their duration, and if the very number of such stages between sleep and wakefulness, illusion and reality, has its beginning and its end in Eternity, then the spiritual "pilgrim", on the contrary, is eternal. Therefore, the hours of his afterlife, D when he is disembodied, he stands face to face with the truth, and not the illusion of his temporary earthly existences during that journey, which we call the "cycle of rebirth", D is the only reality according to our ideas. Such intervals do not prevent the self-cultivating ego from steadily, albeit gradually and slowly, following the path leading to its final transformation when that ego reaches its goal and becomes the divine ALL. These intervals and stages help the movement towards this end result instead of hindering it; and without such time-limited intervals the divine ego would never have reached its ultimate goal. This ego is the actor, and his many and varied incarnations are the roles he plays. Will you refer to these roles, along with their costumes, as the personality of the actor himself? Like this actor, the ego is forced to play many roles during the Cycle of Necessity up to the threshold of Para-nirvana, including those that are unpleasant for him. But just as a bee collects honey from each flower, leaving it behind as food for worms, so does our spiritual individuality, whether we call it Sutratma or ego. From each earthly personality into which karma forces her to be reborn, she collects nectar, consisting only of spiritual qualities and self-consciousness, and unites them all into a single whole, which arises from the "chrysalis", like the victorious Dhyan Chogan. And so much the worse for those earthly personalities from whom she cannot collect anything. Such personalities will certainly not be able to consciously continue their earthly existence.
X. Thus, it follows from this that immortality is still conditional for an earthly personality. Isn't immortality itself then conditional?
M. Not at all. However, it cannot be related to something that does not exist. For everything that exists as Sat and constantly strives towards Sat, immortality and Eternity are absolutes. Matter D is the opposite pole of the spirit, and both of them are one. The essence of all this, i.e. Spirit, Force and Matter, or these three in unity, has neither end nor beginning; but the form that this triple unity takes on during its incarnation, its appearance, is, of course, only an illusion of our personal conceptions. Thus, we should call existence after death the only real one, while earthly life, including earthly individuality, should be considered as a phantom of the realm of illusions.
X. But why, then, in this case, not to call, on the contrary, a dream a reality, and awakening D an illusion?
M. Because we use this expression to help understand the issue, and from the point of view of earthly ideas, it is quite correct.
X. However, I can't understand. If the future life is based on justice and is a just recompense for all our earthly suffering, then in the case of materialists, many of whom are completely honest and merciful people, nothing should remain of their personality but the remnants of withered flowers!
M. Nobody ever said that. No materialist, if he is a good person, even if he is not a believer, can die forever in the fullness of his spiritual individuality. What has been said, D is that the consciousness of some life may disappear in whole or in part; in the case of a consistent materialist, no trace of this unbelieving personality will remain in the series of rebirths.
X. But for the ego this is not annihilation?
M. Of course not. One may sleep like a dead sleep during a railway journey, skip one or more stations without the slightest recollection or awareness of them, wake up at a station and continue the journey, remembering other stopping points until the end of his journey, when his destination is reached. We have mentioned three types of dreams: without dreams, with chaotic dreams, and with dreams so real that for a sleeping person his dreams become a complete reality. If you believe in the latter, why can't you believe in the former? The state that a person will receive after death corresponds to what he believes in and what he expects. One who does not expect life after death will receive absolute emptiness, reaching to complete disappearance in the interval between two rebirths. This is just the execution of the program that we have been talking about, and which is created by the materialist himself. But, as you say, there are different kinds of materialists. The immoral egoist who has never shed a single tear for anyone but himself, thereby adding to his disbelief also complete indifference to the whole world, must forever leave his individuality on the verge of death. His individuality has no sympathy for the surrounding world, and therefore he has nothing to cling to the thread of the Sutratma, and any connection between them breaks with his last breath. For such a materialist there will be no Devachanic state, and the Sutratma will immediately be reborn. But that materialist who was not deceived in anything but his unbelief will oversleep only one station. In addition, the time will come when the ex-materialist will feel himself in Eternity and will probably repent that he has taken at least one day, or station, from eternal life.
X. Still, wouldn't it be more correct to say that D's death is a birth into a new life, or another return to the threshold of eternity?
M. You can, if you want. But just remember that births are different, and that there are births of "stillborn" beings that are mistakes. Also, due to your established Western ideas about material life, the words "living" and "existing" are completely inapplicable to the purely subjective state of post-mortem existence. It is because of such ideas, except in some philosophers, whom few people read and who themselves cannot give a clear picture of it, D all your ideas about life and death eventually become so limited. On the one hand, they led to crude materialism, and on the other hand, to the still material conceptions of another life, which the Spiritualists reflected in their Summerland. There, the souls of men eat, drink, and marry, and live in a Paradise almost as sensuous as Muhammad's Paradise, but even less philosophical. The common conception of uneducated Christians is no better, but they are as material as possible. As for the almost disembodied angels, copper pipes, golden harps, the streets of heavenly cities cobbled with jewels, and hellish flames, it all looks like a scene from a Christmas pantomime. Your difficulties in understanding are due to these narrow ideas. And precisely because the life of the incorporeal soul, while possessing all vitality and reality, as in some dreams, is devoid of any gross objective form of earthly life, Eastern philosophers compared it to visions during sleep.
This is explained in more detail in The Secret Doctrine.
Ishvara D is the collective consciousness of the manifested deity, Brahma, that is, the collective consciousness of the Host of the Dhyan Chohans; and Prajna D is their individual wisdom.
Taijasi means Manas who emits light due to the oneness with Buddhi, Manas, who is luminous due to the radiation of the divine soul. Therefore, Manas-taijasi can be defined as radiating intelligence; human reason glowing thanks to the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas D is a representation of the divine sum of human intellect and self-consciousness.
Some Theosophists have objected to this phrase, but it is the D words of the Masters, and the meaning attached to the word "unmerited" is as given above. In "T.I.O. Brochure" Nya5o 6 a phrase was used, subsequently criticized in Lucifer, which intended to express the same idea. However, it was awkward in its form and open to direct criticism; but essentially the idea was that people often suffer the consequences of the actions of other people D and for that suffering they certainly deserve compensation. If it is fair to say that everything that happens to us cannot be caused by anything but karma, D or the direct or indirect effect of a cause, D it would be a big mistake to believe that evil or good things happen to us only due to our personal karma. (see below).
Our immortal principle of reincarnation, together with the manas memories of previous lives, is called Sutratma, which literally means Thread-Soul, since long series of human lives strung on the same thread are like pearls. Manas must become taijasi, radiant, before it can "hang" on the Sutratma like a pearl on its thread, and acquire a complete and absolute perception of itself in Eternity. As mentioned above, too close connection of the human soul with the earthly mind leads to the complete loss of this radiation.
"Lucifer", January 1889