Julia Voznesenskaya
My posthumous adventures
MYSTERY OF DEATH
Introductory article
My soul, my soul, rise, that you sleep,
The end is approaching, and the need for you to speak:
Arise, then, may Christ God have mercy on you,
Izhe is everywhere, and they fulfilled everything.
The Canon of the Separation of the Soul from the Body
In our time, more and more people, not satisfied with the materialistic descriptions of the world, rush in search of a different, spiritual world, or, as it is also called, "the other world." Advertising propaganda by the media of all kinds of religious movements, sects, occult societies and practicing magicians makes it easy, without obstacles, to penetrate into the life of any of us, those who are at best swindlers, and at worst - representatives of sects and teachings that can destroy forever not only human life, but also the human soul.
The Orthodox Church always warns her children about this, as well as all those laity who have not yet converted to Christ. Curiosity pushes some in search of "spirituality", many, having become disillusioned with their lives, try to find solace in some kind of religious or occult teaching, and some kind of misfortune pushes many to this. Most often, such people have lost their closest, dearest people - a child, a husband, a lover ... It is terrible to realize that you are forever separated from a dear person, that inevitable death awaits you in the end. Powerless despair seizes a person at the thought of the absurdity of life, which will have to end ingloriously, while one could live and live ...
How many have fallen into this abyss,
I'll spread it away!
The day will come when I will disappear
From the surface of the earth. (…)
And there will be life with its daily bread,
With forgetfulness of the day.
And everything will be - as if under the sky
And there was no me!
– wrote Marina Tsvetaeva. And these lines are close to each of us, the feeling that dictated them is understandable. We are all doomed to die.
But Christianity has proclaimed to all mankind a truly good news - the news of our personal immortality, of eternal life, of victory over death. What does it mean?
It is in Christianity that we find the doctrine of personal immortality, of the eternal existence of the individual human soul. Holy Scripture understands bodily death as a transition from one state to another, from one form of being to another.
The Orthodox Church teaches us that the death of a person is the separation of his soul from the body, and is called in Holy Scripture by various names: the exodus, the end, the removal of the soul from its prison, the release from the bonds of the body, the departure, the dormition, etc. With this separation of the two components that make up a person, that is, soul and body, his body returns to the earth like dust, and his spirit returns to God (Eccl. 12:7).
The cause of man's death lies in his fall into sin, since man, by his disobedience, let death into the world. Death is the limit by which the time of exploits ends for a person, and the time of retribution begins, so that after death neither repentance nor correction is possible for us.
In other words, death is not at all the disappearance of a person, but only a transition to a spiritual state, which is the ultimate goal of earthly life. With death, the moral development of a person stops, any further change is excluded, and moral retribution begins for everything that we have done in our life here in this world.
But our immortal souls, even after death, keep their self-consciousness, spiritual forces and will intact, remember the circumstances, persons, events of their earthly life. That is, we remain ourselves even after death, not dissolving into a faceless nothing and not disappearing without a trace. Our bodies will turn to dust, and our souls will await the Last Judgment, staying, depending on their spiritual state at the time of death, either in paradise, with the souls of the righteous, or in hell, along with demons and the souls of sinners. We, like old garments, will put off our flesh and pass into the afterlife, waiting for the resurrection of all the dead, when “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also by His Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom. 8:11)
But death remains deeply unnatural. It is alien to us, it evokes horror, for death was not part of God's eternal plan for creation. God created us not to die, but to live. Moreover, God created us as an indivisible whole.
By death, a person is painfully cut into two parts, his components, and after death there is no longer a person, his soul and body exist separately. Separating body and soul, death thereby forcibly destroys the unity of our human nature. Yes, death awaits us all, but the Orthodox Church tells us that death is unnatural. It is monstrous and tragic when we see it from the outside, it causes a protest of our whole nature, hopeless horror when we ourselves find ourselves in front of her face. Christ Himself prayed for her escape, wept over the dead Lazarus. We live in a world saturated with death, the death that came after our falling away from the Source of Eternal Life - from God.
Why did the Lord allow death?
Death is God's gift to people. It is a gift of His mercy and compassion. For us humans, eternal life, poisoned by suffering and sin, would turn into eternal torment. Unrestrained by anything, we would sink more and more into the abyss of sin brought to life by our own will. We would become like Satan himself and his demons, which would turn eternal life into eternal death and endless torment. After all, it is this eternal life-suffering, poisoned by sin, that will befall those who, at the Last Judgment, will turn out to be incapable of living with God due to their evil deeds. Each person after death will remain the same as she found him, for this earthly life of ours is determined for us to test who we are with: with God and saints, or with Satan and demons.
And so, God gave us a way out. He shares the union of soul and body, in order to then recreate it anew, reunite it in bodily resurrection on the day of the Last Judgment, and thus again bring the renewed person to the fullness of life. As Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia once said: “By means of bodily death, the Lord brings home his child.”
And let death itself be disgusting, abnormal, unnatural, but Christians see in it the hope and blessing of God - after all, it returns us to the Father's house. And it is not for nothing that in the Orthodox tradition we call death dormition. The quiet sleep of the body, while the soul awaits the glorious resurrection on its Day.
And everything in the life of a true Christian is the expectation of death and preparation for it, because it is our exit and resolution from the bonds of the body. Rest from spiritual warfare and a meeting with Christ and with our loved ones who have departed earlier. There the husband will meet with his wife, and the mother with the child. There we will see in glory our God, Creator and Savior.
And the whole life of a Christian is following this hope, the path to God, the return of the wanderer home.
What awaits the soul after death? According to the teaching and Tradition of the Orthodox Church, after death, our souls await a private judgment, different from the universal Last Judgment that will take place at the end of the world. How a private judgment takes place, Holy Scripture does not describe. But a figurative representation of this judgment, based on Holy Tradition and in agreement with Holy Scripture, we find in the doctrine of ordeals, which has existed in the Orthodox Church since ancient times.
We find the essence of the teaching in the word of St. Cyril of Alexandria about the exodus of the soul, excerpts from which we will quote: “When our soul is separated from the body, they will appear before us, on the one hand, the hosts and the forces of heaven, on the other, the powers of darkness, evil peacekeepers, air tax collectors (the publican is a tax collector. Note O. G.), tormentors and accusers of our deeds ... Seeing them, the soul will be indignant, shudder, tremble, in confusion and horror will seek protection from the angels of God, but, being received by the holy angels, and under their roof the air space flowing and ascending on high, she will meet various ordeals (as if some kind of outposts or customs, on which duties are collected), which will block her path to the Kingdom, will stop and restrain her striving for it. At each of these ordeals, an account of special sins will be required. (...) Briefly, every passion of the soul, every sin in a similar way will have its publicans and torturers (...) And if for her pious and God-pleasing life she turns out to be worthy, then the angels will perceive her, and then she will fearlessly flow to the kingdom, accompanied by holy powers. (...) On the contrary, if it turns out that she spent her life in carelessness and intemperance, she will hear this terrible voice: let the ungodly be taken, let him not see the glory of the Lord (Is. 26:10) (...); then the angels of God will leave her and take terrible demons (...); and the soul, bound by inextricable bonds, will fall into a dark and gloomy land, into the places of hell, into the prisons of the underworld and the dungeons of hell.
Yulia N. Voznesenskaya
MY POST-DEATH ADVENTURES
“My Posthumous Adventures” is a story-parable that figuratively tells about what awaits us after death.
In the amazing and sometimes terrible adventures of the main character of the book in the afterlife, the reader discovers the spiritual truths preserved by the Orthodox Church. What are the ordeals of the soul, what awaits us after death, what temptations lie in wait for us - this is what My Posthumous Adventures tells about - a collection of grains of spiritual wisdom and experience of many people.
You are given to know the secrets
Kingdom of God
and the rest - in parables.
God bless!
OK. 8:10
Chapter 1
My posthumous adventures began with the fact that I fell from the fourth floor and crashed.
The police, as I later found out, had two versions - just suicide and murder disguised as suicide.
Both versions had nothing to do with reality, and even as hypotheticals they were not worth much, since they were based solely on the testimony of my émigré girlfriends. The version of suicide was as simple as a woman's novel, and in a nutshell it boiled down to the fact that my husband left me, and in response I threw myself from the balcony. If I really reacted this way to Georgy's betrayals, there would not be enough balconies in our entire apartment building.
The second version - murder disguised as suicide - did not fit for the simple reason that George was not suitable for the role of a murderer: like almost all fornicators and women's favorites, he was, in essence, an adult child, capriciously seeking admiration and affection, weak and a little hysterical, but essentially helpless and kind. He avoided the dangers on his life path, avoided obstacles and never went to extremes.
Everything was much easier. Our cat Watermelon liked to go to the toilet in nature, and my boxes of flowers, suspended from the balcony lattice - from above and below, served as one for him. It was worth leaving the balcony door open for exactly a minute, as he immediately sneaked into the luxurious thickets of petunias and there with pleasure spoiled. And that would be half the trouble: but, having done indecency and sensing retribution, the vile defiler of innocent flowers cowardly tried to hide the traces of the crime, while clods of earth and scolded branches of petunias flew in different directions.
No educational measures, up to beating the head with the Russian Thought folded four times, could cure the cat of his favorite vice.
On that ill-fated morning, I went out onto the balcony several times so as not to miss the taxi ordered in the evening, and simply forgot to close the balcony door behind me for the last time. The prodigal husband grabbed a travel bag with foreign gifts for his, of course, unknown to me, Moscow girlfriend and went to the elevator, and I escorted him out the door with the usual parting words: don’t even think about coming back and don’t forget to put on a warm sweater before boarding - according to the forecast, it’s cold in Moscow and rain. He just as habitually threw that everything would be fine, he would put on a sweater and call when to meet him. After that, I went to the bedroom, cried a little and fell asleep, because I had an almost continuous night of showdown behind me.
I was awakened by the heart-rending meow of Watermelon. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the balcony, from where his cries for help flew.
The stunner cat, taking advantage of the open door and the silence in the house, this time got to the bottom drawer, did his dirty work there, but couldn’t get back: a thick belly, for which, in combination with stripes, he was nicknamed Watermelon, didn’t let him to climb between the bars of the lattice, and spreading petunias prevented climbing over the top. I leaned over the railing and grabbed the cat by the scruff, and he was so frightened that, for the sake of fidelity, he twisted and grabbed my hand with all twenty claws. I twitched in pain and, trying to catch him with my other hand, leaned too much over the railing: my legs almost left the floor, and the cowardly Watermelon, such rubbish, did not lose his head at that decisive moment and jumped up on my shoulders and back and thereby saved his striped skin, he pushed me down. I completely lost my balance and flew from the fourth floor upside down. I hasten to reassure the zealots of the welfare of pets: after I was taken to the hospital with howls in an ambulance, and the police broke into the apartment, our neighbor Frau Hoffmann took custody of the poor orphaned cat, and she did well with her.
It was bad for her geraniums.
The lilac bush, which I luckily hit, was old and spreading - maybe that softened the blow a little. After all, I didn’t break soft-boiled, but only broke half of the bones and smashed my head under a nut.
When I woke up in the intensive care unit and saw my mortal remains surrounded by doctors in the mirrored ceiling above me, I once again admired the successes of German medicine: a whole team of doctors treated my unfortunate members! Some of them put broken ribs back into my chest, sticking out of it like springs from an old canapé, others screwed some screws and dowels into the crumbling bones of my legs, others dug into my open stomach and sewed something there - and I watched everything that was happening in the mirror above her and did not feel any pain or fear - only complete and absolute peace.
I looked at the reflection of my face as it appeared between the green tops of the doctors bending over me: I wanted to see how my appearance corresponded to this medicinal bliss - and that's when it all started for real. I saw my face, but it was the face of a corpse: white to cyanosis, the nose was pointed, blue lips stuck to the teeth, between which a transparent tube stuck out, and something hissed and gurgled in it. I felt disgusted with myself - I was always frightened by the faces of the dead, and then my own ... But the worst thing was that my eyes were closed - so how do I see all this ?!
In fright, I jerked to the side and ... found myself hanging between two lamps under the ceiling. And in an instant everything turned upside down: there was no mirror above me - it was I myself upstairs and looked from there at my own body stretched out below. I was not afraid, because the thought of death had not yet visited me, but I experienced a slight disappointment: it turns out that German medicine has nothing to do with it, and for getting rid of pain I have to thank nature and some of my own defense mechanisms. Well, now everything is clear: this is a dream, this is nonsense, I fly in a dream. In that case, why not fly somewhere nicer? So I thought and immediately carried out my intention, flying out through the door opened by someone into the hospital corridor.
Once under the ceiling of the corridor - for some reason I was always pulled up - I found that a rather thick luminous cord stretched from me through the intensive care door. I thought that I had accidentally dragged some kind of hose from the resuscitation equipment behind me.
I wonder what I actually look like?
I tried to look around myself, and although I clearly had a vision, even sharper than in reality, and I did not feel my own eyes, but I had only to wish, and I saw myself from the side: it was the former, but only translucent, something like a balloon in the shape of my body. The comparison that came to mind was further emphasized by this cord coming out of the middle of my chest, which, by the way, in this form did not have any protruding ribs or any other damage. On the contrary, I felt absolutely healthy and full of energy.
There was a large window at the far end of the corridor, I decided to fly to it. Soaring under the ceiling was a pleasure, but I could not fly further than the middle of the corridor: the cord to which I was tied was stretched, and I felt a burning pain in my chest when I tried to tear it away from me.
I had to bend over and turn around.
I flew past the intensive care unit and turned the corner of the corridor. There was a corner for visitors: a coffee table, a sofa and two armchairs. My friend Natasha was sitting in one of them and talking to someone on her mobile phone, shedding copious tears and greedily smoking a cigarette. Of course, the conversation was about me:
– The doctors said that there was practically no hope. Poor Anka! I always knew this marriage would end in disaster!
- Natasha, stop talking, give me a better cigarette! I yelled cheerfully from under the ceiling. Paying no attention to me at all, she continued her conversation. I sank lower, waved my hand in front of her nose, then touched her shoulder - and my hand went through it like a sunbeam through water. Very surprised, I stopped my attempts and began to listen to Natasha's chatter.
- Well, of course, she is in intensive care and no one is allowed to see her. She is unconscious.
George is not here, no one knows where he is at all. Looks like he got away, you bastard. The police found me from her notebook, I told them everything about their family life, and now they are looking for him as a possible killer. And I think he's a murderer even if Anna killed herself, I'll tell you what, my dear...
I got bored and disgusted - and this is my best friend! He's been sitting here for a couple of hours, judging by the number of cigarette butts and lipstick in the ashtray, crying for me, but still gossiping. I took it and flew away.
I got tired. Hanging out under the ceiling was already boring, I was tired of this dream, but I didn’t know how to wake up from it. An unbelievably acute feeling of loneliness seized me. I decided to return to the intensive care unit, closer to my body, and I succeeded without difficulty.
There were no more doctors in the ward, only the nurse on duty was sitting at a table in the corner. My body lay very calmly, my chest rose and fell evenly, but, looking at the wires and tubes that entangled me, I realized that life in this body is warm only thanks to medical equipment. A luminous cord connected me to my motionless body below, and then it just dawned on me: this is not a dream or delirium, this is all happening in reality.
It became clear to me that in fact I had died, an artificial life was maintained in my body, and my soul, that is, my precious I, had already left it, and only this luminous thread still connected me with it. And I felt so sorry for Anna lying down there, helpless, bandaged and stuffed with needles and tubes! But there was nothing I could do to help myself, and I again wanted to be away from myself, and I again flew into the hospital corridor in order to feel even more acutely the utter loneliness that gripped me.
They appeared at the far end of the corridor, where the window had been. First I heard their voices, very strange voices: it was like a group of adults conferring about something very important in squeaky children's voices. I looked in that direction and at first saw only dark silhouettes against the window, not tall, not more than a meter, squat and humpbacked. They moved in my direction and found themselves under the light of corridor lamps, and then I saw them and immediately decided: aliens! [At about. Seraphim Rose, in the book “The Soul After Death”, examines in detail the post-mortem experiences in which our contemporaries saw precisely aliens, “luminous beings”, etc. O. Seraphim explains that “the reason is that the dying is waiting and ready to see. Christians of past centuries, who had the living water of "faith", were afraid of hell, and whose conscience eventually convicted them, often saw demons before they died, "..." modern "enlightened" people see what is consistent with their comfortable life and beliefs that exclude the fear of hell and belief in demons. In fact, the demons themselves offer such temptations that correspond to the spiritual state or expectations of the dying.” (Quoted from: Father Seraphim (Rose). Soul after death. - St. Petersburg, 1994, p. 44). – Hereinafter Editor's Notes.]
Whether or not I believed in UFOs before this meeting, I don’t know, rather, I just didn’t really think about it, but information on this topic accumulated in my head, settled decently, like any modern reader and viewer. In any case, these creatures did not arouse fear in me, rather curiosity, slightly tinged with anxiety. If we assume that such meetings happen, then why shouldn't this happen to me one day?
The naked, stocky bodies of the aliens were covered with a rather unpleasant-looking gray-pink folded skin, large heads sat deep in the shoulders, and in front turned into elongated faces, which would be more accurately defined by the word “snouts”.
At first glance they looked like some kind of exotic animal, something like a cross between pigs and wolves, but in large round eyes, surrounded by dark folds of skin and devoid of eyelashes, they definitely sparkled with sharp intelligence.
The aliens stood under me and continued to confer, muttering something in their shrill-hoarse language, not even remotely resembling any of the earthly languages I heard. It was clearly about me, because they not only looked in my direction, but also pointed at me with their upper limbs, similar to children's hands in carnival wolf gloves with claws, quite, I must say, frightening in appearance.
Feeling some disgust, I strictly reined in myself: but-but, only without cosmic racism, please! After all, I don’t know how I myself look in their eyes, but even in the human eye, I now, presumably, look more like a humanoid jellyfish than a not badly preserved female forty-something years old.
One of the aliens, who was head and shoulders above the others, took a step forward and spoke to me in Russian, pronouncing the words mechanically, like a robot:
- We've come for you. You must come with us immediately.
I was silent, not knowing what to answer. He, too, paused, then said without any expression:
– We are very glad to meet you. We are full of friendliness.
Very cute! First, the order to go with them to who knows where, and only then a greeting. I decided to be independent.
- Until I find out who you are and where you are inviting me, I will not move. Besides, I'm attached to him. Not to the place, but to my body.
MYSTERY OF DEATH
Introductory article
My soul, my soul, rise, that you sleep,
The end is approaching, and the need for you to speak:
Arise, then, may Christ God have mercy on you,
Izhe is everywhere, and they fulfilled everything.
The Canon of the Separation of the Soul from the Body
The Orthodox Church always warns her children about this, as well as all those laity who have not yet converted to Christ. Curiosity pushes some in search of "spirituality", many, having become disillusioned with their lives, try to find solace in some kind of religious or occult teaching, and some kind of misfortune pushes many to this. Most often, such people have lost their closest, dearest people - a child, a husband, a lover ... It is terrible to realize that you are forever separated from a dear person, that inevitable death awaits you in the end. Powerless despair seizes a person at the thought of the absurdity of life, which will have to end ingloriously, while one could live and live ...
How many have fallen into this abyss,
I'll spread it away!
The day will come when I will disappear
From the surface of the earth. (…)
And there will be life with its daily bread,
With forgetfulness of the day.
And everything will be - as if under the sky
And there was no me!
– wrote Marina Tsvetaeva. And these lines are close to each of us, the feeling that dictated them is understandable. We are all doomed to die.
But Christianity has proclaimed to all mankind a truly good news - the news of our personal immortality, of eternal life, of victory over death. What does it mean?
It is in Christianity that we find the doctrine of personal immortality, of the eternal existence of the individual human soul. Holy Scripture understands bodily death as a transition from one state to another, from one form of being to another.
The Orthodox Church teaches us that the death of a person is the separation of his soul from the body, and is called in Holy Scripture by various names: the exodus, the end, the removal of the soul from its prison, the release from the bonds of the body, the departure, the dormition, etc. With this separation of the two components that make up a person, that is, soul and body, his body returns to the earth like dust, and his spirit returns to God (Eccl. 12:7).
The cause of man's death lies in his fall into sin, since man, by his disobedience, let death into the world. Death is the limit by which the time of exploits ends for a person, and the time of retribution begins, so that after death neither repentance nor correction is possible for us.
In other words, death is not at all the disappearance of a person, but only a transition to a spiritual state, which is the ultimate goal of earthly life. With death, the moral development of a person stops, any further change is excluded, and moral retribution begins for everything that we have done in our life here in this world.
But our immortal souls, even after death, keep their self-consciousness, spiritual forces and will intact, remember the circumstances, persons, events of their earthly life. That is, we remain ourselves even after death, not dissolving into a faceless nothing and not disappearing without a trace. Our bodies will turn to dust, and our souls will await the Last Judgment, staying, depending on their spiritual state at the time of death, either in paradise, with the souls of the righteous, or in hell, along with demons and the souls of sinners. We, like old garments, will put off our flesh and pass into the afterlife, waiting for the resurrection of all the dead, when “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also by His Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom. 8:11)
But death remains deeply unnatural. It is alien to us, it evokes horror, for death was not part of God's eternal plan for creation. God created us not to die, but to live. Moreover, God created us as an indivisible whole.
By death, a person is painfully cut into two parts, his components, and after death there is no longer a person, his soul and body exist separately. Separating body and soul, death thereby forcibly destroys the unity of our human nature. Yes, death awaits us all, but the Orthodox Church tells us that death is unnatural. It is monstrous and tragic when we see it from the outside, it causes a protest of our whole nature, hopeless horror when we ourselves find ourselves in front of her face. Christ Himself prayed for her escape, wept over the dead Lazarus. We live in a world saturated with death, the death that came after our falling away from the Source of Eternal Life - from God.
Why did the Lord allow death?
Death is God's gift to people. It is a gift of His mercy and compassion. For us humans, eternal life, poisoned by suffering and sin, would turn into eternal torment. Unrestrained by anything, we would sink more and more into the abyss of sin brought to life by our own will. We would become like Satan himself and his demons, which would turn eternal life into eternal death and endless torment. After all, it is this eternal life-suffering, poisoned by sin, that will befall those who, at the Last Judgment, will turn out to be incapable of living with God due to their evil deeds. Each person after death will remain the same as she found him, for this earthly life of ours is determined for us to test who we are with: with God and saints, or with Satan and demons.
And so, God gave us a way out. He shares the union of soul and body, in order to then recreate it anew, reunite it in bodily resurrection on the day of the Last Judgment, and thus again bring the renewed person to the fullness of life. As Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia once said: “By means of bodily death, the Lord brings home his child.”
And let death itself be disgusting, abnormal, unnatural, but Christians see in it the hope and blessing of God - after all, it returns us to the Father's house. And it is not for nothing that in the Orthodox tradition we call death dormition. The quiet sleep of the body, while the soul awaits the glorious resurrection on its Day.
And everything in the life of a true Christian is the expectation of death and preparation for it, because it is our exit and resolution from the bonds of the body. Rest from spiritual warfare and a meeting with Christ and with our loved ones who have departed earlier. There the husband will meet with his wife, and the mother with the child. There we will see in glory our God, Creator and Savior.
And the whole life of a Christian is following this hope, the path to God, the return of the wanderer home.
What awaits the soul after death? According to the teaching and Tradition of the Orthodox Church, after death, our souls await a private judgment, different from the universal Last Judgment that will take place at the end of the world. How a private judgment takes place, Holy Scripture does not describe. But a figurative representation of this judgment, based on Holy Tradition and in agreement with Holy Scripture, we find in the doctrine of ordeals, which has existed in the Orthodox Church since ancient times.
We find the essence of the teaching in the word of St. Cyril of Alexandria about the exodus of the soul, excerpts from which we will quote: “When our soul is separated from the body, they will appear before us, on the one hand, the hosts and the forces of heaven, on the other, the powers of darkness, evil peacekeepers, air tax collectors (the publican is a tax collector. Note O. G.), tormentors and accusers of our deeds ... Seeing them, the soul will be indignant, shudder, tremble, in confusion and horror will seek protection from the angels of God, but, being received by the holy angels, and under their roof the air space flowing and ascending on high, she will meet various ordeals (as if some kind of outposts or customs, on which duties are collected), which will block her path to the Kingdom, will stop and restrain her striving for it. At each of these ordeals, an account of special sins will be required. (...) Briefly, every passion of the soul, every sin in a similar way will have its publicans and torturers (...) And if for her pious and God-pleasing life she turns out to be worthy, then the angels will perceive her, and then she will fearlessly flow to the kingdom, accompanied by holy powers. (...) On the contrary, if it turns out that she spent her life in carelessness and intemperance, she will hear this terrible voice: let the ungodly be taken, let him not see the glory of the Lord (Is. 26:10) (...); then the angels of God will leave her and take terrible demons (...); and the soul, bound by inextricable bonds, will fall into a dark and gloomy land, into the places of hell, into the prisons of the underworld and the dungeons of hell.
Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) in his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology writes: “From here it is obvious that ordeals are an inevitable path by which all human souls, both evil and good, make their transition from temporary life to eternal lot; that in the ordeals, during this transition, each soul, in the presence of angels and demons, no doubt before the eye of the All-Seeing Judge(emphasis mine, O. G.), is gradually and in detail tortured in all her deeds, evil and good; that as a result of these tortures, this detailed report of each soul in its former life, good souls, justified in all ordeals, are ascended by angels directly to heavenly abodes, and sinful souls, detained in one or another ordeal, accused of ungodliness, are drawn according to the sentence of the invisible Judges by demons in their gloomy abodes. And, consequently, ordeals are nothing but a private judgment, which is performed on human souls and invisibly by the Lord Jesus himself through angels, admitting to it even the slanderers of our brethren, evil spirits - a judgment at which the soul is remembered and impartially evaluated before her all her affairs, and after which a certain fate is determined for her. (...) However, it should be noted that, just as in general in the depiction of the objects of the spiritual world for us, clothed with flesh, more or less sensual, human-like features are inevitable, so, in particular, they are inevitably admitted in the detailed teaching about the ordeals that the human soul after separation from the body. And therefore, one must firmly remember the instruction that the angel gave to the Monk Macarius of Alexandria, as soon as he began talking about the ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly things. It is necessary to represent the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but, as much as possible for us, in a spiritual sense, and not be attached to particulars, which in different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, with the unity of the main idea about the ordeals, appear different.
In conclusion of the reasoning about the private trial of the dead, one can add a very interesting thought of St. Theophan (Govorov) the Recluse: “No matter how wild the thought of ordeals seems to smart people, but they cannot be avoided. What are these collectors looking for in those passing by? Whether they don't have their product. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, from whom the heart is immaculate and alien to passions, in him they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality factor opposite to them will strike them as with lightning bolts. To this, one of the many scientists expressed the following thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons represent something charming instead of something terrible. Seductively charming, according to all kinds of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When the passions are expelled from the heart in the course of earthly life and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then no matter how beautiful you imagine, the soul, having no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not purified, then to what passion it sympathizes most, the soul rushes there. Demons take her like friends, and then they already know what to do with her. It means that it is very doubtful that the soul, as long as sympathies for the objects of any passions remain in it, would not be ashamed during ordeals. The shame here is that the soul itself throws itself into hell.” (St. Theophan the Recluse. Interpretation of Psalm 118.) Summarizing the above, we can say with confidence that after death our souls really expect a private judgment in the form of ordeals, where we will be given the opportunity to realize our whole life, and where we will be convicted first of all by themselves, by their own conscience and their deeds. If we don’t cleanse our souls here, in this life, with repentance and don’t leave our evil deeds, then we will follow the demons to hell, because we did their deeds, fulfilled their will, clung to them with our hearts.
And our Church, reminding us at the liturgy of death and judgment, prays to the Most Holy Trinity:
The rest of the time of our belly in peace and repentance, end, we ask the Lord.
The Christian death of our belly is painless, shameless, peaceful, and we ask for a good answer at the Terrible Judgment of Christ.
For those who remain here on earth, for the living, death is separation. But the Orthodox faith teaches us that this separation is temporary, and we all hope to be united again in our Lord Jesus Christ. For the Church, in the Church, the living and the dead are members of the same family. The abyss of death is not insurmountable due to the fact that all of us, both the living and the dead, are alive in Christ, and the souls of the departed hear our prayers. As if a person close to us is simply absent, where we cannot write or call.
© Grif LLC, design, 2014
© Lepta Kniga Publishing House LLC, text, illustrations, 2014
© Voznesenskaya Yu.N., 2014
© Tymoshenko Yu., 2014
It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, and to others in parables.
Lord bless!
My posthumous adventures began with the fact that I fell from the fourth floor and crashed.
The police, as I later found out, had two versions - just suicide and murder disguised as suicide. Both versions had nothing to do with reality, and even as hypotheticals they were not worth much, since they were based solely on the testimony of my émigré girlfriends. The version of suicide was as simple as a woman's novel, and in a nutshell it boiled down to the fact that my husband left me, and in response I threw myself from the balcony. If I really reacted this way to Georgy's betrayals, there would not be enough balconies in our entire apartment building.
The second version - a murder disguised as suicide - did not fit for the simple reason that George was not suitable for the role of a murderer: like almost all fornicators and women's favorites, he was, in essence, an adult child, capriciously seeking admiration and affection, weak and a little hysterical, but essentially helpless and kind. He avoided the dangers on his life path, avoided obstacles and never went to extremes.
Everything was much easier. Our cat Watermelon liked to go to the toilet in nature, and my boxes of flowers, suspended from the balcony lattice - from above and below, served as one for him. It was worth leaving the balcony door open for exactly a minute, as he immediately sneaked into the luxurious thickets of petunias and there with pleasure spoiled. And that would be half the trouble: but, having done indecency and sensing retribution, the vile defiler of innocent flowers cowardly tried to hide the traces of the crime, while clods of earth and scolded branches of petunias flew in different directions. No educational measures, up to beating the head with the Russian Thought folded four times, could cure the cat of his favorite vice.
On that ill-fated morning, I went out onto the balcony several times so as not to miss the taxi ordered in the evening, and simply forgot to close the balcony door behind me for the last time. The prodigal husband grabbed a travel bag with foreign gifts for his, of course, unknown to me, Moscow girlfriend and went to the elevator, and I escorted him out the door with the usual parting words: don’t even think about coming back and don’t forget to put on a warm sweater before boarding - according to the forecast, it’s cold in Moscow and rain. He just as habitually threw that everything would be fine, he would put on a sweater and call when to meet him. After that, I went to the bedroom, cried a little and fell asleep, because I had an almost continuous night of showdown behind me.
I was awakened by the heart-rending meow of Watermelon. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the balcony, from where his cries for help flew. The stunner cat, taking advantage of the open door and the silence in the house, this time got to the bottom drawer, did his dirty work there, but couldn’t get back: a thick belly, for which, in combination with stripes, he was nicknamed Watermelon, didn’t let him to climb between the bars of the lattice, and spreading petunias prevented climbing over the top. I leaned over the railing and grabbed the cat by the scruff, and he was so frightened that, for the sake of fidelity, he twisted and grabbed my hand with all twenty claws. I twitched in pain and, trying to catch him with my other hand, leaned too much over the railing: my legs almost left the floor, and the cowardly Watermelon, such rubbish, did not lose his head at that decisive moment and jumped up on my shoulders and back and thereby saved his striped skin, he pushed me down. I completely lost my balance and flew from the fourth floor upside down. I hasten to reassure the zealots of the welfare of pets: after I was taken to the hospital with howls in an ambulance, and the police broke into the apartment, our neighbor Frau Hoffmann took custody of the poor orphaned cat, and she did well with her. It was bad for her geraniums.
The lilac bush, which I luckily hit, was old and spreading - maybe that softened the blow a little. After all, I didn’t break soft-boiled, but only broke half of the bones and smashed my head under a nut.
When I woke up in the intensive care unit and saw my mortal remains surrounded by doctors in the mirrored ceiling above me, I once again admired the successes of German medicine: a whole team of doctors treated my unfortunate members! Some of them put broken ribs back into my chest, sticking out of it like springs from an old canapé, others screwed some screws and dowels into the crumbling bones of my legs, others dug into my open stomach and sewed something there - and I watched everything that was happening in the mirror above her and did not feel any pain or fear - only complete and absolute peace.
I looked at the reflection of my face as it appeared between the green tops of the doctors bending over me: I wanted to see how my appearance corresponded to this medicinal bliss - and that's when it all started for real. I saw my face, but it was the face of a corpse: white to cyanosis, the nose was pointed, blue lips stuck to the teeth, between which a transparent tube stuck out, and something hissed and gurgled in it. I felt disgusted with myself - I was always frightened by the faces of the dead, and then my own ... But the worst thing was that my eyes were closed - so how do I see all this ?!
In fright, I jerked to the side and ... found myself hanging between two lamps under the ceiling. And in an instant everything turned upside down: there was no mirror above me - it was I myself upstairs and looked from there at my own body stretched out below. I was not afraid, because the thought of death had not yet visited me, but I experienced a slight disappointment: it turns out that German medicine has nothing to do with it, and for getting rid of pain I have to thank nature and some of my own defense mechanisms. Well, now everything is clear: this is a dream, this is nonsense, I fly in a dream. In that case, why not fly somewhere nicer? So I thought and immediately carried out my intention, flying out through the door opened by someone into the hospital corridor.
Once under the ceiling of the corridor - for some reason I was always pulled up - I found that a rather thick luminous cord stretched from me through the intensive care door. I thought that I had accidentally dragged some kind of hose from the resuscitation equipment behind me.
I wonder what I actually look like? I tried to look around myself, and although I clearly had a vision, even sharper than in reality, and I didn’t feel my eyes, but I had only to wish, and I saw myself from the side: it was me, but only translucent, something something like a balloon in the shape of my body. The comparison that came to mind was further emphasized by this cord coming out of the middle of my chest, which, by the way, in this form did not have any protruding ribs or any other damage. On the contrary, I felt absolutely healthy and full of energy.
There was a large window at the far end of the corridor, I decided to fly to it. Soaring under the ceiling was a pleasure, but I could not fly further than the middle of the corridor: the cord to which I was tied was stretched, and I felt a burning pain in my chest when I tried to tear it away from me. I had to bend over and turn around.
Julia Voznesenskaya
My posthumous adventures
MYSTERY OF DEATH
Introductory article
My soul, my soul, rise, that you sleep,
The end is approaching, and the need for you to speak:
Arise, then, may Christ God have mercy on you,
Izhe is everywhere, and they fulfilled everything.
The Canon of the Separation of the Soul from the Body
In our time, more and more people, not satisfied with the materialistic descriptions of the world, rush in search of a different, spiritual world, or, as it is also called, "the other world." Advertising propaganda by the media of all kinds of religious movements, sects, occult societies and practicing magicians makes it easy, without obstacles, to penetrate into the lives of any of us, those who are at best swindlers, and at worst - representatives of sects and teachings that can destroy forever not only human life, but also the human soul.
The Orthodox Church always warns her children about this, as well as all those laity who have not yet converted to Christ. Curiosity pushes some in search of "spirituality", many, having become disillusioned with their lives, try to find solace in some kind of religious or occult teaching, and some kind of misfortune pushes many to this. Most often, such people have lost their closest, dearest people - a child, a husband, a lover ... It is terrible to realize that you are forever separated from a dear person, that inevitable death awaits you in the end. Powerless despair seizes a person at the thought of the absurdity of life, which will have to end ingloriously, while one could live and live ...
How many have fallen into this abyss,
I'll spread it away!
The day will come when I will disappear
From the surface of the earth. (…)
And there will be life with its daily bread,
With forgetfulness of the day.
And everything will be - as if under the sky
And there was no me!
Written by Marina Tsvetaeva. And these lines are close to each of us, the feeling that dictated them is understandable. We are all doomed to die.
But Christianity proclaimed to all mankind a truly good news - the news of our personal immortality, of eternal life, of victory over death. What does it mean?
It is in Christianity that we find the doctrine of personal immortality, of the eternal existence of the individual human soul. Holy Scripture understands bodily death as a transition from one state to another, from one form of being to another.
The Orthodox Church teaches us that the death of a person is the separation of his soul from the body, and is called in Holy Scripture by various names: the exodus, the end, the removal of the soul from its prison, the release from the bonds of the body, the departure, the dormition, etc. With this separation of the two components that make up a person, that is, soul and body, his body returns to the earth like dust, and his spirit returns to God (Eccl. 12:7).
The cause of man's death lies in his fall into sin, since man, by his disobedience, let death into the world. Death is the limit by which the time of exploits ends for a person, and the time of retribution begins, so that after death neither repentance nor correction is possible for us.
In other words, death is not at all the disappearance of a person, but only a transition to a spiritual state, which is the ultimate goal of earthly life. With death, the moral development of a person stops, any further change is excluded, and moral retribution begins for everything that we have done in our life here in this world.
But our immortal souls, even after death, keep their self-consciousness, spiritual forces and will intact, remember the circumstances, persons, events of their earthly life. That is, we remain ourselves even after death, not dissolving into a faceless nothing and not disappearing without a trace. Our bodies will turn to dust, and our souls will await the Last Judgment, staying, depending on their spiritual state at the time of death, either in paradise, with the souls of the righteous, or in hell, along with demons and the souls of sinners. We, like old garments, will put off our flesh and pass into the afterlife, waiting for the resurrection of all the dead, when “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also by His Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom. 8:11)
But death remains deeply unnatural. It is alien to us, it evokes horror, for death was not part of God's eternal plan for creation. God created us not to die, but to live. Moreover, God created us as an indivisible whole.
By death, a person is painfully cut into two parts, his components, and after death there is no longer a person, his soul and body exist separately. Separating body and soul, death thereby forcibly destroys the unity of our human nature. Yes, death awaits us all, but the Orthodox Church tells us that death is unnatural. It is monstrous and tragic when we see it from the outside, it causes a protest of our whole nature, hopeless horror when we ourselves find ourselves in front of her face. Christ Himself prayed for her escape, wept over the dead Lazarus. We live in a world thoroughly saturated with death, death that came after our falling away from the Source of Eternal Life - from God.
Why did the Lord allow death?
Death is a gift from God to people. It is a gift of His mercy and compassion. For us humans, eternal life, poisoned by suffering and sin, would turn into eternal torment. Unrestrained by anything, we would sink more and more into the abyss of sin brought to life by our own will. We would become like Satan himself and his demons, which would turn eternal life into eternal death and endless torment. After all, it is this eternal life-suffering, poisoned by sin, that will befall those who, at the Last Judgment, will turn out to be incapable of living with God due to their evil deeds. Each person after death will remain the same as she found him, for this earthly life of ours is determined for us to test who we are with: with God and saints, or with Satan and demons.
And so, God gave us a way out. He shares the union of soul and body, in order to then recreate it anew, reunite it in bodily resurrection on the day of the Last Judgment, and thus again bring the renewed person to the fullness of life. As Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia once said: “By means of bodily death, the Lord brings home his child.”
And let death itself be disgusting, abnormal, unnatural, but Christians see in it the hope and blessing of God - after all, it returns us to the Father's house. And it is not for nothing that in the Orthodox tradition we call death dormition. The quiet sleep of the body, while the soul awaits the glorious resurrection on its Day.
