Modern "post-mortem" experiences

in the light of the teachings of the Orthodox Church

Brotherhood of Reverend Herman of Alaska Valaam Society of America Platinum, California

How This Book Was Written

The theme of death in the life of Father Seraphim was the most important, the main engine of his thought. From his youth, he met with death, when his beloved dog was crushed by a car. He took him dead in his arms, and, as he said, looking at him, looked death in the eyes. And it seemed to him that such a phenomenon as death could not be. He couldn't just disappear. Buried it in the garden behind the house; and often thought about death. Then, when I met him, and once said that I want to write an essay about how great people died, he became very interested. But I was very sorry that I did not finish this work.

O. Seraphim had an analytical mindset. He looked at things as if straight to the heart of the matter; and draw conclusions only after he has thought deeply. Very often silent, and looked deep into. And when he spoke, the saying was born of his whole worldview. He worked it out by teaching himself great philosophies. And, in the end, I came across Orthodoxy. But he had Orthodoxy unrelated to the outside with rites. He was interested in the inner, historical side, the Jesus Prayer, the sacraments, which, as it were, were torn away from external reality, from the external side of religion.

When I met him, the first thing that interested him in me was my father, tortured by the communists and exiled to Vorkuta, where he died. Father Seraphim once even told me that he envied me that I have a martyr in my family, who suffered and left as a righteous man in the other world. He often asked me about life under the communists, where death was so close to everyone.

When we decided with Fr. Seraphim to go to the desert, I clearly saw how he wanted to find a place to rest. We were in Platinum on the mountain, and for the first time we looked at the land we decided to buy. When I spoke to the seller about the cost, I saw him step aside. His face has changed. I knew that at that very moment he felt that he had found a place for his rest! He wanted to have this piece of land and be buried there. And this is the gift.

Often we noticed that his inner joy consisted precisely in the consciousness that there is another world. Sometimes, when visitors expressed their sorrows to him, it seemed that he did not take any part, as if the whole external side of life did not exist, it seemed to him completely unimportant.

Interestingly, when Dr. Moody's book called "Life After Life" came out and the book became very popular, I got him a copy. He read it and said: “Hm, interesting, there must be a whole teaching of the Orthodox Church about this. But where is it? I said, “I don't know of such a separate book. I know that St. Ignatius Brianchaninov has a lot about this in the third volume, also in the book "Dialogues" by St. Gregory the Dialogist, Pope of Rome. But I didn’t have one book, I didn’t know. He says: "We must!" And then the so-called modern "unfortunate theologians" appeared, Like Lev Pukhalo, Fr. Eusebius Stefvna and others who did not read and did not know either St. Theophan the Recluse or St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, and treated our Russian church writers rather dismissively. They wrote articles in which they denied ordeals. It was even rather rudely and comically expressed that how primitive it is to believe in the doctrine that souls go through ordeals, and do not sleep, as it is customary to believe among Protestants. And immediately compared with the Catholic purgatory. And when I took out several books and their articles on this topic, Father Seraphim was indignant: “How can this be allowed? And the Orthodox are silent. And no one defends the teachings of Theophan the Recluse about the other world, especially the ordeal.” I say: “We must defend the Orthodox teaching. Someone has to do it. Get on with it!" He's all on fire! He walked and thought for a long time, and then went to his cell. Came back very soon with a list of articles. How it should be composed. At first, we thought simply in our journal "Orthodox Word" to print a series of articles on this topic, which O. Seraphim was already spinning in his head. And only when they began to make a set, then the idea came to publish a separate book. It was then that the title of the book was given. It turned out to be the last book in the life of Father Seraphim. His conscious spiritual life began with death, and his last work was also devoted to death.

In conclusion, it must be said that Father Seraphim had not only strong awareness of the reality of death, but he also had a mysterious love for her. Somehow I got Bach's cantatas and listened to them in my forest up on the mountain, in my "Valaam" cell. Father Seraphim came on some important business and, naturally, he heard. I stopped him: “Listen to what beautiful, marvelous music!” He made a very serious face, one might even say suffering, and says: "I know all this." And left. Some time passed, we had a meeting, at the summer courses, and there was my lecture on literature and music. And I staged this same cantata No. 82, Bach's cantata on the Presentation of the Lord "Ich habe genug". And suddenly O. Seraphim's face changed. Therefore, I learned that he foresaw his death. This cantata was of great importance for O. Seraphim in his youth. Then, as it seemed to him, he fell mortally ill and, not recognizing the doctors, prepared himself for death, listening to the cantata many times. But he was given a reprieve to atone for his sins, and he lived another twenty years. Having found Orthodoxy, he accepted it and bore spiritual fruit. When I heard the 82nd cantata again, it seemed to him a dying trumpet - and indeed, after a few days, he suddenly fell ill and went into another world, for which he himself consciously prepared, and through his book " Soul after death and still prepares millions of readers.

For our book, we wanted to make a good, interesting cover. They wanted to publish it in the form of a pocket book, with a soft cover. Printed by hand. We wanted the cover to have power. And just at that time we visited the Art Museum in San Diego, and there was a whole gallery of our ancient Russian icons. And two huge ancient icons of the Last Judgment. Twenty red spots are clearly expressed there, i.e., stops of ordeals. So we found the right cover. That is, we put the theological understanding of the other world on the cover. Not just some kind of photographic trick, as is now customary to do in our time, but they gave a liturgical way of life for the soul after death.

When the book came out, our enemies, of course, were very unhappy. But when it came out in Russian, letters poured in from Russia expressing gratitude to us for the fact that this book is just what is needed in our time, that is, the concise teaching of the Orthodox Church about the afterlife.

Hegumen German

Moscow 2006

A certain man was rich, dressed in purple and fine linen, and feasted splendidly every day. There was also a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate covered in scabs and wished to feed on the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and the dogs came and licked his scabs. The beggar died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died, and they buried him. And in hell, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom, and crying out, said: Father Abraham! have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said: child! remember that you have already received your good in your life, and Lazarus - evil; now he is comforted here, while you suffer; and besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can they pass from there to us. Then he said: So I ask you, father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers; let him testify to them that they also do not come to this place of torment. Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen. He said: No, Father Abraham, but if anyone from the dead comes to them, they will repent. Then [Abraham] said to him: if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, then if someone were raised from the dead, they would not believe.

annotation

Seraphim Rose
Soul after death

CONTENT
Foreword

1.1. out-of-body experience
1.2. Meeting with others
1.3. "Luminous Creature"
2. Orthodox teaching about angels
3. Appearances of angels and demons at the hour of death
4. Modern experience of "Sky"
5. Air realm of spirits
5.1. The original nature of man
5.2. Fall of man
5.3. Contact with fallen spirits
5.4. Opening feelings
5.5. The danger of contact with spirits
5.6. Some practical advice
5.7 Conclusion
6. Air trials
6.1. How to understand tollhouses
6.3. Ordeals in the Lives of the Saints
6.4. Modern cases of passing ordeals
6.5. Ordeals endured before death
6.6. private court
6.7. Ordeals as a touchstone of the authenticity of posthumous experience.
6.8. The Teaching of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on Air Ordeals
7. Out-of-Body Experiences in Occult Literature
7.1. Tibetan Book of the Dead
7.2. The Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg
7.3. The "Astral Plane" of Theosophy
7.4. "Astral Projection"
7.5. "Astral Journey"
7.6. Conclusions regarding the "out-of-body region"
7.7. Notes on "reincarnation"
8. Authentic Christian experiences of heaven
8.1. Location of Heaven and Hell
8.2. Christian Experiences of Heaven
8.3. Properties of the true experience of heaven
8.4. Notes on the Vision of Hell
9. The meaning of modern "post-mortem" experiments
9.1. What do modern experiments prove?
9.2. Connection with the occult
9.3. Occult teachings of modern researchers
9.4. "Mission" of modern "post-mortem" experiments
9.5. Christian attitude towards death
10. A summary of the Orthodox teaching on the posthumous fate of the soul
10.1. The Beginning of Spiritual Vision
10.2. Encounter with spirits
10.3. First two days after death
10.4. ordeal
10.5.Forty days
10.6. State of mind before the Last Judgment
10.7. Prayer for the dead
10.8. What can we do for the dead?
10.9. Resurrection of the body
Appendix 1. Teachings of St. Mark of Ephesus on the state of the soul after death
Annex 1.2. From the second discourse on purgatory fire
Appendix 2 Some Recent Orthodox Responses to the Afterlife Debate
Annex 2.1. The Mystery of Death and the Afterlife
Annex 2.2. Return from the dead in modern Greece
Annex 2.3. Dead" are in modern Moscow [2]
Annex 3. Reply to criticism
Annex 3.1. "Contradictions" of Orthodox literature about the state of the soul after death
Annex 3.2. Is there an “out-of-body” experience (before or after death) and an “other world” where souls live?
Annex 3.3. Does the soul "sleep" after death?
Appendix 3. 4. Is the "ordeal" fiction?
Annex 3.5. Conclusion
Appendix 4. Added to the second (posthumous) edition of the book in English.
A certain man was rich, dressed in purple and fine linen, and feasted splendidly every day. There was also a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate in scabs and desired to feed on the crumbs falling from the rich man's table, and the dogs, coming, licked his scabs. The beggar died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died, and they buried him. And in hell, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom, and crying out, said: Father Abraham! have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said: child! remember that you have already received your good in your life, and Lazarus - evil; now he is comforted here, while you suffer; and besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can they pass from there to us. Then he said: So I ask you, father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers; let him testify to them that they also do not come to this place of torment. Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen. He said: No, Father Abraham, but if anyone from the dead comes to them, they will repent. Then [Abraham] said to him: if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, then if someone rises from the dead, they will not believe. /OK. 16, 19-31/
Foreword
This book has a twofold purpose: firstly, from the point of view of the Orthodox Christian doctrine of the afterlife, to provide an explanation of the modern "post-mortem" experiences that have aroused such interest in some religious and scientific circles; secondly, to cite the main sources and texts containing the Orthodox teaching about the afterlife. If today this teaching is so poorly understood, it is largely a consequence of the fact that in our "enlightened" times these texts are forgotten and completely "out of fashion." We tried to make these texts more understandable and accessible to the modern reader. Needless to say, they are infinitely deeper and more useful reading than the now popular books about "post-mortem" experiences, which, even if they are not just an ordinary sensation, still can not be anything but spectacular. because they do not contain a complete and true doctrine of the afterlife.
The Orthodox teaching presented in this book will undoubtedly be criticized by some as being too simple and naive for a person of the 20th century to believe in. Therefore, it should be emphasized that this teaching is not the teaching of a few isolated or atypical teachers of the Orthodox Church, but the teaching that the Orthodox Church of Christ offered from the very beginning, which is set forth in countless patristic writings, in the lives of the saints and divine services of the Orthodox Church, and which the Church continuously transmits up to our days. The "simplicity" of this doctrine is the simplicity of the truth itself, which - whether it be expressed in this or that teaching of the Church - proves to be a refreshing source of clarity amidst the confusion caused in modern minds by various errors and empty speculations of recent centuries. In each chapter of this book, an attempt is made to point to patristic and hagiographic sources containing this teaching.
The main source of inspiration for writing this book was the writings of Bishop Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), who was perhaps the first major Russian Orthodox theologian who directly dealt with precisely the problem that has become so acute in our day: how to preserve genuine Christian tradition and teaching in the world, who have become completely alien to Orthodoxy and strive either to refute and reject it, or to reinterpret it in such a way that it becomes compatible with the worldly way of life and thinking. Keenly aware of the Roman Catholic and other Western influences that sought to modernize Orthodoxy even in his day, Bishop Ignatius prepared for the defense of Orthodoxy both through an in-depth study of Orthodox primary sources (whose teaching he absorbed in a number of the best Orthodox monasteries of his time) and through familiarization with science and literature of his time (he studied at a military engineering school, and not at a theological seminary). Armed thus with a knowledge of both Orthodox theology and secular sciences, he dedicated his life to defending the purity of Orthodoxy and exposing contemporary deviations from it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in none of the Orthodox countries of the 19th century was there such a defender of Orthodoxy from the temptations and errors of modern times; he can only be compared with his compatriot, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, who did the same thing, but stated in a simpler language.
One volume of the collected works of Bishop Ignatius (volume 3) is specifically devoted to the church's doctrine of the afterlife, which he defended against Roman Catholic and other modern distortions. It is from this volume that we mainly took for our book a discussion of such issues as ordeals and manifestations of spirits - teachings that, for a number of reasons, the modern mind cannot accept, but insists on their reinterpretation or complete rejection. Bishop Theophan, of course, taught the same thing, and we also took advantage of his words; and in our century, another outstanding Russian Orthodox theologian, Archbishop John (Maximovich) of blessed memory, repeated this teaching so clearly and simply that we used his words as the basis for the final chapter of this book. The fact that the Orthodox teaching on the afterlife has been so clearly and clearly expounded by the outstanding modern teachers of Orthodoxy down to our days is of great benefit to us, who are striving today to preserve patristic Orthodoxy, not simply by the correct transmission of words, but more than that - by a truly Orthodox interpretation of these words.
In the book, in addition to the Orthodox sources and interpretations mentioned above, we make extensive use of modern non-Orthodox literature on "posthumous" phenomena, as well as a number of occult texts on this issue. In this we followed the example of Bishop Ignatius - to expound false teachings as fully and impartially as necessary to expose their falsity, so that Orthodox Christians would not be tempted by them; like him, we have found that non-Orthodox texts, when it comes to describing actual experience (rather than opinions and interpretations), often provide stunning confirmation of the truths of Orthodoxy. Our main goal in this book has been to provide as detailed a contrast as necessary to show the complete difference between Orthodox teaching and the experience of Orthodox saints on the one hand, and occult teaching and contemporary experience on the other. If we were simply to present the Orthodox doctrine without this opposition, it would be convincing only to a few, not counting those who already held these convictions; but now perhaps even some of those who are involved in modern experiences are aware of the great difference between them and truly spiritual experiences.
However, the mere fact that a significant part of this book is devoted to a discussion of both Christian and non-Christian experiences means that not everything here is a simple presentation of the Church's teaching about life after death, but that the author's interpretation of these various experiences is also given. And as regards the interpretations themselves, of course, there is room for legitimate differences of opinion among Orthodox Christians. We have tried, as far as possible, to give these interpretations in a conditional form, without trying to define these aspects of experience in the same way as one can define the general teaching of the Church about the afterlife. In particular, with regard to occult experiences “out of the body” and in the “astral plane”, we simply presented them in the form in which they were presented by their participants themselves, and compared them with similar cases in Orthodox literature, without trying to accurately determine the nature these experiences; but we accept them as real experiences in which there is actual contact with demonic forces, and not as mere hallucinations. Let the reader judge for himself how fair this approach is.
It should be clear that this book by no means claims to be an exhaustive exposition of the Orthodox doctrine of the afterlife, it is only an introduction to it. However, in fact, there is no complete teaching on this issue, just as there are no Orthodox experts in this field. We, who live on earth, can hardly even begin to comprehend the reality of the spiritual world until we ourselves live there. This is a process that begins now, in this life, and ends in eternity, where we will contemplate face to face what we now see as if through a [dull] glass, guesswork (1 Corinthians 13:12). But the Orthodox sources to which we have pointed in this book give us the basic outline of this teaching, sufficient to induce us not to acquire an exact knowledge of what is, after all, outside of us, but to begin the struggle to achieve the goal of the Christian life is the Kingdom of Heaven, and to avoid the demonic traps that the enemy of our salvation places on the path of Christian struggle. The other world is more real and closer than we usually think, and the path to it opens up to us through a life of spiritual achievement and prayer, which the Church has given us as a means of salvation. This book is dedicated and addressed to those who want to lead such a life.
1. Some aspects of modern experience
Quite unexpectedly, the question of the afterlife has gained wide popularity in the West. In particular, over the past two years, a number of books have appeared, the purpose of which is to describe the "post-mortem" experience. They are written either by famous scientists and doctors, or have received their full approval. One of them, the world-famous physician and "expert" on death and dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, believes that these studies of post-mortem experiences "enlighten many and confirm what we have been taught for two thousand years: that there is life after death."
All this, of course, represents a sharp departure from the hitherto prevailing view in medical and scientific circles, when, in general, death was treated as a taboo, and any thought of an afterlife existence was dismissed as belonging to the realm of fantasy or superstition or, in at best, as being a matter of private faith, which does not have any objective evidence under it.
The apparent, external reason for this sudden change of opinion is simple: new methods of resuscitation of the clinically dead (in particular, by stimulating a stopped heart) have been widely used in recent years. Thanks to this, so many people who were practically dead (without a pulse or heartbeat) were brought back to life, and so many of them are now openly talking about it, because the taboo on this topic and the fear of being branded as crazy have lost their strength.
But of greatest interest to us is the inner cause of this change, as well as its "ideology": why has this phenomenon become incredibly popular, and in terms of what religious or philosophical point of view is it usually understood? It has already become one of the signs of the times, a symptom of the religious interest of our day; what is its significance in this case? We will return to these questions after a thorough study of the phenomenon itself.
But first we must ask: on what should we base our judgments about this phenomenon? Those who describe it do not themselves have a clear interpretation of it; often they look for it in occult or spiritualistic texts. Some religious people (as well as scientists), feeling threatened by their established beliefs, simply deny these experiences in the form in which they were described, usually referring them to the realm of hallucinations. So did some Protestants who are of the opinion that the soul after death is in an unconscious state, or that it immediately goes to "abide with Christ"; similarly, convinced atheists reject the idea that the soul continues to exist at all, despite any evidence presented to it.
But these experiences cannot be explained simply by denying them; they must be properly understood both in themselves and in the whole context of what we know about the posthumous fate of the soul.
Unfortunately, some Orthodox Christians, under the influence of modern materialistic ideas that seeped through Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, also received a rather vague and indefinite idea of ​​​​the afterlife. The author of one of the new books about the afterlife set out to find out the opinion of various sects about the state of the soul after death. Thus, he approached a priest of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and received in response a very general idea of ​​the existence of heaven and hell, but he was told that Orthodoxy does not have "any concrete idea of ​​what the future is." The author could only conclude that "Greek Orthodoxy's view of the future is unclear" (p. 130).
In fact, Orthodox Christianity has a very clear teaching and view of the afterlife, starting from the very moment of death. This teaching is contained in Holy Scripture (interpreted in the entire context of Christian teaching), in the writings of the Holy Fathers, and especially with regard to specific experiences of the soul after death (in numerous lives of saints and anthologies devoted to personal experience of this kind). The entire fourth book of the "Conversations" of St. Gregory the Great (Dvoeslov), Pope of Rome († 604), for example, is dedicated to this. In our day, an anthology of such experiences has been published in English, drawn both from the ancient lives of the saints and from recent reports. And quite recently, a wonderful text was published in English translation, written at the end of the 19th century by a man who came back to life thirty-six hours after death. Thus, the Orthodox Christian has at his disposal the richest literature with the help of which one can understand the new "post-mortem" experiences and evaluate them in the light of the whole Orthodox teaching about life after death.
The book that sparked modern interest in the subject was written by a young Southern psychiatrist and published in November 1975. He knew nothing at the time of other studies or of the literature on the subject, but as the book was being printed it became clear that it was of great interest and that much had already been written on the subject. The tremendous success of Dr. Moody's book (more than two million copies sold) made the experience of the dying public, and over the next four years a number of books and articles about the experience appeared in print. Among the most important are the papers (a forthcoming book) by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, whose discoveries confirm those of Dr. Moody, and the research studies of Drs. Osis and Haraldson. Dr. Moody himself wrote a sequel to his book (Reflections on the Afterlife, Bantam-Mockingbird Book, 1977) containing additional material and further reflections on the subject. The findings contained in these and other new books (all of which are basically in agreement on the phenomenon under consideration) will be highlighted below. To begin with, we will focus on Dr. Moody's first book, which approaches the whole subject in a very objective and systematic way.
Over the past ten years, Dr. Moody has collected the personal testimonies of about one hundred and fifty people who have either experienced death or near death themselves, or who have told him of the experiences of others while dying. From this number, he selected about fifty people with whom he had detailed conversations. He tried to be objective in presenting these materials, although he admits that the book "naturally reflects the background, opinions, and prejudices of its author" (p. 9), who is religiously a Methodist with rather liberal views. Indeed, the book as an objective study of "posthumous" phenomena suffers from a number of shortcomings.
First, the author does not give a single complete death experience from beginning to end, only giving excerpts (usually very short) of each of the fifteen individual elements that form his model of a complete death experience. But in fact, the experiences of the dying, as described in this and other published books, often differ so much from each other in detail that an attempt to include them all in one model seems premature at best. Dr. Moody's model seems at times artificial and far-fetched, although, of course, it does not diminish the value of the factual evidence he cites.
Second, Dr. Moody brought together two rather different phenomena: the actual "near-death" experience and the "near-death" experience. He recognizes the difference between them, but argues that they form a "one" (p. 20) and should be studied together. In those cases where the experience that begins before death ends with the experience of death itself (regardless of whether the person was revived or not), there are indeed “single” experiences, but some of the phenomena he describes (very quick recollection of life events at the moment of danger drowning, the experience of "going into a tunnel" while being given an anesthetic like ether) have been quite often experienced by people who have never experienced clinical death, and therefore they may belong to "a model of some wider experience and can only occasionally accompany dying" . Some of the books now published are even less selective in their choice of material and lump together experiences of being "out of the body" and actual experiences of death and dying.
Thirdly, the very fact that the author approaches these phenomena “scientifically”, without having a clear idea in advance of what the soul is actually exposed to after death, causes various misunderstandings and misunderstandings about these experiences, which cannot be eliminated by a simple accumulation of descriptions. ; those who describe them inevitably add their own interpretation. The author himself admits that it is virtually impossible to scientifically study this issue; and indeed, he turns to the original experience for its explanation in such occult writings as the writings of Swedenborg or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, remarking that he now wants to take a closer look at "the vast literature on paranormal and occult phenomena in order to expand his understanding of the phenomena being studied” (p. 9).
All this leads to the fact that we cannot expect too much from this and other similar books - they will not give us a complete and coherent idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat happens to the soul after death. Yet here and in other new books, there are quite a few factual near-death experiences worthy of serious attention, especially since some interpret these experiences as hostile to the traditional Christian view of the afterlife, as if they disproved the existence of either paradise, or - especially - hell. How are we to understand these experiences?
Those fifteen elements which Dr. Moody describes as belonging to the complete experience of dying may, for the purposes of our presentation, be reduced to a few basic properties, which will be set forth here and compared with the Orthodox literature on the subject.
1.1. out-of-body experience
According to the stories, the first thing that happens to the deceased is that he leaves the body and exists completely separate from it, without losing consciousness. He is often able to see everything around him, including his own dead body and attempts to revive it; he feels that he is in a state of painless warmth and lightness, as if he were swimming; he is completely unable to influence his environment by speech or touch, and therefore often feels very lonely; his thought processes usually become much faster than when he was in the body. Here are a few short excerpts from the description of such experiments:
“The day was piercingly cold, but while I was in this blackness, I felt only warmth and the utmost calmness that I have ever experienced ... I remember thinking, “I must be dead” (p. 27).
“I had the most wonderful feeling. I felt nothing but peace, calmness, lightness - just calmness” (p. 27).
“I saw myself being revived, it was really weird. I was not very high, as if on some kind of elevation, a little higher than them; just maybe looking over them. I tried to talk to them, but no one heard me, no one would have heard me” (p. 37).
“People were coming from all directions towards the crash site… When they got really close, I tried to dodge to get out of their way, but they just went right through me” (p. 37).
“I could not touch anything, I could not communicate with anyone around me. This terrible feeling of loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation. I knew that I was completely alone, alone with myself” (p. 43).
By the way, there is amazing objective evidence that a person is really out of the body at this moment - sometimes people are able to retell conversations or give accurate details of events that took place even in neighboring rooms or even further away while they were "dead." Among other examples of this kind, Dr. Kubler-Ross mentions one remarkable case when a blind woman saw and then clearly described everything that happened in the room where she "died", although when she came back to life again, she was again blind - this stunning evidence that it is not the eye that sees (and it is not the brain that thinks, for after death the mental faculties are sharpened), but rather the soul, which, while the body is alive, performs these actions through the physical organs, and when dead, by its own power.
Nothing here should surprise the Orthodox Christian, for the experience described here is what Christians know as the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death. It is characteristic of our time of unbelief that people rarely resort to Christian vocabulary or realize that it is their soul that has separated from the body and is now experiencing all this; usually they are simply puzzled by the state in which they find themselves.
It was precisely such a person - baptized in Orthodoxy, but in the spirit of the late 19th century who remained indifferent to the truths of his own faith and did not even believe in an afterlife - and the story of the “posthumous” experience was written, entitled “Unbelievable for many, but a true incident” (K. Ikskul. Trinity Flower. 1910). What he experienced 80 years ago is still of great importance for us today and even seems providential in the light of the new modern “post-mortem” experience, for this is the only “post-mortem” experience of the soul that goes much further than the brief fragmentary experiences given in new books and experienced by a receptive person. , who began with modern unbelief, and came to the recognition of the truths of Orthodox Christianity - and so much so that he ended his days as a monk. This little book can be used as a control case against which new cases can be judged. It was approved as containing nothing contrary to the Orthodox teaching about the afterlife by one of the leading Orthodox missionary writers of the beginning of the century, Archbishop Nikon of Vologda.
After describing the last agony of his physical death and the terrible heaviness pressing him to the ground, the author says that “suddenly I felt that it became easy. saw.
I saw that I was standing alone in the middle of the room; to the right of me, surrounding something in a semicircle, all the medical personnel crowded ... I was surprised by this group; there was a bunk where she stood. What now attracted the attention of these people there, what did they look at when I was no longer there, when I stood in the middle of the room?
I moved over and looked where they were all looking: there I was lying on the bunk.
I do not remember that I felt anything like fear at the sight of my double; I was only perplexed: how is it? I felt here, meanwhile, and there, too, I ...
I wanted to feel myself, to take my left hand with my right hand: my hand went right through; I tried to grab myself by the waist - the hand again passed through the body, as if through empty space ... I called the doctor, but the atmosphere in which I was was completely unsuitable for me; she did not perceive and did not transmit the sounds of my voice, and I realized my complete disunity with everything around me, my strange loneliness; Panic gripped me. There was indeed something unspeakably terrible in that extraordinary loneliness...
I looked, and only then for the first time did the thought occur to me: hasn't something happened to me that in our language, the language of living people, is defined by the word "death"? This came to my mind because my body lying on the bed had the exact appearance of a corpse ...
In our concepts, the word “death” is inextricably linked with the idea of ​​some kind of annihilation, the cessation of life, how could I think that I had died when I did not lose self-consciousness for a single minute, when I felt myself just as alive, hearing everything, seeing, conscious, able to move, think, speak?
Dissociation from everything around me, the splitting of my personality, could rather make me understand what happened if I believed in the existence of the soul, if I were a religious person; but this was not the case, and I was guided only by what I felt, and the feeling of life was so clear that I was only puzzled by a strange phenomenon, being completely unable to connect my sensations with traditional concepts of death, that is, feeling and conscious of myself to think that I don't exist.
Remembering and thinking over my then state later, I only noticed that my mental faculties acted even then with amazing energy and speed ... "(pp. 16-21)
In early Christian literature, the state of the soul in the first minutes after death is not described in such detail; the emphasis is always placed on stronger experiences that come later. It is probably only in our time, when the identification of life with life in the body has become so complete and convincing, that one would expect so much attention to be paid to the first few minutes, when the expectation of modern man is so completely turned upside down: death is not the end, life continues, a completely new state opens up to the soul!
Of course, there is nothing in this experience that would contradict the Orthodox teaching about the state of the soul immediately after death. Some, criticizing this case, doubted whether a person was dead if he was revived after a few minutes, but this is only a matter of technique, as we will say in due time. The fact remains that in these few minutes (sometimes also a minute before death) there are experiences that cannot be explained simply as hallucinations. Our task here is to find out how we should understand these experiments.
1.2. Meeting with others
After death, the soul remains in its original state of loneliness for a very short time. Dr. Moody cites several cases where, even before death, people suddenly saw dead relatives and friends.
“The doctor lost hope of saving me and told my family that I was dying ... I realized that all these people were there, almost hovering in droves near the ceiling of the room. These were all people whom I knew in a past life, but who had died earlier. I got to know my grandmother and the girl I knew as a schoolboy, and many other relatives and friends… It was a very happy event, and I felt that they had come to protect and see me off” (p. 44).
This experience of meeting deceased friends and relatives at the time of death is by no means a new discovery, even among modern scientists. About fifty years ago it was the subject of a small book by the pioneer of modern parapsychology, or psychic research, Sir William Barrett. After the appearance of Dr. Moody's first book, a much more detailed description of these experiences, inspired by Sir William's, was published, and it turned out that the authors of this book had been conducting systematic studies of the dying for many years. Here we must say a little about the discoveries of this book.
This book is the first fully scientific publication on the experience of dying. It is based on the results of detailed questionnaires and interviews with a randomly selected group of doctors and nurses in the eastern United States and northern India (the latter is chosen for maximum objectivity to check for discrepancies in experience that may arise due to national, psychological and religious differences). ). The material obtained as a result of this includes more than a thousand cases of apparitions and visions of the dying (and several brought back to life from a state of clinical death). The authors conclude that, on the whole, Dr. Moody's discovery is consistent with theirs (p. 24). They found that the apparitions of deceased relatives and friends (and in India, the numerous apparitions of Hindu "gods") to the dying often come within an hour, and usually within a day before death. In about half of the cases, there is a vision of some unearthly, "paradise"-like setting that evokes the same feelings (the experience of "paradise" will be discussed below). This study is especially valuable in that it carefully distinguishes between incoherent ethereal hallucinations and clear otherworldly phenomena and visions, and also statistically analyzes the presence of factors such as the use of hallucinogenic drugs, high fever, or diseases and brain damage - factors that any of which could cause ordinary hallucinations, and not a genuine experience of something happening outside the mind of the patient himself. Very important is the discovery of the authors that the most coherent and clearly otherworldly experiences are those patients who are in the greatest contact with thisworldly reality and are least prone to hallucinations; in particular, those who experience dead or spiritual beings usually have full control of their mental faculties and see these beings with full awareness of being in a hospital setting. Moreover, they found that hallucinators usually see the living, while the real phenomena of the dying are, rather, dead persons. Although the authors are cautious in their conclusions, they tend to "accept the afterlife hypothesis as the most understandable explanation for their data" (p. 194). In this way, this book complements Dr. Moody's findings and provides a striking confirmation of the experience of meeting the dead and spiritual beings at the time of death. Whether these beings are really what the dying think they are is a question to be considered below.
These discoveries are, of course, quite striking when viewed against the backdrop of agnosticism and unbelief that has long characterized modern science. For an Orthodox Christian, on the other hand, there is nothing surprising about them; we know that death is only a transition from one form of existence to another, and we are familiar with numerous manifestations and visions of the dying - both saints and ordinary sinners. St. Gregory the Great (Dvoeslov), describing many of these experiences in his Conversations, explains the meeting with others in this way: remuneration” (“Interviews”, IV, 36). Especially with regard to the people of the righteous life of St. Gregory remarks: “It often happens with the righteous that at the time of their death they see the saints who precede them, so that they are not afraid of the painful thought of death; so that they painlessly and fearlessly break free from the bonds of their flesh, at that time the society of heavenly citizens appears before their mental eyes” (“Conversations”, IV, 12). In subsequent chapters, he gives examples of the appearance of dying angels, martyrs, the Apostle Peter, the Mother of God and Christ Himself (IV, 13-18).
Dr. Moody gives one example of a dying person meeting not with relatives or a spiritual being, but with a completely alien face: recently. She didn't know who it was” (“Life After Life,” p. 45). St. Gregory in his Conversations describes a similar phenomenon: he tells of several cases in which a dying person calls out the name of another person who is dying at the same time in another place. And this is not at all clairvoyance, bestowed only on saints, for St. Gregory describes how an ordinary sinner, obviously doomed to hell, sends for a certain Stephen, who is unknown to him and who was supposed to die at the same time, to tell him that "our ship is ready to take us to Sicily" (being a place of great volcanic activity , Sicily reminded of hell) (“Interviews”, IV, 36). This, obviously, is what is now called extrasensory perception, which for many is particularly acute before death and, of course, continues after death, when the soul is already completely outside the realm of the physical senses.
Therefore, this private discovery of modern psychic science only confirms what the reader of early Christian literature already knows about encounters at the time of death. These encounters, although they do not seem to necessarily take place before the death of everyone, can still be called universal in the sense that they occur regardless of nationality, religion, or the sanctity of life.
On the other hand, the experience of the Christian saint, although it has those common features that can be experienced by everyone, contains an entirely different dimension that defies definition by psychiatric researchers. In this experience, special signs of God's favor often appear, and visions from another world are often seen by all or many of those nearby, and not just by the dying person himself. Let us quote just one such example from the same "Conversations" of St. Gregory.
“At midnight they were at the bed of Romulus; suddenly a light descended from heaven filled her whole cell and shone with such brilliance that it struck the hearts of those present with inexpressible fear ... Then there was a noise, as if from some large crowd of people; the door of the cell began to shake, as if crowds of people were pushing through it; they felt, as they spoke, they sensed the presence of those who entered, but from extraordinary fear and light they could not see, because fear and the very brightness of that light struck and closed their eyes. Behind this light, an unusual fragrance immediately spread, so that the pleasantness of the smell calmed their souls, struck by the radiance of light. But when they could not endure the forces of such a light, Romula began to console the trembling Redempta who was with her, a teacher in her virtues, with an affectionate voice, saying: “Do not be afraid, mother, I am not dying yet.” The fragrance lasted for three days, and on the fourth night she again called her mentor and, upon her arrival, asked to be allowed to receive Holy Communion. Neither Redempta herself, nor the patient's other fellow student, left her side; and suddenly, on the landing in front of the door of her cell, two choirs of singing were arranged ... Romula's holy soul was released from the body. When she ascended to heaven, the higher the singing voices flew, the weaker the psalmody was heard, until the sounds of psalmody and fragrance finally disappeared ”(“ Interviews ”, IV, 17). Orthodox Christians will remember similar cases from the lives of many saints (St. Sisoy, St. Taisia, St. Theophilus of Kyiv, etc.).
As we delve into this exploration of the experience of the dying and of death, we must keep in mind the great difference between the common experience of the dying, which is now attracting so much interest, and the gracious experience of death of righteous Orthodox Christians. This will help us better understand some of the mysterious aspects of death that are currently observed and described in the literature. Understanding this difference, for example, can help us identify the phenomena seen by the dying. Do relatives and friends really come from the realm of the dead to appear to the dying? And do these manifestations themselves differ from the dying manifestations of holy righteous Christians?
To answer this question, remember that Drs. Osis and Haraldson report that many dying Hindus see the gods of their Hindu pantheon (Krishna, Shiva, Kali, etc.) and not close relatives and friends, which is usually the case in America.
But the Apostle Paul clearly said that these "gods" are really nothing (1 Cor. 8:4-5), and any real encounter with the "gods" is associated with demons (1 Cor. 10:20). Who then do the dying Hindus see? Dr. Osis and Haraldson believe that the identification of the beings encountered is largely the result of subjective interpretation based on religious, cultural, and personal backgrounds;

Seraphim Rose

Soul after death

1. Some aspects of modern experience

1.1. out-of-body experience

1.2. Meeting with others

1.3. "Luminous Creature"

2. Orthodox teaching about angels

3. Appearances of angels and demons at the hour of death

4. Modern experience of "Sky"

5. Air realm of spirits

5.1. The original nature of man

5.2. Fall of man

5.3. Contact with fallen spirits

5.4. Opening feelings

5.5. The danger of contact with spirits

5.6. Some practical advice

5.7 Conclusion

6. Air trials

6.1. How to understand tollhouses

6.3. Ordeals in the Lives of the Saints

6.4. Modern cases of passing ordeals

6.5. Ordeals endured before death

6.6. private court

6.7. Ordeals as a touchstone of the authenticity of posthumous experience.

6.8. The Teaching of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on Air Ordeals

7. Out-of-Body Experiences in Occult Literature

7.1. Tibetan Book of the Dead

7.2. The Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg

7.3. The "Astral Plane" of Theosophy

7.4. "Astral Projection"

7.5. "Astral Journey"

7.6. Conclusions regarding the "out-of-body region"

7.7. Notes on "reincarnation"

8. Authentic Christian experiences of heaven

8.1. Location of Heaven and Hell

8.2. Christian Experiences of Heaven

8.3. Properties of the true experience of heaven

8.4. Notes on the Vision of Hell

9. The meaning of modern "post-mortem" experiments

9.1. What do modern experiments prove?

9.2. Connection with the occult

9.3. Occult teachings of modern researchers

9.4. "Mission" of modern "post-mortem" experiments

9.5. Christian attitude towards death

10. A summary of the Orthodox teaching on the posthumous fate of the soul

10.1. The Beginning of Spiritual Vision

10.2. Encounter with spirits

10.3. First two days after death

10.4. ordeal

10.5.Forty days

10.6. State of mind before the Last Judgment

10.7. Prayer for the dead

10.8. What can we do for the dead?

10.9. Resurrection of the body

Appendix 1. Teachings of St. Mark of Ephesus on the state of the soul after death

Annex 1.2. From the second discourse on purgatory fire

Appendix 2 Some Recent Orthodox Responses to the Afterlife Debate

Annex 2.1. The Mystery of Death and the Afterlife

Annex 2.2. Return from the dead in modern Greece

Annex 2.3. Dead" are in modern Moscow [2]

Annex 3. Reply to criticism

Annex 3.1. "Contradictions" of Orthodox literature about the state of the soul after death

Annex 3.2. Is there an “out-of-body” experience (before or after death) and an “other world” where souls live?

Annex 3.3. Does the soul "sleep" after death?

Appendix 3. 4. Is the "ordeal" fiction?

Annex 3.5. Conclusion

Appendix 4. Added to the second (posthumous) edition of the book in English.

A certain man was rich, dressed in purple and fine linen, and feasted splendidly every day. There was also a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate covered in scabs and wished to feed on the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and the dogs came and licked his scabs. The beggar died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died, and they buried him. And in hell, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom, and crying out, said: Father Abraham! have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said: child! remember that you have already received your good in your life, and Lazarus - evil; now he is comforted here, while you suffer; and besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can they pass from there to us. Then he said: So I ask you, father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers; let him testify to them that they also do not come to this place of torment. Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen. He said: No, Father Abraham, but if anyone from the dead comes to them, they will repent. Then [Abraham] said to him: if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, then if someone were raised from the dead, they would not believe. /OK. 16, 19-31/

Foreword

This book has a twofold purpose: firstly, from the point of view of the Orthodox Christian doctrine of the afterlife, to provide an explanation of the modern "post-mortem" experiences that have aroused such interest in some religious and scientific circles; secondly, to cite the main sources and texts containing the Orthodox teaching about the afterlife. If today this teaching is so poorly understood, it is largely a consequence of the fact that in our "enlightened" times these texts are forgotten and completely "out of fashion." We tried to make these texts more understandable and accessible to the modern reader. Needless to say, they are infinitely deeper and more useful reading than the now popular books about "post-mortem" experiences, which, even if they are not just an ordinary sensation, still can not be anything but spectacular. because they do not contain a complete and true doctrine of the afterlife.

The Orthodox teaching presented in this book will undoubtedly be criticized by some as being too simple and naive for a person of the 20th century to believe in. Therefore, it should be emphasized that this teaching is not the teaching of a few isolated or atypical teachers of the Orthodox Church, but the teaching that the Orthodox Church of Christ offered from the very beginning, which is set forth in countless patristic writings, in the lives of the saints and divine services of the Orthodox Church, and which the Church continuously transmits up to our days. The "simplicity" of this doctrine is the simplicity of the truth itself, which - whether it be expressed in this or that teaching of the Church - proves to be a refreshing source of clarity amid the confusion caused in modern minds by various errors and empty speculations of recent centuries. In each chapter of this book, an attempt is made to point to patristic and hagiographic sources containing this teaching.

The main source of inspiration for writing this book was the writings of Bishop Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), who was perhaps the first major Russian Orthodox theologian who directly dealt with precisely the problem that has become so acute in our day: how to preserve genuine Christian tradition and teaching in the world, who have become completely alien to Orthodoxy and strive either to refute and reject it, or to reinterpret it in such a way that it becomes compatible with the worldly way of life and thinking. Keenly aware of the Roman Catholic and other Western influences that sought to modernize Orthodoxy even in his day, Bishop Ignatius prepared for the defense of Orthodoxy both through an in-depth study of Orthodox primary sources (whose teaching he absorbed in a number of the best Orthodox monasteries of his time) and through familiarization with science and literature of his time (he studied at a military engineering school, and not at a theological seminary). Armed thus with a knowledge of both Orthodox theology and secular sciences, he dedicated his life to defending the purity of Orthodoxy and exposing contemporary deviations from it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in none of the Orthodox countries of the 19th century was there such a defender of Orthodoxy from the temptations and errors of modern times; he can only be compared with his compatriot, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, who did the same thing, but stated in a simpler language.

One volume of the collected works of Bishop Ignatius (volume 3) is specifically devoted to the church's doctrine of the afterlife, which he defended against Roman Catholic and other modern distortions. It is from this volume that we mainly took for our book a discussion of such issues as ordeals and manifestations of spirits - teachings that, for a number of reasons, the modern mind cannot accept, but insists on their reinterpretation or complete rejection. Bishop Theophan, of course, taught the same thing, and we also took advantage of his words; and in our century, another outstanding Russian Orthodox theologian, Archbishop John (Maximovich) of blessed memory, repeated this teaching so clearly and simply that we used his words as the basis for the final chapter of this book. The fact that the Orthodox teaching about the afterlife has been so clearly and clearly expounded by the outstanding modern teachers of Orthodoxy down to our days is of great benefit to us, who are striving today to preserve patristic Orthodoxy, not simply through the correct transmission of words, but more than that, through a truly Orthodox interpretation of these words.