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| ©Daniel Andreev Charity Foundation, 1997. |
All rights on the text of this book belong to the Copyright Holder. This text is presented for educational purposes only and should be considered in the context of visiting library. |
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1. The Rose of the World and Its Place in History 2. On the Metahistorical and Transphysical Methods of Knowledge
3. The Structure of Shadanakar: Worlds of Ascent |
4. The Structure of Shadanakar: The Infraphysical planes 5. The Structure of Shadanakar: Elementals 6. The Highest Worlds of Shadanakar |
1. The Rose of the World and Its Place in History
1.1 The
Rose of the World and its Foremost Tasks
THIS BOOK WAS BEGUN at a time when the threat of
an unparalleled disaster hung over the heads of humanity—when a generation
only just recuperating from the trauma of the Second World War discovered to its
horror that a strange darkness, the portent of a war even more catastrophic and
devastating than the last, was already gathering and thickening on the horizon.
I began this book in the darkest years of a dictatorship that tyrannized two
hundred million people. I began writing it in a prison designated as a
"political isolation ward." I wrote it in secret. I hid the
manuscript, and the forces of good—humans and otherwise—concealed it for me
during searches. Yet every day I expected the manuscript to be confiscated and
destroyed, just as my previous work—work to which I had given ten years of my
life and for which I had been consigned to the political isolation ward—had
been destroyed.
I am finishing The Rose of the World a few years later. The threat of a third
world war no longer looms like dark clouds on the horizon, but, having fanned
out over our heads and blocked the sun, it has quickly dispersed in all
directions back beyond the horizon.
Perhaps the worst will never come to pass. Every heart nurses such a hope, and
without it life would be unbearable. Some try to bolster it with logical
arguments and active protest. Some succeed in convincing themselves that the
danger is exaggerated. Others try not to think about it at all and, having
decided once and for all that what happens, happens, immerse themselves in the
daily affairs of their own little worlds. There are also people in whose hearts
hope smoulders like a dying fire, and who go on living, moving, and working
merely out of inertia.
I am completing The Rose of the World out of prison, in a park turned golden
with autumn. The one under whose yoke the country was driven to near exhaustion
has long been reaping in other worlds what he sowed in this one. Yet I am still
hiding the last pages of the manuscript as I hid the first ones. I dare not
acquaint a single living soul with its contents, for, just as before, I cannot
be certain that this book will not be destroyed, that the spiritual knowledge it
contains will be transmitted to someone, anyone.
But perhaps the worst will never come to pass, and tyranny on such a scale will
never recur. Perhaps humanity will forevermore retain the memory of Russia's
terrible historical experience. Every heart nurses that hope, and without it
life would be unbearable.
But I number among those who have been fatally wounded by two great calamities:
world war and dictatorship. Such people do not believe that the roots of war and
tyranny within humanity have been eradicated or that they will be in the near
future. Perhaps the danger of one tyranny or war will recede, but after a time
the threat of the next tyranny or war will arise. For me and others like me,
both those calamities were a kind of apocalypse— revelations of the power of
planetary Evil and of its age-old struggle with the forces of Light. Those
living in different times would probably not understand us. Our anxiety would
seem to them an overreaction; our view of the world would seem poisoned. But a
conception of the logical consistency of historical events branded in the human
mind by a half century of observing and participating in events and processes of
unprecedented magnitude cannot be called an overreaction. And a conclusion that
forms in the human heart through the efforts of the brightest and deepest sides
of its nature cannot be poisoned.
I am seriously ill—my days are numbered. If this manuscript is destroyed or
lost, I will not be able to rewrite it in time. But if, sometime in the future,
it reaches only a few persons whose spiritual thirst drives them to surmount all
its difficulties and read it through to the end, then the ideas planted within
cannot help but become seeds that will sprout in their hearts. Whether that
occurs before a third world war or after it, and even if no third war is
unleashed in the near future, this book will not die if but one pair of friendly
eyes passes, chapter by chapter, over its pages. For the questions it attempts
to answer will continue to trouble people far into the future.
Those questions are not confined to the realms of war and politics. But nothing
can shake my conviction that the most formidable dangers that threaten humanity,
both now and for centuries to come, are a great suicidal war and an absolute
global dictatorship. Perhaps, in our century, humanity will avert a third world
war or, at the very least, survive it, as it survived the First and Second World
Wars. Perhaps it will outlive, somehow or other, a dictatorship even more
enveloping and merciless than the one we in Russia outlived. It may even be that
in two or three hundred years new dangers for the people of Earth will appear,
dangers different but no less dire than a dictatorship or a great war. It is
possible, even probable. But no effort of the mind, no imagination or intuition,
is capable of conjecturing a future danger that would not be connected, somehow
or other, with one of these two principal dangers: the physical destruction of
humanity through a war, and the spiritual death of humanity through an absolute
global dictatorship.
This book is directed, first and foremost, against the two basic, supreme evils
of war and dictatorship. It is directed against them not as a simple warning,
nor as a satire that unmasks their true nature, nor as a sermon. The most biting
satire and the most fiery sermon are useless if they only rail against evil and
prove that good is good and bad is bad. They are useless if they are not based
on a worldview, global teaching, and program of action that, spread from mind to
mind and will to will, would be capable of averting these evils.
The purpose of my life has been to share my experience with others—to shed
light on the future panorama of history and metahistory, on the branching chain
of alternatives we face or are bound to face, and on the landscape of
variomaterial worlds that are closely linked with ours through good and evil. I
have tried, and still try, to fulfill that task through fiction and poetry, but
the limitations of those genres have prevented me from disclosing these ideas
precisely and intelligibly in their entirety. The purpose of this book is to set
out that worldview in an exhaustive manner, helping the reader to see how,
though dealing with the preternatural, it at the same time holds the key to
understanding current events and the fate of each of us. This is a book that, if
God saves it from destruction, will be laid, as one of many bricks, in the
foundation of the Rose of the World, at the base of a Community of all humanity.
There exists an entity that for many centuries has proclaimed itself the lone,
steadfast unifier of all people, shielding them from the danger of all-out
warfare and social chaos. That entity is the state. Since the end of the tribal
period, the state has been of vital necessity at every historical stage. Even
hierocracies, which attempted to replace it with religious rule, simply became
variations of the selfsame state. The state bonded society together on the
principle of coercion, and the level of moral development necessary to bond
society together on some other principle was beyond reach. Of course, it has
been beyond reach even until now, and the state has remained the only proven
means against social chaos. But the existence of a higher order of moral
principles is now becoming evident, principles capable not only of maintaining
but also of increasing social harmony. More important, methods for accelerating
the internalization of such principles are now taking shape.
In the political history of modern times, one can distinguish two international
movements diametrically opposed to one another. One of them aims for the
hypertrophy of state power and an increase in the individual's dependence on the
state. To be more exact, this movement seeks to bestow ever greater power on the
person or organization in whose hands the state apparatus lies: the Party, the
Army, the Leader. Fascist and national socialist states are the most obvious
examples of such movements.
The other movement, which appeared at least as far back as the eighteenth
century, is the humanist. Its origins and major stages are English
parliamentarianism, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, German social
democracy, and in our days, the struggle for liberation from colonialism. The
long-range goal of the movement is to weaken the bonding principle of coercion
in the life of the people and transform what is largely a police state defending
race or class interests into a system based on overall economic equilibrium and
a guarantee of individual rights.
History has also witnessed examples of novel political arrangements that might
appear to be hybrids of the two movements. Remaining in essence phenomena of the
first type, they alter their appearance to the extent expedient for the
achievement of their set goal. This is a tactic, a deception, but nothing more.
Nevertheless, despite the polarity of these movements, they are linked by one
trait characteristic of the twentieth century: global ambitions. The ostensible
motivation of the various twentieth century movements can be found in their
political blueprints, but the underlying motivation in modern history is the
instinctive pursuit of global dominion.
The most vigorous movement of the first half of this century was distinguished
by its internationalist doctrines and global appeal. The Achilles heel of the
movements vying with it—racism, national socialism—was their narrow
nationalism, or to be more exact, the strictly racial or nationalist fences
around their promised lands, the chimera of which they used to seduce and dazzle
their followers. But they too strove for world dominion, and invested colossal
energy toward that end. Now American cosmopolitanism is occupied with avoiding
the mistakes of its predecessors.
What does that sign of the times point to? Does it not point to the fact that
global unity has grown from an abstract concept into a universal need? Does it
not point to the fact that the world has become smaller and more integrated than
ever before? Finally, does it not point to the fact that the solution to all the
problems of vital interest to humanity can be lasting and profound enough only
if undertaken on a global scale?
Taking advantage of that fact, despotic regimes systematically actualize the
principle of extreme coercion or partly camouflage it with a cunning blend of
methods. The tempo of life is accelerating. Monolithic states are emerging that
earlier would have taken centuries to erect. Each is predatory by nature, each
strives to subjugate humanity to its sole rule. The military and technological
power of these states boggles the mind. They have already more than once plunged
the world into war and tyranny. Where is the guarantee that they will not do so
again in the future? In the end, the strongest will conquer the globe, even at
the cost of turning a third of the world's surface into a moonscape. The cycle
of wars will then come to an end, but only to be replaced by the greatest of
evils: a single dictatorship over the surviving twothirds of the world. At first
it will perhaps be an oligarchy. But, as often happens, eventually a single
Leader will emerge. The threat of a global dictatorship—this is the deadliest
of all threats hanging over humanity.
Consciously or unconsciously sensing the danger, the movements belonging to the
humanist mold are trying to consolidate their efforts. They prattle about
cultural cooperation, wave placards about pacifism and democratic freedoms, seek
illusory security in neutrality, or, frightened by their adversary's aggression,
they themselves embark on the same path. Not one of them has put forward the
indisputable proposal that is capable of winning people's trust: the idea that
some kind of moral supervision over the activities of the state is a vital
necessity. Certain groups, traumatized by the horrors of the world wars, are
trying to unite so that in the future their political federation will encompass
the entire globe. But what would that lead to? The danger of wars, it is true,
would be defused, at least temporarily. But who can guarantee that such a
superstate, supported by large, morally backward segments of the populace (and
such segments are far more numerous than one would wish) and rousing in humanity
dormant impulses for power and violence, will not in the end develop into a
dictatorship compared to which all previous tyrannies will seem like child's
play?
It is worth noting that the same religious faiths that proclaimed the
internationalist ideals of brotherhood earliest are now in the rearguard of
humanity's push toward global unity. It is possible to attribute this to their
characteristic emphasis on the inner self and their neglect of everything
external, including sociopolitical issues. But if one delves deeper, if one says
out loud for all to hear what is usually discussed only in certain small circles
of people who lead a deeply spiritual life, then something not everyone takes
into consideration is uncovered. That something is a mystical fear, originating
during the age of the Roman Empire, of the future unification of the world. It
is the indefatigable concern for the welfare of humanity felt by those who sense
that in a single universal state lies a pitfall that will inevitably lead to an
absolute dictatorship and the rule of the "prince of darkness," the
result of which will be the final paroxysms and catastrophic end of history.
In actual fact, who can guarantee that a strong-willed egoist will not assume
leadership of the superstate and, further, that science will not serve such a
leader truthfully and faithfully as a means for turning the superstate into that
exact kind of monstrous mechanism of violence and spiritual disfigurement I have
been talking about? There is little doubt that theoretical models for blanket
surveillance of people's behavior and thoughts are being developed at this very
moment. What are the limits of the nightmarish scenarios that are conjured in
our imagination as a result of the merger of a dictatorship of terror and
twenty-first century technology? Such a tyranny would be all the more absolute
because even the last, tragic means of casting it off would be closed—its
overthrow from without by war. With every nation under one rule, there would be
no one to war against. Global unity—the dream of so many generations, the
cause of so many sacrifices—would then reveal its demonic side: the
impossibility of escape if the servants of the dark forces were to seize control
of the world government.
Bitter experience has already led humanity to the conviction that neither those
socioeconomic movements guided solely by reason nor scientific progress in
itself are capable of guiding humanity between the Charybdis of dictatorship and
the Scylla of world war. On the contrary, new socioeconomic systems, in coming
to power, themselves adopt the practices of political despotism and become the
sowers and instigators of world war. Science becomes their lackey, far more
obedient and reliable than the church was for the feudal barons. The root of the
tragedy lies in the fact that the scientific professions were not from the very
beginning coupled with a deeply formulated moral education. Regardless of their
level of moral development, everyone is admitted into those professions. It
should come as no surprise today that one side of every scientific and technical
advance goes against the genuine interests of humanity. The internal combustion
engine, radio, aviation, atomic energy - they all strike the bare flesh of the
world's people with one end, while advances in communications and technology
enable police states to establish surveillance over the private life and
thoughts of each person, thus laying an iron foundation for life-sucking
dictatorial states.
So, lessons drawn from history should lead humanity to realize that the dangers
will not be averted and social harmony will not be achieved by scientific and
technological progress alone. Nor shall it be accomplished by the hypertrophy of
the state, by the dictatorship of a "strong leader," or by social
democratic administrations that get buffeted by the winds of history, first
right, then left, from inept starry-eyed idealism to revolutionary extremism. We
must, rather, recognize the absolute necessity of the one and only path: the
establishment, over a global federation of states, of an unsullied,
incorruptible, highly respected body, a moral body standing outside of and above
the state. For the state is, by its very nature, amoral.
What idea, what teaching will aid in the creation of such a supervisory body?
What minds will formulate its guiding principles and make it acceptable to the
overwhelming majority of people? By what paths will such a body—a body
foreswearing the use of force—arrive at worldwide recognition, at a position
even higher than a federation of states? If it can in fact introduce into
leadership the policy of gradually replacing coercion with something else, then
what would that something else be? And in what manner would it be introduced?
And what doctrine would be able to solve the incredibly complex problems that
will arise in connection with all that?
The present book attempts to give, to some extent, an answer to the above
questions (although it shall also deal with wider issues). As a prologue to
answering them, however, it is best to first clearly identify what this teaching
sees as the irreconcilable enemy against which it is directed.
From the historical point of view, it sees its enemies in all states, parties,
or doctrines that strive to enslave others and to establish any form of despotic
political regime. From the metahistorical point of view, it has but a single
foe: the Antigod, the Spirit of Tyranny, the Great Torturer, who takes many
shapes and forms in the life of our planet. For the movement I am now talking
about—both now, when it has barely begun to form, and later, when it will have
become the decisive voice in history— there will be only one enemy: tyranny
and coercion wherever it may arise, even within itself. Coercion will be
admissible only in cases of absolute necessity, only in mitigated forms, and
only until that time when the highest body, by means of a reformed educational
system, has, with the help of millions of highly committed minds and wills,
prepared humanity for the substitution of free will for force, the voice of
deep-felt conscience for the decrees of human laws, and a community for the
state. In other words, until the very essence of the state has been transformed
and a living family of all peoples has replaced the soulless and coercive state
apparatus.
One need not assume that such a process will require an enormous span of time.
By systematically immersing the populations of huge countries in a single
meticulously formulated system of education and social conditioning, powerful
dictatorships have irrefutably proven what a powerful lever the molding of a
generation's psyche can be. Each generation formed closer and closer to what the
ruling powers considered desirable. Nazi Germany, for example, managed to
achieve its goals in this area in the span of a single generation. Clearly its
ideals can elicit no response in us other than anger and disgust. Its methods,
as well, must be rejected almost wholesale. But we must take hold of the lever
it discovered and not let go. The century of mass spiritual enlightenment, the
century of decisive victories for a new, as yet barely discernible pedagogy is
approaching. Even if only a few dozen schools are organized on its principles, a
generation capable of doing its duty out of free will, not coercion, a
generation acting out of creative impulses and love, not fear, would form there.
That is the essence of ennobling education.
I picture an international organization, both political and cultural in nature,
setting as its aim the transformation of the state through the consistent
implementation of far-reaching reforms. The crucial stage in the fulfillment of
that aim will be the founding of the Global Federation of Independent States.
But this must carry the proviso that a special body be established over the
Federation - the body I have already mentioned, which will oversee the
activities of the states and guide them toward a bloodless and painless
transformation from within. The key here is "bloodless and painless,"
for in that way it will differ from revolutionary doctrines of the past.
I consider it both premature and unnecessary to speculate on the structure and
name of that organization. For now, so as to avoid constantly repeating a
lengthy description, we will give it a provisional name: the League for the
Transformation of the State. As for its structure, those who will be its
founders will be both more experienced and more practical than I—they will be
leaders of vision, not poets. I will only say that it seems to me personally
that the League should establish branches in every country, with each branch
consisting of several divisions: cultural, philanthropic, educational, and
political. The political division in each country will assume the structural and
organizational aspects of a national party of global religious and cultural
reforms. All such parties will be linked and united in the League and by the
League.
How, where, and among whom specifically the formation of the League will take
place I, of course, do not and cannot know. But it is clear that the period of
time from its inception until the establishment of the Federation of States and
the moral supervisory body over it will be regarded as a preliminary stage, when
the League will channel all of its energies into disseminating its ideas,
recruiting new members, expanding its operations, educating younger generations,
and forging within itself a future body that in time can be entrusted with a
global leadership role.
The League's constitution will not restrict its membership to people of any
particular philosophical or religious belief. All that will be required is an
active commitment to realizing its program and a resolve not to violate its
moral code, the cornerstone of the organization.
Despite all the vicissitudes of public service, the goals of the League must be
attained not at the price of departure from its moral code but as a result of
faithful adherence to it. Its reputation must be spotless, its disinterestedness
not subject to doubt, its moral authority ever increasing, as the best and
finest of humanity will be drawn to it and will constantly strengthen its ranks.
The path to global unification will proceed, in all likelihood, through various
stages of international solidarity, through the unification and merger of
regional blocs. The last stage would take the form of a global referendum or
plebiscite—some form of free vote by every person. It may result in a victory
for the League only in certain countries. But the inexorable march of history
will be on the League's side. The unification of even half the globe will be the
final step in a revolution of people's consciousness. A second referendum will
be held, perhaps a third, and a decade or so later the borders of the Federation
will encompass all of humanity. Then there will be a real possibility of
implementing a series of wide-ranging measures aimed at transforming the
conglomerate of states into a single state that will be gradually altered by two
parallel programs: one external, concerned with political, social, and economic
affairs, and one internal, focused on educational, moral, and religious matters.
From the above, it should be clear that the members of the League and its
national parties will be able to wield as weapons only their words and their own
example, and this only against those ideologies and doctrines that try to clear
the path to power for a dictator or support a dictator already in power.
Although the activities of the great Mahatma Gandhi and the political party he
inspired were confined to the national scale, the League will see them as its
historical predecessors. The first political leader/ living saint in modern
times, Gandhi consolidated a purely political movement on a foundation of high
moral standards, refuting the prevailing attitude that politics and morality are
incompatible. But the national borders within which the Indian National Congress
acted will be expanded by the League to encompass the entire planet, and the
goals of the League will be of a higher historical stage, or series of stages,
than were the goals set by the great party that freed India.
Oh, there will of course be many people who will insist that the League's
methods are impractical and unrealistic. I've met enough champions of political
realism to last me a lifetime. There is no injustice or social villainy that has
not tried to cover itself with that pitiful fig leaf. There is no weight more
deadening, more earthbound, than talk of political realism as a counter to
everything lofty, everything inspirational, everything spiritual. Such political
realists are, incidentally, the same sort of people who in their time claimed,
even in India, that Gandhi was a dreamer out of touch with reality. They were
forced to eat their words when Gandhi and his party, while maintaining high
moral standards, won freedom for their country and led it to prosperity. But
this was not the kind of material prosperity that blinds people's eyes with the
black soot of statistics on the increase in coal production or with radioactive
dust from experimental tests of hydrogen bombs. This was cultural, ethical,
aesthetic, and spiritual prosperity, which would slowly but surely give rise to
material well-being.
Those who are unable to see the good in people those whose outlook has coarsened
and whose conscience has withered in the atmosphere of flagrant state violations
of human rights will also accuse the League of unrealistic methods. They will be
joined by those who cannot see what revolutions in mass consciousness await us
in the not too distant future. The trauma of wars, oppression, and every
possible violation of human rights already has launched a grass roots movement
for peaceful coexistence. Events that destroy our feeling of security, deprive
us of all comfort and peace of mind, and uproot our faith in current ideologies
and the social orders they uphold are constantly taking place and will continue
to do so. The exposing of the unbelievable atrocities perpetrated behind the
imposing facade of dictatorships, concrete proof of the foundation and price of
their temporary victories and apparent successes, will parch the soul like a hot
desert wind. People's spiritual thirst will become unbearable. The elimination
of the threat of great wars, the discovery of paths to uniting the world without
bloodshed, a spiritual leader and living saint who will head a united humanity
in the future, the weakening of state coercion, and the growth of a global
community spirit this is what believers pray for and nonbelievers dream about in
our century. And it is highly probable that a lofty, global teaching, moral,
political, philosophical, and spiritual will transform this generation's thirst
into an international creative enthusiasm.
The fact that humanity's last major religious movement the Protestant
Reformation took place four hundred years ago, and that the last religion of
global impact, Islam, is in its thirteenth century of existence is sometimes
cited in support of the argument that the religious era of humanity is past. But
one should gauge the potential of religion as a whole, not by its specific
forms. What matters is not how long ago the last major forms emerged but whether
the evolution of religion has reached a dead-end: whether it is possible to
integrate the indisputable laws of science into creative religious thought,
whether there glimmers within such a worldview the possibility of making sense
of our experience in the new era, and whether religion will be able to play a
real and progressive role in such experience.
It is true that approximately four hundred years have passed since the last
major religious movement of international scope. It is also true that for many
centuries prior to the Protestant Reformation there had been no comparable
movements. But is that even the point? Is it still not clear that a definite
current of mental, creative work absorbed almost all of humanity's spiritual and
intellectual energy during the last few centuries? It would be difficult to
expect that while maintaining such a rapid pace of scientific, technical, and
social progress and creating such cultural treasures in literature, music,
philosophy, and art, humanity would, in the last centuries, find within itself
the energy to create more universal religious systems as well.
But the turn of the century was the end of an era. The golden age of literature,
art, music, and philosophy came to a close. The realm of sociopolitical activity
has drawn to itself and with time this has become more and more apparent not the
most, but the least, spiritual representatives of the human race. A gigantic
spiritual vacuum has formed that did not exist even fifty years ago, and
hypertrophied science has been powerless to fill it. If I may put it thus:
colossal resources of the human genius have remained untapped. That is the womb
of creative energy where the embryonic global interreligion is forming.
Will religion not its old forms, but the sum religion that the world is now
pregnant with be able to eliminate the most dangerous threats hanging over the
heads of humanity: world war and global tyranny? It will probably be unable to
avert the next world war: if a third world war breaks out, it will likely take
place even before the appearance of the League. But after the nucleus of the
future interreligion has been formed, the League's first and foremost task will
be to prevent all wars that threaten to break out and to prevent the rise of a
global tyranny. Will that religion be able to achieve the greatest degree of
harmony between individual freedom and the interests of humanity, a harmony
conceivable only at the present stage of history? That is only another aspect of
that same foremost task. Will it promote the balanced development of the
creative impulses with which every person is gifted? Yes, except for demonic
impulses that is, impulses toward tyranny, violence, and self-assertion at the
expense of other living beings. Will it, like other movements with similar
global aspirations, require blood and victims in order to emerge triumphant? No
except in those cases when its faithful may be forced to prove their devotion to
its message at the cost of their lives. Will its ideas contradict not only the
philosophical doctrine of materialism (they will contradict that, of course, at
all points from A to Z), but also the objective and indisputable laws of modern
science? Not in the slightest. Is it possible to imagine a campaign during the
period of its ascendancy wherein dissenters will be persecuted, when it will
force its tenets on philosophy, science, and art? To the contrary, its proposed
route leads from partial initial restrictions on freedom of expression to
eventual unlimited freedom of expression. This being so, what remains of the
argument that religion is incapable of responding and providing practical
solutions to the most pressing problems of the day?
One has every right and justification to direct such a reproach not at religion
but, alas, at science. It is that same system of views that fails to look beyond
the limits circumscribed by contemporary scientific knowledge that is incapable
of providing answers to the most fundamental and elementary questions. Does the
Source, the Creator, God exist? Unknown. Does such a thing as a soul exist? If
so, is it immortal? Science does not know the answer. What is time, space,
matter, energy? Opinions are sharply divided. Is our world eternal and endless
or, on the contrary, is it limited within time and space? Science does not
possess the necessary data to give a definite answer. Why should I do good and
not evil, if evil appeals to me and I can be sure of escaping punishment? The
answers are totally unintelligible. How can science be used to avert the
possibility of wars and tyranny? Silence. How can social harmony be attained
with the least human cost? Mutually exclusive proposals are put forward that
resemble each other only in that they are all equally unrelated to pure science.
It is natural that on such shaky and subjective and, indeed, pseudo-scientific
foundations doctrines have arisen based only on class, racial, nationalist, or
party interests that is, on those very systems whose purpose is the
justification of dictatorships and wars. The distinguishing mark of such
doctrines is their low level of spirituality. It follows, therefore, that the
desired moral supervisory body cannot be organized on the basis of the so-called
scientific worldview, for, in essence, such a worldview does not exist. Rather,
it shall arise through communion with the world of spirit; through the reception
of the rays of that world pouring out and into our hearts, reason, and
conscience; and through the application of the precept of active and creative
love to every facet of our lives. The moral level which incorporates all of the
above traits is called sanctity.
There is yet another popular fallacy: a view of religion as a phenomenon that is
reactionary by nature, particularly in our age. But it is just as ridiculous to
speak of the reactionary nature of religion in general, irrespective of the
specific forms it takes, as it is to try to prove the reactionary nature of art
in general or philosophy in general. A dynamic thinker one who perceives
evolving sets of facts and the processes by which those sets are shaped will be
able to distinguish the telltale marks of reactionary and progressive forms in
art, in religion, in all areas of human activity. One may find a large number of
reactionary forms of religion, even more than one would like, but that fact has
no relation whatsoever to the embryonic sum religion with which this book is
concerned. For there have not been, nor are there, more progressive aims or
methods in our century than those that will be fused together in that religion.
As for the scientific method's claim to supremacy, it is powerless to stamp out
the methods of art and religion, in their widest sense, just as an aggressive
religiosity was powerless to stamp out science in its time. That is because
their methods are differentiated not only by how they cognize but by what they
cognize. In the last century, the rapid progress of science and technology gave
rise to predictions about the death of art. A hundred years have passed and the
constellation of arts has not only not faded away but has been brightened by yet
another star the art of cinema. Thirty or forty years ago many in Russia
believed the demise of religion was inevitable as a result of scientific and
social progress. And yet, despite all the resources mobilized against it, the
constellation of religions has not only not faded away but scientific and social
progress has caused it to be brightened by the ability to turn the world's
religions from a collage of separate petals into one single, whole spiritual
flower the Rose of the World.
It follows from the above that a religious movement that integrates humanity's
positive experience into its philosophy and praxis and draws conclusions from
the negative experience that require too much courage and honesty to be made by
other streams of social thought; a movement whose first and foremost tasks are
the transformation of the state into a community, the unification of the entire
world, and the ennobling education of humanity; a movement that will guard
against the distortion of its ideals and methods with the indestructible shield
of a higher morality such a movement cannot but be recognized as progressive,
promising, and creatively young.
A shield of morality! On what principles will such a morality be founded? I
spoke of sanctity. But is it not simply utopian to think that entire segments of
society, and not just single individuals, could be saintly?
It is necessary to state what exactly is meant here by the term
"sanctity." An ascetic life spent in a monastery is not a prerequisite
for the attainment of sanctity. Sanctity is the highest stage of moral
development for a person. Whoever surpasses it is no longer just saintly, but is
a prophet as well. Sanctity can take many different forms depending on time,
place, and a person's character. If we generalize, sanctity, defined negatively,
is the internal state of a person, constant and ending only with death, in which
the will is free from egoistic impulses, the reason is free from slavery to
materialistic desires, and the heart is free from bursts of random, turbid
emotions that demean the soul. To define it positively, sanctity is the
permeation of all one's inner and outer life with an active love for God,
people, and the world.
It is doubtful that the necessary psychological climate for the emergence of a
moral body founded on that same sanctity could be better prepared than in an
organization whose meaning and purpose lie in the hope of this emergence. The
League will be that very organization. Even atheists could number among its
members. But the League's basic tenet the necessity of a global moral body
standing above all the states will be the very thing to fuse the most committed,
creative, energetic, and gifted of its members into a nucleus a nucleus
characterized by an atmosphere of unflagging spiritual creativity, active love,
and purity; a nucleus composed of people enlightened enough to be aware not only
of the danger threatening each of them if their ambitious impulses are unleashed
but of the danger, as well, of a too superficial formulation of religious moral
values, which can lead to ethical formalism, hypocrisy, spiritual staleness, and
sanctimony.
No one but God knows where and when the Rose of the World's first flames will be
kindled. The country Russia has only been designated; tragic events might still
take place that could interfere with that mystical event and force it to be
relocated to another country. The time the sixties has only been projected;
disastrous cataclysms might take place that would move the date far ahead into
the future. It is possible that the first flame will kindle not in the League
for the Transformation of the State but in a different, as yet unknown group of
people. But here or there, in this country or another, a decade earlier or
later, the interreligious, global church of the new age the Rose of the World
will appear as the sum total of the spiritual activity of many people, as the
joint creation of people standing beneath the shower of heaven-sent revelation
it will appear, emerge, and embark on its historical journey.
Religion, interreligion, church I cannot render the idea with the necessary
exactitude using those words. Its many fundamental departures from previous
religions and churches will in time require new words to be coined for use in
reference to it. But even without them, it will be necessary to introduce such a
large vocabulary of new words into the pages of this book that now, at the
beginning, I think it best not to run to the aid of those words but to rely on a
descriptive definition of the distinguishing features of what will be called the
Rose of the World.
It will not be like any restricted religious faith, whether true or false. Nor
will it be an international religious order like the Theosophists, the
Anthroposophists, or the Masons, composed, like a bouquet, of various flowers of
truth eclectically picked from every imaginable religious glade. It will be an
interreligion or pan-religion, in that it will be a teaching that views all
religions that appeared earlier as reflections of different layers of spiritual
reality, different sets of variomaterial facts, and different segments of our
planetary cosmos ("Planetary cosmos" refers to the sum total of planes
of differing materiality, dimensions, and time streams that are necessarily
linked to the Earth. The planetary cosmos is the planet Earth with all the
complexity of the material (and not just physical) planes of its existence. Many
heavenly bodies possess such gigantic systems. They are called bramfaturas. The
Earth's bramfatura is called Shadanakar. A brief glossary appended at the end of
the book gives definitions for those words that are either used here for the
first time or altered by a new sense.). That point of view treats Shadanakar
both as a separate entity and as part of the divine universe. If the older
religions are petals, then the Rose of the World will be a flower: with roots,
stem, head, and the commonwealth of its petals.
The second distinction concerns the globality of the Rose of the World's
aspirations and their historical concreteness. Not one religion, with the
exception of medieval Catholicism, has made the reorganization of human society
its aim. But the papacy, stubbornly trying to contain feudal chaos with the dams
of hierocracy, was unable to weaken the exploitation of the have-nots by the
haves, to lessen social inequality with wide-ranging reforms, or to raise the
overall standard of living. Be that as it may, it would be unfair to blame the
ruling Catholic hierarchy for its failure: the material resources, both economic
and technological, necessary for such large-scale transformations were still
unavailable. It was no coincidence that evil in the world was felt to have
existed from time immemorial (and right up to modern times has been considered
eternal and unavoidable), and that Catholicism in essence focused, like all the
other religions, on the "inner self" alone, teaching individual
perfection. But times have changed, material resources have become available,
and it is thanks to the entire historical process, and not to the Rose of the
World, that the latter can now regard social justice not as something alien to
its purposes, doomed to failure, and not worth the efforts, but can link it
inseparably to the growth of the inner self: work on oneself and social justice
will become two parallel processes that should complement each other.
One often hears that Christianity has failed. If it were only a question of the
past, one could say that from the social and overall moral point of view it has
failed. "Religion has failed." Yes, if humanity's religious creativity
were spent by what has already been woven, religion in the above-mentioned sense
truly could be said to have failed. But at present it is fair to say only this:
the older religions could not substantially decrease the amount of social
injustice, because they did not possess the necessary material resources, and
the lack of those resources gave birth to a negative attitude toward all such
attempts. In that way the ground was prepared for the secular stage of
civilization.
In the eighteenth century social conscience awakened;- Social disharmony was
finally felt and perceived as something intolerable, demeaning, and to be
overcome. That, of course, occurred in connection with the fact that the
material resources that had been lacking began to appear. But the older
religions were unable to grasp that fact. They did not want to take advantage of
those resources, did not wish to direct the process of social transformation,
and it is that same sluggishness, intellectual laziness, conceptual immobility,
and closemindedness that is their greatest fault. Religion discredited itself by
its centuries-long powerlessness in that respect, and it should come as no
surprise that Europe, followed by other continents, fell into the opposite
extreme: the transformation of society by purely mechanical means in
conjunction with a complete renunciation of the spiritual side of the process.
The result, too, should come as no surprise: upheavals the world has never
before witnessed, loss of life that had never been envisaged even in our worst
nightmares, and a decline in the overall moral level, whose very possibility
many people in the twentieth century see as a grim and tragic enigma.
The responsibility for the depth and perseverance of the resulting secular stage
rests to a large extent on the older religions. They also bear responsibility
for the spiritual fate of millions of souls who, in the struggle for social
justice, placed themselves in opposition to religion in general and thus tore
the spiritual roots of their own existence loose from the soil of world
spirituality. But genuine religious activity is a definite kind of social
service, and genuine social service is at the same time religious activity. No
religious act, even the self-abnegation of a monk, is done in isolation from the
whole, and every such work contributes to world wide enlightenment. No positive
social activity can help but increase the amount of good in the world that is,
such activity cannot help but have religious meaning. The pulsing of social
conscience, active compassion and concelebration, unflagging practical efforts
for social justice this is the second manner which the Rose of the World is
distinct from the older religion.
The third distinction concerns dynamism of outlook. There have already been
religions that have incorporated concepts of metahistory-Judaism and early
Christianity—but only in remote and brief periods during their formation did
they try to formulate a spiritual framework to explain the historical processes
taking place at the time. During those brief, half-forgotten times, the
astonishing insights of the Apocalypse remained hidden from people's eyes by a
blanket of allegories and innuendos; its code of images allowed for every
imaginable interpretation. Thus, a genuine framework for understanding
historical processes did not take shape. Historical knowledge was as yet scarce
and limited in scope, geographical horizons were small, and the mystical mind
was not yet ready to grasp the internal logic of metahistory and the incredible
complexity of Shadanakar.
But the appearance of the Rose of the World has been preceded by the scientific
era, an era that revolutionized humanity's view of the universe, of nations, of
cultures, and of their fates. It has been preceded by yet another era: one of
radical social changes and upheavals, of revolutions, and of world wars. Both
kinds of phenomena have loosened humanity's psychological crust, which had
remained for so many centuries unbroken. In that soil, plowed up by the iron
teeth of historical catastrophes, the seeds of metahistorical revelation will
fall. And the entire planetary cosmos will reveal itself to people's spiritual
sight as a constantly evolving system of variegated worlds, a system speeding
toward a blindingly brilliant goal, spiritualized and transformed from century
to century and from day to day. Images from future eras are beginning to show
through our reality—each in all its inimitable uniqueness, in its correlation
of metahistorical forces battling within it. The goal of the Rose of the World
is to become a receptor, fosterer, and interpreter of that knowledge. The
collective mystical consciousness of all living humanity, it will illumine the
meaning of the historical processes of the past, present, and future in order to
assume creative guidance of those processes. If one may speak of any dogmas in
its teaching, then those dogmas will be deeply dynamic, multifaceted, and
capable of further enrichment, development, and long-range evolution.
From that follows the fourth distinction of the Rose of the World, which entails
a program of consistent, spiritual-historical tasks that are entirely concrete
and achievable in principle. I will list once again the foremost of them: the
unification of the planet under a federation of states overseen by a moral
supervisory body; the establishment of economic well-being and a high standard
of living in every country; the ennobling education of younger generations; the
reunification of the Christian churches and the creation of a free amalgamation
of all religions of Light; the transformation of the planet into a garden and
the state into a community. But those are merely tasks of the first order. Their
realization will open the way to tasks of an even higher order— the
spiritualization of nature.
Interreligiosity, the globality of its societal aspirations and their concrete
nature, the dynamism of its outlook, and consistency in its global historical
tasks—these are the characteristics that will distinguish the Rose of the
World from all religions and churches of the past. The bloodlessness of its
paths, the painlessness of its reforms, its kindness and consideration toward
people, the waves of spiritual warmth that will emanate from it— these are the
characteristics that will distinguish it from all sociopolitical movements of
the past and present.
Obviously, the essence of the state, as well as the moral cast of society,
cannot be transformed in the wink of an eye. An immediate and complete
renunciation of coercion is pure fantasy. But that element will decrease over
time and societal space. Every kind of discipline is made up of elements of
coercion and consciousness, and one or another type of discipline results from
the ratio of these two elements. Slave economies, prisons, and concentration
camps boast a high percentage of coercion and an almost complete absence of
consciousness. There is a slightly higher percentage of consciousness present
during army drills. And further, to the extent that the element of coercion is
weakened within disciplinary models, the categorical imperative of inner
self-discipline grows and replaces it. The new pedagogy will be based on the
fostering of that same impulse. Its principles and methods, as well as methods
for the moral rehabilitation and rebirth of criminals, will be discussed in a
later chapter. But it should be clear even now that the external stimulus of
coercion will disappear quickest of all within the inner concentric circles of
the Rose of the World, for those circles will be filled by the very people who
have wed their entire life to its tasks and principles and no longer have any
need of outside coercion. They will be its conscience, and who, if not they,
should occupy the seats of the Upper Council?
Is it possible to overstate the edifying effect exerted by political systems
where the worthiest people stand at the head of society, guiding and creating?
Think not of those whose will is overdeveloped at the expense of other sides of
their self and whose strength lies in their unscrupulous approach to means, but
of those in whom will, reason, love, purity of thought, and a profound
understanding of life are harmoniously developed and combined with conspicuous
spiritual gifts—those we call living saints.
Recently we saw an example of just such a saint: we were witnesses to India's
decisive hour and the great spirit of Gandhi. We were presented with an
astonishing spectacle: a person wearing a loincloth, with no government
authority, without a single soldier or servant at his command, without a roof
over his head, became the conscience and the spiritual and political leader of
three hundred million people. One soft-spoken word from him was enough to unite
those millions in a massive, nonviolent struggle to free their country, in which
the shedding of their enemy's blood gave rise to nationwide fasting and
mourning.
It is easy to imagine how tragically the Indian people's historical course would
have been altered if, instead of that saint, a person of a self-willed nature,
like Mussolini or Stalin, had at that decisive minute stepped forward as
leader—a so-called strong leader, a master of demagoguery and political
intrigue, who masks his despotic nature behind fulsome speeches about the
people's welfare! How skillfully he would have played on the base of instincts
of the people, on their natural hatred for their conquerors, on their envy of
the rich. What waves of fire and blood would have broken over India, flooding
islands of high moral consciousness fostered and strengthened over thousands of
years by the brightest children of that great people! And, in the end, what a
tyranny such a person would have established over the exhausted country, taking
advantage of the people's habit of obedience, formed through centuries of
slavery. Gandhi channelled the country's thirst for self-determination and
national identity down a different path. Here is the first example in modern
times of the power that will gradually replace the sword and whip of state rule.
That power is the loving trust a people have for whomever gives proof of the
moral elevation upon which rests the authority of living saints.
I foresee a host of objections. One is as follows. Yes, such a thing was
possible in India, with its unique characteristics, with its four-thousand-year
religious history, with the moral stature of its people. Other peoples have
different legacies, and India's experience is not applicable to any other
country.
True, every people has its own historical legacy. And India's legacy has led to
its people becoming a pioneer on that road. But almost every nation has
encountered, either within or beside their borders, dictatorships and tyrannies
of all imaginable colors and ideological masks, and each has had sufficient
opportunity to realize into what a disastrous abyss a blind
leadership—unenlightened by sanctity, not even meeting the minimum
requirements of an average moral level—can plunge their country. After all,
government leadership demands self-renunciation, and an average moral level is
too low for that. Many nations, as well, have come to realize that where, in
place of dictators, political parties alternate, faces change like a
kaleidoscope. Diplomats and generals, bosses and lawyers, demagogues and
business people—some are self-seekers, others are more principled, but none is
capable of breathing a new, clean, and vibrant spirit into life or of solving
problems of vital national interest. No one can trust a single one of them more
than they trust themselves, because not one of them has paused even a moment to
think about what sanctity and spirituality mean. They are fleeting shadows,
fallen leaves blown about by the winds of history. If the Rose of the World does
not make its appearance in time on the international scene, they will be
scattered by the fiery breath of willful and merciless dictatorships. If the
Rose of the World does appear, they will dissolve, melting under the rising sun
of its great message, because the hearts of the people will trust one living
saint more than a hundred modern-day politicians.
But an even greater and brighter effect will be exerted on the people and their
destiny if three of the highest gifts—sanctity, religious vision, and artistic
genius—are all combined in one person.
O, so many aspects of religion belong entirely to its past stages. One such
aspect appears to be the power that strictly delineated, didactically
formulated, law-like dogmas incapable of growth have had over people's minds.
Human experience and the growth of individuality during the last centuries have
led to human beings feeling cramped by and suspicious of any dogma. As a result,
no matter how nondogmatic the Rose of the World's teachings will be, no matter
how much they will be permeated by a spirit of religious dynamism, a great many
people will have difficulty accepting them. On the other hand, many millions
will respond to its call, as it will be addressed not so much to the intellect
as to the heart, resounding in masterpieces of literature, music, theater, and
architecture.
Works of art are more capacious and multifaceted than theosophical aphorisms or
philosophical arguments. They leave more room for the imagination; they permit
each person to interpret the teaching so that it is more understandable and in
tune with his or her own individuality. Revelation flows down from many streams,
and if art is not the purest then it is at least the widest of them. Therefore,
every art form and a beautiful repertoire of ritual will outfit the Rose of the
World with colorful and glittering habiliments. And for that same reason, it
would be most natural for a person who possesses three of the greatest
gifts—religious vision, sanctity, and artistic genius—to stand at the head
of the Rose of the World.
Perhaps such a person will never come, or will
come much later. It is possible that a collective of the worthiest, and not one
single person, will lead the Rose of the World. But if Providence sends a person
of such great spirit to our century—and it has sent them before—and the
forces of evil are unable to thwart his or her mission, it will be the greatest
of good fortune for the entire planet. For no one can exert a greater and
brighter influence on humanity than a genius of the word who has become a
visionary leader and living saint and who has been raised to the heights of
being global guide of a cultural and social renaissance. That person, and only
that person, can be entrusted with an extraordinary and unprecedented task:
moral supervision of all the states of the Federation and guidance of nations
with a view to transforming those states into a global community.
O, we Russians paid dearly for the unconditional trust we placed in a
strong-willed man, whom many of us viewed as a benefactor of humanity. We will
not repeat the same mistake! There are unmistakable signs that distinguish a
person worthy of such a mission from an evil genius. The latter is gloomy; the
former is bright with spiritual vitality. One consolidates power with executions
and torture; the other will not spend a single day seeking power, and when that
individual accepts power no one's blood will be spilled. One will cultivate the
cult of personality across the land; the other will consider such glorification
ridiculous and repellent. One is unapproachable; the other is open to all. One
is wracked by an unquenchable thirst for life and power and hides from imagined
dangers behind impenetrable walls; the other is free from worldly temptations
and calm in the face of danger, with a clean conscience and unshakable faith.
They are two antipodes, the ambassadors of two irreconcilable camps.
Of course, such elected leaders would be but the first among equals in an Upper
Council. In everything they would rely on the cooperation of many, and their own
activities would be monitored by many. They would be able to assume their
extraordinary post only after undergoing rigorous tests. Such a post cannot be
filled by the young, not even by the middle-aged, but only by those ripened by
old age. Temptations and negative emotions must be long overcome. As for the
election itself, it seems to me that it could be conducted only in the form of
one or another kind of plebiscite. And even during the term of office of the
High Mentors, the Council would be keeping watch on their activities. Departure
from their path would result in the transfer of their powers to the worthiest.
In general, all the issues involved could be carefully thought out, the dangers
foreseen, decisions precisely weighed and later adjusted. But as long as the
High Mentors keep to the preordained path, they will be the mystical links
between humanity and the other worlds, the revealers of the will of Providence,
the spiritual guides of billions and the guardians of their souls. There is
nothing to fear by uniting all spiritual and secular power in the hands of such
people.
Some will say that such people appear perhaps only once in every five hundred
years. I will go one step further: individuals of such stature, who possess the
sum of these above-mentioned gifts, could never have existed before. An Einstein
could not have appeared among the Maoris of the nineteenth century. It would be
ridiculous to expect to find a Dostoyevsky, such as we know him, among the
subjects of Tutankhamen or Theodoric. He would have possessed a different sum of
gifts then, and many of them would not have found outward expression in his
life. People like those I am speaking of could not have realized the gifts they
were endowed with even in the recent past, and their contemporaries would have
remained in the dark as to their true stature and potential. The prerequisite
conditions already seem to be taking shape as the new age begins; the Rose of
the World will see them ripen in such a way that the social and cultural
atmosphere will provide the High Mentor with a chain of successors worthy of the
post.
Some will also say that even all the above-listed gifts are not enough for such
an extraordinary position, that such people also need a versatile, sober, and
practical political mind. No doubt. Such a leader will have to deal with
thousands of the most varied problems; knowledge and experience—economic,
financial, judicial, even technical—will be needed. But the age of Aristotle
is long past; minds of encyclopedic breadth are unthinkable in our day and age.
And the activities of those I am speaking of are just as unthinkable apart from
the collective mind, from the Upper Council. The most profound minds, those wise
in the vicissitudes of leadership, as well as specialists from every branch of
knowledge, will take part in it. It is wisdom, not encyclopedic erudition or
practical management skills, that will be demanded of the High Mentors: wisdom
to understand people at first sight, to go instantly to the heart of complex
issues, and never for a second to remain deaf to the voice of conscience. The
High Mentors should be so elevated morally that love and trust in them will
replace other methods of rule. The use of coercion or force will be a torment
for them; they will resort to it only in the rarest of cases.
But that is only one possible option, although it is in my opinion the most
desirable. It is easy to imagine an alternative: leadership of the Rose of the
World, a relationship with the Federation government and legislative bodies,
where the collective principle will be limited by nothing and no one. The task
of working out a constitution belongs to the far future, and our fortunate
descendants, not us, will have the chance to choose one option from the many
possible.
But isn't that a theocracy? I dislike the word theocracy. Theocracy is the rule
of God; to use it in reference to any kind of social or political system would
be absurd from the point of view of atheists and blasphemous from the point of
view of believers. History has never witnessed, nor will it witness, a
theocracy. Not theocracy, but hierocracy, the rule of a priesthood, should be
used in reference to the ecclesiastical states of the Pope or the Dalai Lama.
The system I have described is the exact opposite of any type of hierocracy: the
church will not disappear into the state, which swallows it up and rules in its
name. Rather, the entire conglomerate of states and assembly of churches will
gradually merge into a global community and interreligious church. Posts in the
higher bodies—legislative, executive, and supervisory—will not be occupied
by the upper hierarchy of a church but by the finest representatives of all
nations, all faiths, all social classes, and all specialties.
Not a hierocracy, not a monarchy, not an oligarchy, not a republic: something
qualitatively different from all that has come before will emerge. It will be a
global-wide social system working toward sanctifying and enlightening all life
on earth. I do not know what it will be called. The point is not in the name but
in the essence. Its essence will consist of work in the name of spiritualizing
individuals, all of humanity, and nature.
LITTLE BY LITTLE a new attitude toward
everything will arise: there would not be the slightest reason for the Rose of
the World to come into being if it only repeated what has been said before. A
new attitude and way of thinking will emerge in regard to every aspect of life,
large and small: cosmic and historical processes, planetary laws and the links
between variomaterial worlds, personal relationships and approaches to personal
growth, states and religion, the animal world and the environment—in a word,
everything that we group under the concepts culture and nature.
A new attitude toward everything will arise, but that does not mean that every
old attitude will be discarded or vilified. In many cases a point of view will
merely be presented whereby past attitudes will no longer contradict, but will
complement, each other, revealing each as merely a different aspect of the same
reality, or even of many realities. Such an approach is often effective, for
example, when examining the older religions and the realities behind them. This
book is devoted in its entirety to that new attitude. The subject matter is far
too broad and complex to be even briefly outlined in one chapter. Although this
chapter is entitled "Perspective on Culture" and the following
chapter, "Perspective on Religion," one should not expect an
exhaustive treatment of these subjects. All six books of this work are permeated
with a new way of looking at various spheres of culture, various historical
events, various religious systems, and various realms of nature. These first
chapters are merely intended as a sort of introduction. They contain a synopsis
of certain fundamental principles, no more.
In our century science has assumed the dominant role in culture. The scientific
method lays claim to absolute supremacy; for that reason this chapter will begin
with a description of the perspective offered by the Rose of the World on the
scientific method itself. It must be stated promptly and plainly that no matter
how many illusions the partisans of the scientific method have tried to create
in that regard, it has never been, is not now, nor will it ever be the only mode
of inquiry or the only means to know the material world. One need remember that
besides the artistic method— with which the scientific method now
condescendingly and grudgingly shares its preeminent status—the foundations
for a mode of inquiry and a method to know the material world were laid long
ago. The study of that method is inextricably linked to people's work on their
spiritual selves and the enlightenment of their moral selves. There is even the
possibility that it will become to a certain degree the dominant method in the
future. I have in mind not so much magic or occultism, which have been
discredited by a number of misunderstandings, but rather the concept of
spiritual work. Various systems and schools of that type can be found in all
religions with long spiritual traditions. Having in the course of centuries
developed practical techniques for bringing the will to bear on the human
organism and on external matter, and guiding a person to that level only after
protracted moral preparation and manifold tests, they have elevated, and elevate
now, hundreds, perhaps thousands, to what is in layman's terms called miracle
working. That arduous method, which has aroused the intense hatred of modern-day
philistines, is distinguished by one principle foreign to science: work on and
transformation of one's own being, as a result of which the physical and ether
coatings of one's self become more pliable, elastic, and obedient to one's will
than is normally possible. That path leads to such allegedly legendary phenomena
as passing bodily through threedimensional objects, levitation, walking on
water, teleportation, the healing of incurable diseases and of blindness
and—that highest and rarest attainment—the resurrection of the dead.
What we are dealing with in such cases is the manipulation of laws that hold in
our materiality, and the suspension of lower laws by higher ones, which as yet
are unknown to us. And if, in the twentieth century, the majority of us live our
entire lives without encountering indisputable examples of such phenomena, it
does not necessarily follow that such phenomena do not occur, or that they are
impossible in principle, but only that the prevailing conditions—cultural,
social, and psychological—in the secular era (especially in the West, and even
more so in the countries belonging to the socialist camp) have to such an extent
impeded the study and mastery of that method that the number of such phenomena
has been reduced to a handful of isolated cases.
Certain truly momentous events that took place nearly two thousand years ago
(they will be discussed later) are responsible for the fact that it has become
impossible to usher not individuals alone but whole masses of people onto that
path of knowledge. With the passage of time, the psychological climate of the
secular era obstructed more and more any movement along that path. Nowadays,
enormous obstacles face anyone wishing to embark on study of the method. In
certain countries such study has become, for all practical purposes, impossible.
But there is no reason to suppose that the method will remain that slow and
arduous forever. The areligious era is not endless; we are living at its close.
It is difficult to imagine anything appearing more unwieldy, unrefined, crude,
and impotent than do the achievements of modern technology when compared with
the achievements of the method of which I am speaking. If the incalculable
material and human resources that are now swallowed up for the advancement of
the scientific method were invested in the development and study of this other
method, then the panorama of human life—creative work, knowledge, the
organization of society, and morality—would undergo radical changes. The
psychological climate of the era of the Rose of the World will create conditions
more conducive than ever before to the development of that method. But that
belongs to the future, and not the near future at that. Until that time arrives
we have no alternative but to use in the main a different method, much less
refined and not leading very far, but dominant everywhere at the moment.
From that follows the Rose of the World's overall perspective on science and
technology at the current stage of history. Laboriously gathering facts,
deducing regularities from them without understanding the nature or orientation
of those regularities, manipulating them mechanically without the ability to
foretell what inventions and social upheavals its discoveries will lead to,
science has long been open to everyone regardless of their moral level. The
consequences are in front of our eyes and above our heads. The chief consequence
is that not one person on Earth can be sure that a hydrogen bomb or some other,
more appalling scientific achievement will not be dropped on them or their
fellow citizens at any moment by highly educated minds. It is therefore natural
that one of the first measures the Rose of the World will undertake after it
begins supervision of the states' activities will be the creation of an Upper
Scientific Council—that is, a committee staffed by members from the inner
circles of the Rose of the World itself. Consisting of people who combine the
respect of the scientific community with a high level of moral integrity, the
Council will assume executive management of all scientific and technological
work, serving both planning and regulatory functions.
What is involved in the protection of the vital interests of humanity appears on
the whole straightforward enough, at least in its principles, and there is
hardly a need to pause over it now. As for the issues involved in the protection
of the interests of the animal and plant worlds, they will be discussed in those
sections of the book devoted to the animal world and the world of the
elementals. That is perhaps the only area in which the outlook of the Rose of
the World and the views of the majority of contemporary scientists cannot be
reconciled. The conflict, however, does not pertain to any scientific theory.
Rather, it applies only to certain of science's practical methods that are
incompatible with the basic demands of goodness not only in the view of the Rose
of the World but also in the view of nearly every religious moral teaching and,
indeed, of nearly every humane person.
Outside those purely methodological clashes, there are not, nor can there be,
any conflicts between the Rose of the World and science. There is nowhere for a
conflict between them to arise. They deal with different things. It can hardly
be a coincidence that the erudition of the majority of this century's scientific
geniuses did not prevent them from holding personal religious beliefs and from
sharing and even creating bright, spiritual systems of philosophy. Einstein and
Planck, Pavlov and Lemaitre, Eddington and Milne-no matter what the field of
their scientific inquiry, all remained, in their own way, people with a firm
belief in God. I am, of course, disregarding here Russian scientists of the
Soviet period, some of whom were forced to proclaim their materialism not out of
any philosophical convictions but for completely different reasons, which are
obvious to anyone.
Leaving aside philosophy and politics, we can say that in areas purely
scientific the Rose of the World does not make any claim that science would have
sufficient grounds to reject. What is being asserted is that science has been
silent thus far about the realities the Rose of the World describes. But that is
a situation that will not continue for long. As for the social, cultural, and
moral tasks that the Rose of the World will attempt to carry out, it is
impossible to imagine that they would meet with any objections in principle from
authorities in the scientific community.
It is reasonable to suppose that it will not be the very idea of planning
scientific activity that will be the subject of debate in the future but the
limits of what will be subject to planning and of its practical methods. No
doubt special study will be devoted to the planning and coordination of
scientific work carried out in certain states of the midtwentieth century. But
only individual features will be borrowed from their experience, if only because
the Federation will be made up of many states, both large and small, that will
have just been unified and will be at varying stages of economic development,
states formed against the backdrop of different cultures and possessing
different sociopolitical systems. Systems distinguished by greater economic
centralization will find it easier to be assimilated into the inexorable process
of global socialization; others, accustomed to a laissez-faire system, will be
drawn into it more gradually. That, as well as the variety of cultural
traditions, will result in an extremely mixed global economy and interplay of
cultural heritages during the first stage.
Deep-rooted national antagonisms will also long continue to make their presence
felt. It will take time to balance and harmonize the needs of different
countries and different layers of society that will benefit from, say, the
priority development of such and such a branch of industry in such and such a
place or the sale of their products somewhere or other. In order to reach an
equitable solution to those kinds of problems, a new psychological trait will be
required from those who will head the Scientific Council and the Rose of the
World itself mastery of the inner sway of personal, as yet entirely natural,
cultural-ethnic bonds—that is, a complete impartiality toward nations. What
effort, what moral authority and even self-sacrifice, will be necessary just to
weaken deep-seated antagonisms, such as Anglo-Arab, Russo-Polish, or Turko-Armenian!
What will Germans, English, Russians, or Americans have to do to enable so many
countries to forget the hostility those Western nations have aroused in them?
What educational programs will be needed to soothe the wounded pride that
prevents many small or middle-sized nations from being on friendly terms with
their neighbors and that escalates into aggressive dreams of attaining greatness
at the expense of other countries?
But that is only one side of the coin. Many Western nations will have to rid
themselves of the slightest trace of their old feelings of superiority over
others. Russians will have to realize that their country is not the crowning
glory of creation and is in fact no better than many other nations. The English
will be forced to perform colossal work on their inner selves so as to renounce
their habit of favoring the interests of the inhabitants of the British isles
over the interests of citizens of Indonesia or Tanzania. From the French will be
required the ability to take to heart the interests of Paraguay or Thailand just
as passionately as they do their own The Chinese and Arabs will liberate their
hearts and minds from the once justified, and now anachronistic, distrust of
Europeans, which they have nursed for so many centuries, and will learn to
bestow no less attention on the needs of Belgium or Greece than on those of
Shanghai or the Sudan. The citizens of the republics of Central America will
have to cease caring and complaining only about their own situation and take
part in the distribution of the world's wealth, taking into account the needs of
Afghanistan, Cambodia, and even Yakutia. The citizens of the United States will
be expected to remember that they call themselves Christians and that
Christianity is incompatible with a savage hate for any race, blacks included.
This psychological remolding will be, as anyone can see, incredibly difficult,
but it is the only way freedom from wars and tyranny can be won. As one would
expect, nobody can hope to take part in the work of the global planning bodies
without that remolding.
Nations will even have to learn to make sacrifices—not of their blood, not, of
course, of the lives of their sons and daughters, but of dollars. For the more
affluent nations will be faced with the necessity of sharing their resources
with the peoples of the East and South, and disinterestedly at that, without an
eye to turning such aid into big business. In short, all those in the leadership
of the Rose of the World must be able to feel themselves as, above all, members
of the entire cosmos, then as members of humanity, and only then as members of a
nation.
The overall goal of the Rose of the World—or to be more exact, of the gigantic
spiritual process that began thousands of years ago and of which the Rose of the
World is but one stage—is the enlightenment of Shadanakar. And the foremost
task of our age consists in establishing everywhere, without excluding a single
human being, a standard of living worthy of humans, simple day-to-day
well-being, and fundamentally decent moral relations between people. The idea
that every person without exception should be assured of worthwhile work, rest,
leisure, a comfortable old age, decent shelter, access to all democratic
freedoms, and satisfaction of their basic material and spiritual needs will
begin to be actualized more and more in everyday life.
Only much later, in the very last chapters, will I be able to shed light on
concrete measures, on that program of integrated reform whereby these principles
will, I believe, take on flesh and blood. For now, only the principles are under
discussion. Thus, those in whom these principles awaken no sympathy will not
waste their time and energy on further reading, while those in sympathy will be
able to get a feel for the inner spirit of the Rose of the World before moving
on to an investigation of the possible paths for making these ideals a reality.
The above is the basic attitude of the Rose of the World toward science and
technology, as far as I can explain it without delving into metahistory and
transphysics. That should also be the role played by the scientific method in
the next few historical periods.
Several decades from now, the ever-increasing rate of economic growth will reach
a level we will be fully justified in calling global prosperity. Living
standards now enjoyed by citizens of the economically advanced nations will be
established in the remotest corners of the globe. The rechanneling of the
massive sums that are now spent on weapons into peaceful uses will impart almost
unimaginable acceleration to economic growth. Universal elementary education
will likely be achieved even before that. Eventually, even universal secondary
education will be felt to be insufficient. The borders of the intelligentsia
will encompass all of humanity. The development of newer and newer means of
communication, along with their accessibility and practicability, will virtually
eliminate the distance between nations and cultures. As the working day shrinks,
new reserves of time will be freed up. Physiological science will devise
technology that will enable the human brain to memorize input quicker and
indelibly. Leisure time will increase. And those matters that now occupy the
majority of people—the economy, politics, product improvement, technology, the
further upgrading of material comforts—will lose their interest. It is
entirely realistic to think that the generations of those times will find it
baffling and strange that their ancestors could have been so engrossed by and
emotional about decisions relating to such boring and trivial matters. Their
energy will be channeled into the creation of riches of a higher order, since
the economic base, being firmly grounded and global, will not be subject to any
sharp fluctuations.
Issues connected with technology and economics will cease to engage people's
overriding attention. They will be dealt with in their respective committees and
will be subject to public scrutiny, just as issues of restaurant hygiene or
sewage are now. Humanity's gifts will be put to a different use, dictated by the
thirst for knowledge, a love for all living beings, a need for higher forms of
creative work, and a passion for beauty.
The thirst for knowledge, which at one time drove explorers to embark on voyages
through uncharted waters and to range over unopened continents, will send them
first (perhaps even before the rise of the Rose of the World) into outer space.
But the other planets are inhospitable. After several exploratory missions the
launches will halt, and the thirst for knowledge itself will begin to shift in
focus. Methods will be devised to activate and develop the dormant organs
possessed by every human being: organs of spiritual sight, spiritual hearing,
deep memory, and the ability to separate at will one's inner, variomaterial
bodies from the physical body. Voyages around variomaterial worlds, around the
unfolding planes of Shadanakar, will commence. It will be the age of cosmic
Magellans and Columbuses of the spirit.
What systematic views on the individual's value, rights, obligations, and growth
will help to create a new psychological climate and hasten the dawn of the
golden age?
The absolute value of individuals lies in the fact that they share with God an
innate capacity for creative work and love. The relative value of individuals
depends on the level they have reached in their spiritual ascent, on the sum of
efforts—both their own and Providence's—spent on the attainment of that
level, and on the degree to which they manifest in their lives those gifts for
divine creative work and love.
The terrestrial leg of the cosmic journey of an ascending monad is that stage
when its gifts for creative work and love already can and should be brought to
bear in elevating its natural and human environment—that is, lessening the
tendency of individual parts and units within that environment to assert
themselves at the expense of others. Evil consists of just that tendency. Its
forms and magnitude are almost endless in their variety, but at its root it is
always the same: the attempt to assert oneself at the expense of everyone and
everything else.
The older religions judged the relative value of individuals by the degree to
which they obeyed the prescriptions of a given religious-moral code. Religions
with ascetic leanings believed the highest stage to be sainthood, defining it as
either pure monastic service or as martyrdom for one's faith. In so doing they
relegated love to the background. A monk's or martyr's self-denial were
performed not out of love for humanity or for all living beings but out of a
yearning to merge with God and to avoid the torments of hell. I am, of course,
referring here to the predominant tendency, the prevalent attitude, and not to
such astonishing individual apostles of love as St. Francis of Assisi, Ramajuna,
or Milarepa.
Monstrous though it may seem to us, even the eternal suffering of sinners in
hell did not arouse in the majority of adepts of those religions the desire to
enlighten the world's laws, including the law of retribution, or karma. Eternal
punishment for temporal sins appeared to them a just act of God or in any case
(as in Brahmanism) an unalterable and absolutely immutable law. Buddha burned
like a torch with the flame of compassion, but he, too, taught only how to free
oneself from the wheel of iron laws and not how to enlighten and transform those
laws. As for creative work, its intrinsic nature was not recognized at
all—such a concept did not even exist—while little importance was attached
to concrete forms of creative work accessible to ordinary people, with the
exception of religious works in the narrow sense of the word: acts of charity,
theology, missionary service, church architecture, and religious service.
Other religions that are not given to asceticism, such as Islam and
Protestantism, modified the ideal of sanctity, broadening it and, at the same
time, lowering it, making it more accessible, more popular, even going so far as
to require the observance of commandments vis-a-vis God, the state, one's
neighbor, one's family, and, lastly, oneself. It should be emphasized that
neither one nor the other group of religions set themselves the task of
transforming society, let alone nature. Accordingly, the conception of an
individual's obligations also remained deficient and narrow.
It was only natural that such tasks were finally advocated by secular teachings,
though in an extremely simplistic form. A lower, internally contradictory moral
standard was proclaimed that blindly mixed progressive features with others that
fell below a moral minimum one would have thought long beyond question. People
dusted off the old formula "The end justifies the means" and,
hesitating to proclaim it openly and honestly, began applying it in practice.
The moral aspect of historical events was wholly ignored when the events were
subjected to scrutiny or evaluation; verdicts were passed based only on
consideration of the overall progressive or reactionary orientation of the given
event. No one was disturbed by the fact that such a practice led to the
justification of atrocities committed by many despots of the past, even such
outrageous mass slaughters as the Jacobin terror or the activities of the
Oprichnina. Many timehonored achievements in social progress—such as freedom
of speech, the press, and conscience—were cast aside. Generations raised in
such an atmosphere gradually ceased to feel even the need for those freedoms—a
symptom that speaks far more eloquently than any tirade of society's shocking
spiritual decline. Thus, as society further embraced that moral standard in the
form it took in real life, those positive features that it did possess were
nullified. For the future held only the prospect of the dominion of material
satiety, purchased by a renunciation of spiritual freedom, by millions of human
lives, and by the exile of billions of souls to the lower planes of Shadanakar,
souls that had sold their divine birthright for a meager pottage.
One can only hope that humanity will learn from that terrible lesson.
The Rose of the World will teach the absolute value of individuals and their
divine birthrights: the right to be free from the yoke of poverty and the
oppression of power-hungry groups, the right to well-being, the right to all
forms of free creative work and the public unveiling of the fruits of that work,
the right to religious searchings, and the right to beauty. The right of people
to a secure existence and to the enjoyment of the benefits of civilization is an
inborn right that in itself does not necessitate a renunciation of freedom or
spirituality. It would be leading people astray to assert that we are faced with
a crucial dilemma here, that in order to attain what are only the natural and
self-evident blessings of life we must sacrifice our spiritual and social
freedom.
The Rose of the World will also teach the obligations of individuals: to
consistently expand the area encompassed by their love and to foster, multiply,
and enlighten what is born of their work. Thus, creative work is both a right
and an obligation. Even now I am unable to comprehend how it was that that truly
divine gift to humans did not receive due notice in any of the older religions,
except for certain forms of polytheism, especially that of ancient Greece. If I
am not mistaken, it was only in ancient Greece that creativity itself (and not
productivity, as in other forms of polytheism) was deified. Great masters of the
arts were even pantheonized.
It is a sad and puzzling fact that after the decline of ancient Greece the
creative gift ceased to attract the notice of religions and was no longer
conceptualized in ontological, metaphysical, or mystical terms. Under the
influence of the shallowly interpreted Semitic idea that after six days of
creation the Divine Creative Spirit rested, theology has preferred to circumvent
the question of God's further creation. The words of God recorded in
Revelations, "Behold, I will make all things new," has remained the
lone flight of inspiration, the lone intuition in that regard. As for human
creativity, an altogether suspicious attitude was formed toward it, as if the
sin of pride to which a human creator could fall victim was more dangerous and
deadlier than creative sterility. Unfortunately, the view on human creativity
that formed in the religions of Indian origin was no less injurious.
The last few centuries of Western culture—so rich in works of genius in all
spheres of art, science, and philosophy—have taught us much. They have taught
us to hold human creativity in reverence and human labor in respect. But the
secular spirit of these centuries has fostered just what the older religions
feared: creators have become afflicted by pride in their creative gift, as if
that gift had been forged by them themselves. True, that conceit has nested not
so much in the hearts of real geniuses, let alone artistic visionaries, as in
the hearts of lesser scientific and artistic figures. A series of chapters in
this book will be specially devoted to a closer examination of that problem from
the point of view of the Rose of the World's teachings.
In any case, creative work, like love, is not an exclusive gift bestowed on only
a chosen few. A few now possess sanctity and moral vision, heroism and wisdom,
genius and talent. But all that is merely activation of the potential dormant
within every soul. A sea of love, an inexhaustible wellspring of creativity,
bubbles behind the consciousness of each one of us. The sum religion will seek
to remove that barrier and allow those healing waters to wash over our life. A
creative attitude toward everything will appear among the generations raised
under it, and even labor will cease to be a burden. Rather, it will become the
outward expression of an unquenchable desire to create new things, better
things, and to create of oneself. All the Rose of the World's followers will
enjoy creative work, teaching its joys to children and teenagers. They will be
creative in everything they do: writing, architecture, science, gardening, the
decoration and tempering of daily life, religious service and religious drama,
the love between man and woman, childbearing, physical exercise and dance, the
enlightenment of nature, and play. For all creative work, except the demonic,
that is done in its own name and for its own sake is divine in nature. Through
it, people elevate themselves and fill their own hearts and the hearts of those
around them with God.
When it comes to spiritual growth, the majority of people move along the slow
and wide path. The path runs through marriage and childbearing, work and
pastimes, through the fullness and variety of life's impressions, joys, and
pleasures. But there is also a Narrow Path. It is a path for those who harbor in
their soul a special gift that requires strict self-denial: the gift of
sainthood. Religious teachings are wrong to claim that the Narrow Path is the
one true path or the highest one. Equally wrong are those social or religious
systems that deny it outright and erect barriers against those who feel called
to that path and to it alone. It is doubtful that monasteries will be numerous
in the era of the Rose of the World, but there will be some, so that all who are
driven onto the Narrow Path by spiritual thirst will be able to work on
activating powers within their soul that require years of inner work in silence
and solitude to develop. If a person enters onto the Narrow Path out of fear of
retribution or dreams of a personal, egoistic, and closed relationship with God,
that person's victories will be meaningless. There is no such God Who rewards
loyal slaves with the blissful contemplation of His glory. Contemplation of the
highest spheres is the release of one's self from oneself to commune with the
One, Who contains all monads and the entire world within Himself. Therefore, a
follower of the Rose of the World will not feel compelled to embark on the
Narrow Path by spiritual egoism or by a desire for personal salvation mingled
with cool indifference toward the fate of others. Those who follow it will be
motivated by the realization that gifts will be unveiled on the Narrow Path with
which the living saint will be able to help the world more effectively from
solitude than hundreds can in the outside world and, further, that after death
these gifts will so grow in strength that even the powerful upper hierarchies of
demons will bow before them.
There is no need whatsoever for heavy vows to accompany tonsure. There are no
grounds whatsoever for condemning or vilifying someone who, after the lapse of
several years, leaves the path. Those entering the path will at first take only
a short-term vow: for three, five, or seven years. Only after successfully
completing those stages will they, if they wish, be permitted to take a vow for
a longer period of time. Yet even then the realization of the irrevocability of
their decision, the fear of having made an irreparable mistake will not torment
or haunt them, giving rise to despair and wild bursts of as yet unmastered
negative emotions. They will know that with the expiration of the vow they will
be free to return to the outside world, free to choose any lifestyle, any work,
free to have a family without having to fear censure or scorn from anyone.
I have endeavored to provide a glimpse of the Rose of the World's perspective on
the scientific and Scientific modes of inquiry, on individuals' rights and
obligations, on human creativity and labor, and on the two basic types of
spiritual paths: the Wide and the Narrow. In order to complete this overview of
its perspective on culture, it would be sensible to dwell on the Rose of the
World's views on art, in the broader sense of the word. But that subject is so
important and touches on so many different levels, and is so close to my heart
personally, that I have decided to devote a series of chapters to it in one of
the later parts of the book. Therefore, before moving on to the question of the
Rose of the World's perspective on other religions, I will jot down just a few
words about art in the approaching era.
What features might distinguish the art to be created by people who have
embraced the spirit of the Rose of the World in the near future, when the sun of
the golden age will have only Just begun to illumine the clouds on the horizon?
It would be naive to try to predict or summarize the variety of artistic trends,
genres, schools, and styles with which that sphere of culture will scintillate
toward the end of this century. But a certain dominant style will, I think,
emerge. Of course, it will not exhaust all the different artistic movements
(under the conditions of maximum freedom that would be impossible as well as
unnecessary for the same reason). This style is destined to become the
mainstream in art and literature in the last third of this century. The
perception of reality intrinsic to the Rose of the World— transparent
perception, which distinguishes variomaterial or spiritual planes through the
physical plane—will find expression in that style. Such a perception of
reality will be a far cry from a studied optimism that is afraid to shatter its
own peace of mind in heeding the dark and tragic sides of existence. Creators of
that style will not seek to ignore the distressing and frightening underside of
the world. They will consider it cowardly to desire to forget about the bloody
path of history; about the reality of the dreadful infraphysical planes of
Shadanakar; about their merciless laws, which bind untold hosts of unfortunates
in chains of inhuman torments; and about the ghastly fall that is being readied
for the human spirit by the forces of the Antigod and that will almost certainly
take place when the golden age has run its course. But a higher level of
awareness will not tarnish their love for the world, it will not lessen the joy
they receive from nature, culture, creative work, public service, love, and
friendship. In fact, quite the contrary! Could the awareness of hidden dangers
threatening the one you love ever extinguish the flame of that love? There will
be wondrous, life-affirming works of unprecedented purity and joyfulness. There
will appear in all the artistic genres—both those that already exist and those
that will arise later—works that will sparkle like splashes of water on sunlit
ponds, works by artists of the future about a love that is much more capacious
than ours, works about youth, about the joys of family life and public service,
about the broadening of human consciousness and the expansion of the frontiers
of our perception, about friendship between people and elementals, about the
daily proximity of the friends of our heart who are as yet unseen, as well as
much more that will concern the people of those times and that we are incapable
of imagining.
It seems to me that such a style—masculine in its fearlessness and feminine in
its lovingness, a profound combination of joy and affection for people and the
world, yet with a keen awareness of the world's darker depths—could be called
either transparent realism or metarealism. And need I mention that a work of art
will not necessarily have to be an example of transparent realism for people who
have embraced the Rose of the World's spirit to be able to enjoy and delight in
it? They will delight in everything that has the mark of talent and at least one
of the following features: a sense of beauty, broad scope, profundity of
thought, sharpness of insight, purity of heart, or a joyful spirit.
There will come a time when the moral and aesthetic level of society, and of
artists themselves, will be such that the need for restrictions of any kind will
disappear, and freedom of artistic, literary, philosophical, and scientific
forms of expression will be absolute. But it will not be until several decades
after the Rose of the World has assumed moral supervision over the states that
the era of that ideal moral level arrives. It is not through wisdom but youthful
naivete that one could arrive at the idea that society has already reached those
heights of maturity when absolute freedom will not give rise to critical,
irreparable abuses.
At first it will be necessary to assign to local branches of the Global Artistic
Council, besides more pleasant duties, that single checkpoint through which an
artistic work will have to pass before its public unveiling. That will be, if
you will, the censor's swan song. In the beginning, when national antagonisms
and racial-prejudice will have not yet been eliminated, and powerhungry
organizations will continue to play on those prejudices, a ban will have to be
laid on any form of hate propaganda against any segment of the populace.
Censorship will be maintained longer over books and texts that popularize
scientific and philosophical ideas that give inadequate, superficial, or
distorted treatment to objective facts and thus lead uninformed readers astray.
Censorship will persist over works of fiction, requiring from them, it seems to
me, a minimum of artistic merit in order to protect the literary market from a
flood of tasteless, aesthetically ignorant trash. Finally, an unconditional ban
on pornography will likely be in place longest of all. With the removal of each
of these restrictions another measure will take its place: the Global Artistic
Council or the Global Scientific Council will, after the release of a work of
poor quality, print an authoritative review of it. That will suffice.
Clearly, it will not be easy to devise a system to determine who will sit on
such councils, a system that will ensure that people with party or conceptual
biases, intolerant supporters of particular movements or philosophical schools,
or champions of the creative interests of some single group, nation, or
generation not interfere in any sphere of culture. I would think, however, that
in the psychological atmosphere of the Rose of the World a system like that
could be devised.
If, for the moment, we avoid entering into fine distinctions between the
concepts of culture and civilization, we may say that culture is nothing other
than the sum total of humanity's creative work. If creative work is the highest,
most precious, and sanctified of human gifts, an expression of the human soul's
divine prerogative, then there is not, nor can there be, anything more precious
or sanctified than culture. Further, the more spiritual a given cultural level,
a given cultural sphere, or a given creative work might be, the more valuable it
is as well.
The culture of a united humanity is only now emerging. Until now the only
cultures to reach individual maturity have been those of individual suprapeoples,
a suprapeople being a group of nations that are bound by a distinct, jointly
created culture. But none of these cultures is confined to that aspect that
exists and evolves within our three-dimensional space. Those who participated in
the building of that culture here continue their creative work in the afterlife
as well, though the work is, of course, altered in accordance with the
conditions of that world or those worlds through which the soul of the human
creator is passing at the time. An awareness is growing of million-strong
communities of such souls, of heavenly lands and cities above each of the
world's suprapeoples, and of Arimoya, the emerging heavenly land of the culture
of a united humanity. A perspective on culture based on such principles is new
and startling. We would be right in even noting that with further
crystallization and deepening it will grow to become a vast mythology, if in
using the word "myth" we disaccustom ourselves from thinking of
something that has no basis in reality. Here we are dealing with just the
opposite: a colossal reality that is reflected hazily and superficially, but
reflected all the same, in mythology.
The atmosphere established by the Rose of the World and its teachings will give
rise to conditions necessary for that cultural mythology to be grasped by every
mind. Even if only a limited number of minds are able to comprehend it in all
its esoteric complexity, the spirit of the worldview, and not its letter, will
gradually become accessible to almost everyone. And if we contemplate the
prospect of instilling that worldview in the general populace, then devising a
system of measures to safeguard all spheres of culture from interference by
people who have no inner right to manage those spheres will cease to appear a
hopeless task.
HOW OFTEN WE USE THE WORD truth and how seldom
we ponder its meaning. In pondering its meaning here, we will not, however, let
ourselves be troubled by the fact that we are essentially repeating the question
posed by Pilate. Rather, we will attempt, as best as we are able, to arrive at a
deeper understanding of the concept.
We call "true" a theory or teaching that, in our opinion, presents an
undistorted view on some object of knowledge. To be precise, truth is an
undistorted reflection in our mind of an object of knowledge. There can exist as
many truths as there are objects of knowledge.
But objects of knowledge are known through us, not through themselves. It thus
follows that a truth about any object of knowledge known through us should be
recognized as a relative truth. Absolute truth is the reflection of an object of
knowledge that is known by some subject in itself. In principle, that kind of
knowledge is possible only when the duality of object and subject is removed:
when the subject of knowledge is the object.
Absolute universal truth is the undistorted reflection in a consciousness of the
Greater Universe known in itself. Absolute component truths are undistorted
reflections of some part of the Universe, also known in itself.
Naturally, absolute truth of the Greater Universe can exist only in the
consciousness of a subject of knowledge commensurate with it, an omniscient
subject capable of being the object, capable of knowing things not only through
itself but also in itself. That subject of knowledge is called the Absolute,
God, the Universal Sun.
God, as an object of knowledge, is knowable in Himself only by Himself. The
Absolute Truth of God, as well as the Absolute Truth of the Universe, is
attainable only by God.
Clearly, any component truth, no matter how small the object o f knowledge, is
attainable by us only in its relative form. But this sort of agnosticism should
not be viewed as immutable. When any component subject of knowledge, any monad,
ultimately merges with the Absolute Subject, it avails itself of the possibility
of not only knowledge through itself, but also of knowledge in itself. It is
therefore correct to speak of a phased, as distinct from an immutable,
agnosticism.
There may be few or many versions of component truths— personal, individual
varieties of one component relative truth. Objects of knowledge of smaller scale
(in comparison with the subject) are, however, reflected in the consciousness of
a number of like subjects in an identical, or almost identical, manner. It is
that likeness between many subjects that dictates that their individual versions
of one or another truth will be alike as well. If it were not so, it would be
impossible for people to understand one another about anything. But the larger
the object of knowledge (in comparison with the subject), the greater the number
of versions that arise. The relative truth of the Universe and the relative
truth of God give birth to as many individual versions as there are subjects of
knowledge.
It should be clear that all our "truths" are, strictly speaking, only
approximations of the truth. The smaller the object of knowledge, the better it
can be grasped by our consciousness, and the narrower the gap between its
absolute truth and our relative truth concerning it. There is, however, a lower
limit in the ratio of scale between subject and object, below which the gap
between the absolute and relative truth again begins to widen. For example, the
gap between the absolute truth of an elementary particle and our relative truth
concerning it is enormous. The gap between the absolute truth of the Universe,
the absolute truth of God, and our relative truths concerning them is boundless.
One would think that, after Kant, these ideas should be universally known and
acknowledged. But if they were internalized by every religiously feeling and
thinking person, there would be no claims of individual or collective knowledge
of the absolute truth, no claims of the absolute truth of some one theory or
teaching.
As was shown above, only the Omniscient Subject is in possession of the absolute
truth. If a human subject—for instance, the collective consciousness of some
historical church—possessed that truth, it would be objectively revealed in
the unqualified omniscience of that collective consciousness. But the fact that
not one human collective or individual is invested with that omniscience proves
yet again how groundless are the claims to absolute truth by any teaching. If
the representatives of the Rose of the World ever think to assert the absolute
truth of its teachings, such claims would be just as groundless and absurd.
But the claim that all teachings or some one teaching are false is just as
groundless and absurd. There are not, nor can there be, any wholly false
teachings. If there appeared an opinion that lacked even a grain of truth, it
would never become a teaching, a system of ideas communicated to someone else.
It would remain the invention of the person who brought it into being, as
sometimes happens, for example, with the philosophical and pseudoscientific
imaginings of the mentally ill. Only individual component statements can be
false, in the strict sense of the word. Such statements maintain the illusion of
truth with light borrowed from true component statements that enter into the
same system. There is, however, a certain ratio of quantity and weight between
true component statements and false ones whereby the latter begin to nullify the
grains of truth contained in the given teachings. There are, furthermore,
teachings in which the false statements not only nullify the elements of truth
but consign the whole system to the category of spiritual negatives. It is
customary to call them "left-hand teachings." The future teaching of
the Antigod, by which it appears the penultimate period of world history will be
marked, will be formulated in such a manner that a minimal weight of component
truths will by their light lend the appearance of truth to a maximum number of
false statements. The end result will be that the teaching will entangle the
human consciousness in webs of lies stronger and stickier than any other.
Religions that are not left-hand teachings differ from each other not by virtue
of the truth of one and the falsity of all the rest, but rather in two
altogether different respects. First, they differ by virtue of the varying
stages of their ascent to absolute truth—that is, in accordance with the
decrease of subjective, temporal elements within them. That developmental
distinction can be provisionally labeled a vertical distinction. Second, they
can differ by virtue of the fact that they speak of different things—they
reflect different sets of objects of knowledge. This type of segmental
distinction can be provisionally labeled a horizontal distinction.
One should always bear in mind these two types of distinctions as we examine the
Rose of the World's perspective on other religions.
Scientific progress presents itself to us as a continuous process whereby
relative component truths are accumulated, elaborated, and fine-tuned. At each
successive stage it is the custom to repudiate not the set of facts accumulated
earlier but merely their outdated interpretation. Instances when a previous set
of facts was cast into doubt and repudiated—as happened, for example, with
alchemy—are comparatively rare. But in the history of religion, other
practices have unfortunately prevailed. Rather than seeing a continuous
succession of interpretations of spiritual facts not subject to doubt, what we
usually witness is that the repudiation of large numbers of relative component
truths that were grasped earlier as a new set of truths, with the inclusion of a
certain number of old ones, is presented as absolute. That is particularly true
in regard to the supplantation of the so-called pagan religions by monotheistic
systems.
It should be obvious to all that observance of such practices in the context of
the expanding horizons of the twentieth century would at best lead to the
creation of yet another religious sect. It would, of course, be ridiculous to
apply the scientific method to religion, just as it would be ridiculous to apply
the artistic method to the field of science. But it has long been time for us to
adopt the scientist's good habit and not repudiate, but rethink sets of relative
truths accumulated earlier.
From the above it follows that no teaching (except left-hand teachings, which
are recognizable, above all, by their spiritually corrupting influence) can be
rejected outright. They should be recognized as inadequate, as clouded with
subjective, human contaminants of a temporal, classist, racist, or individual
nature. Nevertheless, a grain of relative truth, a grain of knowledge
"through us" of one or another aspect of the transphysical world, is
present in each religion, and each of those truths is a precious jewel belonging
to all humanity. At the same time, it is natural that the weight of truth in
systems that take shape as the sum of the experience of a great many individuals
is, as a rule, greater than the weight of truth in systems found only among
small groups. An exception to the rule are new systems that might be in the
process of gaining wider acceptance but naturally must first pass through an
esoteric or infant stage.
In the worldview of the Rose of the World, such widely embraced systems are
called myths, a point that will be explained in detail a little later. One or
another transphysical reality always lies behind the myths, but it cannot help
being distorted and muddied through contamination of the myth by the "all
too human." It is hardly possible, at least at present, to formulate
strictly and precisely a method to liberate the transphysical kernel of a myth
from its human-made husk. The necessary set of criteria that would obtain in
every case has not yet been devised. In addition, it is doubtful that such an
intricate mystical task could be performed with the help of rational analysis
alone. It is true that we could, by drawing on the teleology of history, devise
a system of classification of religions that would allow us to group the highly
developed religions together and thus convince ourselves that there are beliefs
professed, though with different degrees of purity and stress, by the entire
group. Among such beliefs are the oneness of God, the plurality of different
spiritual hierarchies, the plurality of variomaterial worlds, the infinite
plurality of evolving monads, and the existence of some universal moral law,
which is characterized by the rewards or punishments people receive before or
after death for what they do during their lives. As regards everything else,
even the interpretation of
the shared beliefs just listed, the myths either contradict one another or speak
of different things.
If, however, in many cases the individuality of the subject contaminates the
image of the object with something extraneous, something exclusively human,
there are just as many instances when a spiritual truth can be intuited only by
a mind of a definite cast. Individuality then becomes a factor that does not
cloud intuition but, to the contrary, makes it possible. The teleological
process in the history of human religions has partly consisted in readying the
consciousness of individual persons, peoples, races, or eras by means of
historical and biographical factors to enable it to intuit a given truth, a
given transphysical reality. To other individuals, peoples, races, and eras, a
consciousness readied in that manner and its religious experience may seem
strange, distorted, or naive, and fraught with every sort of aberration.
From the hundreds of those possible, I will for the time being cite only one
particularly illustrative example: the idea of reincarnation. An intrinsic part
of Hinduism and Buddhism, and present in the Kabbala of esoteric Judaism, the
idea of reincarnation is rejected by orthodox Christianity and Islam. But must
one conclude on the basis of the idea's non-universality that it is no more than
a racial or temporal-cultural aberration of the Indian consciousness? The
problem is that in order to reconcile the beliefs of different religions one
must, first of all, learn to sift out the primary from the secondary, the common
from the particular. The common, primary aspect of any belief consists of the
seed of the idea, a seed which displays remarkable tenacity over the centuries.
Sowed in the soil of different cultural milieus, it sprouts in different ways,
all of which are varieties of the given belief. If there is any teleological
aspect to history at all, then, of course, that aspect should first and foremost
inform the life of just those tenacious spiritual seeds—in the widely embraced
core of an idea professed by millions of individuals.
The seed of the idea of reincarnation is the teaching about a certain self that
completes its cosmic growth, or a segment of it, through stages of successive
existences in our physical world. Everything else, such as the
spiritual-material nature and structure of the reincarnating self, the
dependence of reincarnation on the law of karma, the application of the
principle of reincarnation to the animal world—all these are merely variations
of the core idea. And it is easy to see that one will encounter genuine
aberrations more often in those variations and details than in the seed, on
whose intuition by the Indian people the teleological forces labored for many
centuries, expending fantastic amounts of energy to weaken the partition between
waking consciousness and deep memory—the repository of memories of the soul's
journeys up to the moment of its last reincarnation.
The error of religious doctrines lies, for the most part, not in their contents
but in their claim that the law stated by the doctrine is in universal force and
must be professed by everyone who desires salvation. The above leads us to
acknowledge the genuine nature of the spiritual experience that was molded into
the idea of reincarnation. Yes, such a formative path does exist; there is in
principle nothing in the essence of the idea unacceptable to Christianity and
Islam, save perhaps the fact that no utterances by their founders about the idea
have reached us. (Which, in any case, proves nothing in itself, since, as is
known, far from everything they said found its way into the Gospels and Quran.)
But it categorically does not follow that the path of reincarnation is the
single possible and real formative path for an individual spirit. The Indian
people's consciousness, readied in such a manner as to intuit that type of path,
expressed its discovery, as often happens in such circumstances, in absolute
terms and turned a deaf ear to intuitions of other types of formative paths. The
exact opposite happened with the Jewish and Arab peoples. Intuiting the truth of
other formative paths, on which incarnation on the physical plane occurs only
once, the consciousness of these peoples expressed this second type of path in
absolute terms that were just as unwarranted. The fact that one or the other
path can, generally speaking, predominate in different human metacultures also
led them to do so. As a result, an apparently irreconcilable dispute has arisen
between the two groups of world religions. In actual fact, both these seemingly
contradictory ideas are true at their core, having pinpointed two paths of those
possible, and beyond a renunciation by each side of claims to the universal
exclusivity of their ideas nothing is needed to resolve the
"conflict."
Thus, one of the historical bases for supposedly irreconcilable conflicts
between religions consists in the unwarranted expression of a belief in absolute
terms. Another basis is as follows.
One of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity is of course the teaching of
the Holy Trinity. The founder of Islam rejected that doctrine, because he
suspected it of being a relapse into polytheism and, more importantly, because
his own spiritual experience did not contain any positive indication of such a
truth. But in this twentieth century there can hardly still be a need to
reiterate the arguments of Christian theologians who in their time proved and
explained the fundamental distinction between the doctrine of the Trinity and
polytheism. It is a point so elementary that one can only suppose there are no
longer any Muslim thinkers who, having studied the Christian creed, would
persist in making that erroneous claim. As for the second argument—that
Muhammad's spiritual experience contained no confirmation of the Trinity—it is
logically unsound. No one person's experience can contain a confirmation of all
truths that were arrived at earlier in the course of humanity's collective
intuitions about God and the world. There is a limit to every individual's
knowledge. Only the wisdom of the Omniscient encompasses the entirety of truth
"within Himself." Therefore, the fact that Muhammad did not encounter
anything in his personal spiritual experience that supported the Trinity
doctrine should not in itself serve as sufficient grounds for rejecting the
idea, even in the eyes of orthodox Muslims. Instead of the statement, "The
Prophet, in intuiting the absolute oneness of God, recognized the falsity of the
Trinity doctrine," one should, in all fairness, rephrase the statement
thus: "The Prophet, in intuiting the absolute oneness of God, did not
receive any indication of the truth of the Holy Trinity."
It is entirely natural that the Christian creed not only has no objections to
the Muslim doctrine of the One God but wholly concurs with it. But Christianity
supplements that belief with an idea whose persistence for two thousand years
and whose acceptance by millions of individuals point to the truth of the core
concept. So what does the conflict between these two fundamental doctrines of
the two religions boil down to? Does it not boil down to the arbitrary and
unwarranted denial of one's truth by the other, a truth that has no mention in
the latter's own positive experience?
Now we see the second historical and psychological basis for deep-rooted
disputes between different faiths: the unwarranted denial of the truth of a
differing belief solely because we do not have any positive evidence for it.
Unfortunately, disputes founded solely on that logical and epistemological
inconsistency are beyond count. Let's examine another well-known instance. Both
the Sunni sect of Islam and Protestantism deny the truth of the cult of the
saints, yet almost all other religions embrace it and in one or another form
give expression to it. Objections to the cult can be reduced to two: first,
people have no need of mediators between themselves and God; second, worship and
prayer offered not to God but to those who were once human is sinful, as it
leads to the deification of persons. But what exactly is meant by that famous
statement that "people have no need of mediators"? If the one who
gives voice to that thought has no need of them, then what right does he or she
have to speak for others, even for all humanity? Who invested that individual
with the authority? Certainly not the millions of people in almost every country
and religion who have felt a vital, daily need for such mediators—a need that
has made the existence of the cult of the saints psychologically possible. If we
do not feel a need for something (there are people, for example, who do not feel
a need for music) and become indignant with all those who do, regarding them as
fatuous dreamers, selfinterested liars, or unenlightened ignoramuses, what are
we proving but our own ignorance?
The second argument concerns the sin of offering up divine worship and prayers
to those who were humans. But divine worship, in the monotheistic sense, is not
offered up to the saints; no one equates them with God. The very idea is
ludicrous and, for people raised in Christian countries, inexcusably uninformed.
True, there is in Hinduism the concept of the avatar—-an incarnation of God in
human form—but avatars are not saints. We kneel before saints as people who
were able to overcome the human in themselves, or as instruments of God's will,
as celestial messengers.
Protestantism denies the concept of sainthood altogether. But here we are
dealing with an argument over particulars rather than the essence of the matter.
For, in rejecting the ideal of monastic asceticism, Luther and Calvin did not
belittle earthly sanctity, though they understood it, on the one hand, in a
wider sense than did Catholicism and, on the other hand, in a somewhat lower
sense: the Narrow Path as such was rejected.
The dying Muhammad forbade his followers to invoke his spirit in prayer. That
shows the purity and sincerity of his purposes, but it goes directly counter to
the basic principles of a religious-moral worldview. For if sanctity, as the
highest form of self-sacrifice for the sake of humanity, is faultless and
selfless service of God—and if we understand sanctity thus then it would be
silly to deny that it exists on Earth and that it occurs, however rarely, in
life—if that is so, then it is impossible to imagine the soul of a saint
resting in idle bliss after death. Saints will help those still living and those
below them in their ascent with all the powers of their souls, including those
powers that are revealed only after death. It is as natural as an adult helping
a child, and just as little does it diminish or demean those to whom the help is
proffered. The Prophet Muhammad could hardly have been unaware of this. One can
only suppose that certain abuses and excesses that he observed in the cult of
the saints moved him to forbid his followers to establish anything of the sort.
He may have thought that the prohibition would be balanced by the fact that
deceased saints do not necessarily need reminders from people at prayer in order
to extend them unseen help.
Every teaching that preaches the truth of the soul's immortality and of a higher
moral law can suppose that the spirit of a saint will in the afterlife become
indifferent and unresponsive to those still living only by going counter to all
logic and its own principles. The denial of the truth of the cult of the saints
makes sense only from the point of view of materialism. On the other hand,
to express the cult of the saints in absolute terms as obligatory is
unwarranted. There can be protracted legs in the journey of a soul, or in the
journey of an entire people, when there is no need of "mediators,"
when a soul, consciously or unconsciously, feels that the growth of its
independence, energy, freedom, and spiritual will precludes any need to appeal
to anyone for help other than God Himself. On what basis and by what right will
we force such an individual to take part in the cult of the saints?
A much greater difficulty is posed by the fundamental dispute between
Christianity and other religions concerning the belief in the divinity of Jesus
Christ and the worship of Him as the incarnation of one of the hypostases of the
Trinity. It is well known that the other religions either recognize Jesus as a
prophet among other prophets or ignore Him, sometimes even going so far as to
positively deny His Providential mission. Christianity, for its part, citing the
words of its Founder that no one can come to the Father except through the Son,
denies all non-Christians the possibility of salvation.
It is possible, however, to avoid many misunderstandings and vulgarizations of
ideas if we examine each utterance of Christ that has reached us, asking
ourselves, Did Christ, in the present instance, speak as a person, as a concrete
historical figure who lived in a particular country at a particular time, or
does the voice of God that He hears in Himself become transformed through His
mind and lips into human words? Every one of Christ's utterances requires
examination in just such a vein. Does He speak in the present case as a person
or as a Herald of truth from the spiritual world? For it is impossible to
imagine that at every moment of his life Jesus spoke only as a Herald and never
as a simple human being. There can hardly be any question that in His anguished
cry on the cross, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" the
pain of one of those minutes is recorded when he, Jesus the man, experienced the
tragedy of separation, the tragedy of the cutting of the link between his human
self and the Divine Spirit. On the other hand, in His teachings given at the
Last Supper one hears clearly God the Son, the Planetary Logos behind the
first-person-singular pronoun.
All Christ's words recorded in the Gospels should be grouped into one of these
two categories. It then becomes perfectly clear that His saying that no one can
come to the Father except through the Son should not be understood in the lower,
narrow, literal, and merciless sense that no human souls besides Christians are
saved. Rather, this must be heard in the majestic, truly spiritual, cosmic sense
that every monad that reaches full spiritual maturity immerses itself in the
depths of God the Son, the Heart and Demiurge of the Universe, and only after
that crowning act returns to its source, to God the Father, and in a manner
unfathomable for us merges with Him and the entire Holy Trinity.
Keshab Chandra Sen, one of the most prominent leaders of Brahmo Samaj, an Indian
religious-philosophical society, voiced a profound insight when he said that the
wisdom of the Hindus, the meekness of the Buddhists, the courage of the Muslims
all come from Christ. In referring to Christ, Sen clearly meant not the
historical figure Jesus, but the Logos, Who found expression chiefly, but not
exclusively, in Jesus Christ. That idea, in my opinion, provides the intimations
of a path to an outlook whereby Christians and many Eastern religious movements
can arrive at mutual understanding.
Certain expressions that have become rooted in Christian theology, that are
repeated almost automatically by us, and that are exactly what is unacceptable
to other faiths also require reexamination and clarification. What is meant, for
example, by the word embodiment in reference to Jesus Christ? Do we continue to
think even now that the Universal Logos was contained within the form of a human
body? Can we grant that a bodily instrument, an individual physical organism, a
human brain capable of accommodating the Universal Reason was created after
generations of teleological preparation? If so, then one must conclude that
Jesus was omniscient in His human lifetime, which does not concur either with
facts from the Gospels or with His own words. Do we not consider the
disproportionate scale—the mixture of cosmic categories, in the very extreme
sense of the word, with categories belonging to the local-planetary, the
narrowly human—preposterous? And preposterous not because it surpasses the
limits of our reason but, to the contrary, because it is all too obviously the
product of thinking at a definite, longpast period of culture, when the universe
appeared a billion times smaller than it is in reality, when it seemed quite
possible for the solid firmament to fall upon the Earth, and for a dreadful hail
of stars to come loose from the hooks on which they were hung. Would it not then
be more precise to speak not of the embodiment of the Logos in the person of
Jesus Christ but of the Logos's expression in Jesus through the medium of the
great God-born monad that is the Planetary Logos of the Earth? We call Christ
the Word. But a speaker does not after all take shape in a word but expresses
himself or herself through it. Similarly, God is expressed, not embodied, in
Christ. It is in that sense that Christ is in truth the Word of God, and thus
yet another stumbling block to reconciling Christianity and certain other
religious movements disappears.
I have touched on only four interreligious disputes. With the exception of the
last one, which springs from a moot and insufficiently precise formulation,
these disputes are founded on discrepancies in the spiritual experiences of the
great prophets, on the fact that while viewing certain objects from different
vantage points in Shadanakar, from different spiritual points of view, these
visionaries see different aspects of the given objects. Such disputes can be
provisionally labeled horizontal conflicts, meaning by that the validity of the
points of view and their illusory contraposition.
Yet another example. Throughout their existence, Christianity and Islam have
been battling with what they call paganism. Over the centuries the idea that
monotheism and polytheism are irreconcilable and incompatible has become
impressed on humanity as a kind of axiom. Discussion of why and how that came to
be would lead us to digress too far. What is important is the question, On what
basis did the religions of Semitic origin, while affirming the existence of
spiritual hierarchies and devising a detailed description of them-both an
angelogy and demonology—in the Middle Ages, restrict their number to those few
that found a place in medieval schemata? Is there even a shadow of consistency
in their denial in principle of truth to all other experience of spiritual
hierarchies? There are absolutely no grounds for it, except references once
again to the Gospels' and the Quran's silence on the subject. It was because
there were insufficient grounds for a blanket denial that the Christian Church,
in the first few centuries of its existence, did not so much deny the existence
of the gods of the Olympic pantheon as identify them with the demons and devils
of Semitic canonical texts. In doing so, the Church, contrary to the facts,
ignored the character of the divinities as it was intuited by the polytheistic
spiritual tradition, arbitrarily ascribing to them demeaning and shameful traits
or deliberately overemphasizing the all too anthropomorphic element the subjects
of knowledge—polytheistic humanity—had introduced into the images, an
element which by that time had been preserved only in its lower, popular
aspects. As if acknowledgment of the existence of hierarchies of nature, of
great elementals, or of national guiding spirits could undermine the oneness of
God—the Creator and Builder of the Universe, the source and estuary of the
earthly flow of life— more than would acknowledgment of God's other beautiful
children—angels and archangels, not to mention those demons of the Bible!
Unfortunately, even today that ancient misunderstanding has not been cleared up.
For a long time now, nothing has remained of classical polytheism. But a
hardened, narrow-minded intolerance lacking all wisdom is discernible every time
the Christian churches—or at least those persons who speak in their names—
have occasion to pass judgment on the Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan
systems. The two other religions of Semitic origin are just as intolerant. What
we are dealing with here is a typical example of horizontal differentiation
between religions. Without contradicting each other in the essentials, without
clashing with each other in the boundless spiritual cosmos, Christianity and
Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, Judaism and Shinto speak of different things, of
different spiritual lands, of different parts of Shadanakar. But human ignorance
interprets this as a contradiction and pronounces one of the teachings true and
the rest false: "If there is one God, then other gods are nothing but
shams. They are either devils or figments of the human imagination." How
naive! God is One, but there are many gods. The writing of that word with both a
capital and small g testifies in clear terms to the differing connotations
attached to it in both cases. If someone is frightened of repeating the word in
different senses, let that person substitute some other for it when speaking of
polytheism—"great spirits" or "great hierarchies"—but
nothing will be changed. That is, nothing will be changed if we discount the
possibility that the use of the word "spirit" could in certain cases
lead to misunderstandings, as many of those gods are more than spirits—they
are powerful beings possessing material form, though they do so on other,
transphysical planes of being.
All these disputes arising from misunderstandings between religions bring to
mind an analogy I once saw in a religious text, though I do not remember which
one. It told of several hikers who each climbed different slopes of one and the
same mountain, saw and studied its different faces, and upon their return argued
about who among them saw what really existed and who saw nothing but figments of
the imagination. Each believed that the mountain was exactly as he or she had
seen it, and that the testimonies of the other hikers about the other slopes
were lies, absurdities, and traps to snare human souls. Thus, the first
conclusion that follows from our examination of interreligious disputes reveals
a path to eliminating those that arise either from a simple misunderstanding or
from a discrepancy between the religious objects of knowledge experienced—that
is, horizontal conflicts.
Not only polytheism but animism and pro/o-animism, too, consist of more than
vague, random, subjective images that arose in the minds of prehistoric humans.
Transphysical reality lies behind them as well. Providence is Providence for
just the reason that it has never left peoples and races to be the dupes of
fantasies and illusions without any possibility of contact with a higher
reality. One would have to posit in place of God a dark, evil power as the true
shepherd of humanity if one were to think that prehistoric humanity was barred
for tens of thousands of years from the possibility of experiencing anything
spiritual, or at the very least variomaterial, of coming into contact with
something besides the physical world and our own fantasies.
But if this is so, how can the spiritual experience of so-called savages enrich
us, who stand on such a high level of spiritual knowledge compared to them? By
that which was intuited back then, in that milieu, by that inimitable psyche,
but was not passed on and not included by succeeding spiritual traditions in
their treasury. Research specifically devoted to theurgic beliefs and the
tradition of protological thought could help not only to
"rehabilitate" those ancient beliefs in their essential features but
could also establish a place for them in the synthesized religious worldview
that is now beginning to take shape. It would come to light, for example, that
the belief of the Arunta tribe of Australia in a single living substance that
flows between matter constantly and everywhere, from being to being, from object
to object (and in essence the religion of that tribe consists entirely of such
beliefs) is one of humanity's oldest revelations about the transphysical cosmos.
It is a vivid, brilliant revelation, more definitive than any later ones about
that single life force. The Australians called it arungvilta, the more highly
developed religion of Hinduism calls it prana, and we have yet to hear what
science will call it in twenty or thirty years from now.
That dispute—the belief in arungvilta-prana by the oldest faiths and the
denial of it by the overwhelming majority of later religious teachings—can be
viewed as a developmental dispute, a vertical conflict between different levels
of religious knowledge. But here we also encounter the same error, the same
faulty approach to another tradition that we saw when we examined the question
of Islam's denial of the cult of the saints and the concept of the Trinity.
Here, too, behind all the arguments (Incidentally, if the Gospels do not speak
of arungvilta-prana in so many words, they do recount in detail many cases when
Christ and, later, the apostles put the substance to use. It is incomprehensible
how orthodox Christian believers could account for the variomaterial mechanism
that the performers of miraculous cures employed if they deny the existence of a
life force flowing everywhere and through everything.) brought against those
ancient revelations, lurks the same naive way of thinking: The canonical texts
that are authoritative for me say nothing about arungvilta-prana. There is,
therefore, no such thing. That way of thinking is, at the very least, foolhardy,
because one is then forced to deny the existence not only of arungvilta-prana
but of radio waves, elementary particles, a host of chemical elements, other
galaxies, and even, for example, the planet Uranus, for the canonical texts
maintain strict silence concerning all of them.
It also becomes clear that it is absolutely necessary to take into consideration
what was disregarded back during the formation of the older, classical faiths:
the experience of prehistoric spiritual revelation. In addition, we must
consider something that could not be taken into account previously: the
experience derived from the centuries-long evolution of religions on every
continent, from world history, and from science. The material taken from those
various experiences teaches us to treat all doctrines and beliefs dynamically,
to see every belief as a link in the chain of religious-historical evolution,
and to separate them into three layers. The deepest layer is the core idea,
which contains the relative component truth. The next layer is the particular
coloring, molding, or specification of the idea to the extent that its
individual, racial, or temporal features are justified, since it was that and
only that racial or temporal cast of mind that enabled the people to intuit the
idea at all. The third and outermost layer is the husk, the aberrations, the
unavoidable haze of the human mind through which the light of revelation passes.
Therefore, experience from every stage of development, including polytheism,
animism, and others, must be freed from its outermost layer, rethought, and
included in the teachings of the sum religion.
The principles on which such work would be carried out have barely been outlined
here. The set of criteria requires a great deal of work. Besides, such a
reexamination of our religious legacy is a colossal undertaking requiring the
combined labor of many, many people. At present, there are not enough people
even qualified for the task, not to mention the absence of other necessary
conditions. But if the task is huge, then it is better to undertake the
preliminary work sooner rather than later. The difficulties should not be
underestimated, but there is every reason to hope that with the commitment,
energy, and initiative of those involved, the gulfs and rifts that now separate
all religions will gradually be filled in and that, though each religion will
preserve its uniqueness, a kind of spiritual amalgamation will in time unite all
right-hand teachings.
It is well known that many Japanese who profess Christianity remain at the same
time faithful to Shinto. An orthodox Catholic or Protestant, and a Russian
Orthodox, too, are appalled by such a thing. They cannot comprehend how it is
psychologically possible, and they even sense something blasphemous in it. But,
far from any blasphemy, such a thing is possible and even natural, because the
Christian tradition and the Shinto tradition differ from each other
horizontally: they speak of different things. Shinto is a national myth. It is
an aspect of the world religious revelation that was unveiled to the Japanese
people, and to them alone. It is a conceptualization of the spiritual or, better
yet, transphysical reality that presides over the Japanese people and them
alone, manifesting itself in their history and culture. One will not find in
Shinto answers to questions of a cosmic, planetary, or international
nature—questions about the Creator, the origin of evil and suffering, or paths
of cosmic growth. It deals only with Japan's metahistory, its metaculture, the
hierarchies guiding it, and with the heavenly assembly of enlightened souls that
have risen from Japan to the higher worlds of Shadanakar. The syncretism of the
Japanese—that is, their simultaneous profession of Shinto and Catholicism or
Shinto and Buddhism—is not a psychological contradiction. To the contrary, it
is an intimation of how the traditions and truths of various religions will
harmoniously complement each other.
Before the amalgamation of Christianity and other right-hand religions and
faiths is realized—and that is one of the Rose of the World's historical
tasks—it would of course be natural to bring about the reunification of the
Christian churches. The Rose of the World will carry out the theological,
philosophical, cultural, and organizational preparation for such a reunification
with untiring commitment. Until the reunification of Christianity has taken
place, until the Eighth Ecumenical Council (or several subsequent councils) has
reexamined the entire mass of old doctrines and has adopted a number of beliefs
based on the spiritual experience of the last one thousand years, until the
highest authority of a reunified Christianity has sanctioned the Rose of the
World's teachings—until that time those beliefs can be, of course, professed,
propounded, and preached, but they should not be molded into a fixed, final form
to be offered up for profession to all Christians.
The Rose of the World sees its surreligiosity and Interreligiosity in the
reunification of Christian faiths and in the further amalgamation of all
religions of Light in order to focus their combined energies on fostering
humanity's spiritual growth and on spiritualizing nature. Religious exclusivity
will not only be foreign to its followers, it will be impossible. Co-belief with
all peoples in their highest ideals—that is what its wisdom will teach.
The structure of the Rose of the World will therefore suggest a series of
concentric circles. No followers of any right-hand religion should be considered
outside the global church. Those who have not yet reached an awareness of
surreligious unity will occupy the outer circles; the middle circles will be
composed of the less active and creative of the Rose of the World's followers,
the inner circles will be for those who have equated the meaning of their life
with conscious and free divine creative work.
May a Christian enter a Buddhist temple with reverence and respect. Eastern
peoples, separated from the centers of Christianity by deserts and mountain
ranges, have over thousands of years intuited through the wisdom of their
teachers the truth about different regions of the heavens. Glimmering through
the smoke of incense are statues of the high guardians of other worlds and the
great messengers who spoke to people of those worlds. Few Western people have
had contact with those worlds. May the knowledge preserved in the East enrich
their minds and souls.
May a Muslim enter a Hindu temple with a peaceful, pure, and solemn feeling.
Those are not false gods that gaze on them there, but provisional images of
great spirits perceived and passionately loved by the peoples of India. Other
nations should accept testimony about them with joy and trust.
May an orthodox follower of Shinto not pass by the nondescript building of a
synagogue with disdain or indifference. There, another great people that has
enriched humanity with profound treasures preserves their knowledge of those
truths through which the spiritual world revealed itself to them and no one
else.
One can compare the Rose of the World to an upturned flower, the roots of which
are in heaven and the petals here, among humanity, on Earth. Its stem is
revelation, through which flow the spiritual juices that feed and strengthen its
petals, our fragrant chorus of religions. Besides the petals, it has a heart:
its own teachings. Its teaching is not a random blend of the highest beliefs of
various theosophies of the past. In addition to a new perspective on our
religious legacy, the Rose of the World will establish a new perspective on
nature, history, the destiny of human cultures and their tasks, on creative
work, love, the paths of cosmic ascent, and the gradual enlightenment of
Shadanakar. In some cases the perspective will be new because, although various
figures of the past have spoken of them before, they will be adopted and
professed by a religion, by a church, for the first time. In other cases, a
perspective of the Rose of the World will be new in the full sense of the word,
because no one has ever voiced it before. These new perspectives flow from new
spiritual experience, without which, instead of the Rose of the World, only a
rational and sterile religious eclecticism would be possible.
But before moving on to the contents of that spiritual experience, to the
principles of that teaching, we must first investigate by what paths of the soul
that experience is acquired and by what methods we can facilitate or accelerate
our acquisition of it.
2. On the
Metahistorical and Transphysical Methods of Knowledge
2.1 Some
Features of the Metahistorical Method
THE PHRASE religious feeling is a commonly used
but misleading expression. There is no general religious feeling but, rather, a
vast world of religious feelings and experiences, endless in their variety,
which often contrast with one another, differing in emotion, focus, intensity,
tone, and what we might call their tint. Those who have not had any personal
religious experience and make inferences about it on the sole basis of others'
testimony do not have the slightest idea of the breadth and variety of that
world. Such thirdparty testimony, in conjunction with the absence of personal
experience on the part of the listener, is almost always greeted with disbelief,
preconceptions, and the tendency to interpret it in accordance not with the
claims of the testifiers themselves but with the dogmatic tenets of areligious
schools of thought.
The variety of religious feelings is matched by the variety of methods of
religious knowledge. To set forth these methods would necessitate writing an
exhaustive research work on the history and psychology of religion. Such a task
in no way enters into the aim of this book. But one aim of this book is to help
the reader arrive at an understanding of those particular methods of religious
knowledge that seem to me to have the greatest creative potential at the current
stage of history.
It would be most unfortunate if anyone suspected me of laying claim to the role
of founder of a great historical, cultural, and social enterprise—that is, the
creation of what we are calling the Rose of the World. The reality of the
situation is altogether different. The Rose of the World can and will arise only
as the result of the combined efforts of an enormous number of people. I am
convinced that an identical process is taking place not only in Russia but also
in many other parts of the globe, the foremost of which appear to be India and
North America. The grandiose reality of other worlds is bursting into the human
consciousness: at first the consciousness of isolated individuals, then of
hundreds of people, and later of millions. Yes, now, at this very minute, people
who as yet know nothing of each other, who are sometimes separated by great
distances and national borders, and sometimes merely by the walls of a few
houses, are experiencing startling breaches in their consciousness and are
gazing on transphysical heights and depths. And some are endeavoring—in accord
with their own abilities and inner cast—to express or depict their experience,
if only approximately, in works of literature, art, or music. I do not know how
many, but clearly already more than a few people are standing under that shower
of revelation. As for my aim, it is to set forth that revelation exactly as I
have been experiencing it—no more.
Therefore, this chapter will not deal with the scientific mode of thought and
inquiry, or even with the artistic, but with things whose understanding requires
a definite rethinking of the ideas that have reigned supreme in Russia for the
past forty years.
I believe that serious investigation by researchers at the forefront of
contemporary physiology and psychology into the large mass of apocalyptic
literature, the autobiographical testimony of ecclesiastical authors and
religious figures who underwent like experiences, and the unbiased study of
material scattered throughout works on comparative religion will in time lead to
the development of a scientific method on the basis of which it will be possible
to lay the foundation for an epistemology of religious and, in particular,
metahistorical knowledge. It is realistic to expect the emergence of an
educational system geared toward mastering the mechanics of that knowledge,
providing individuals, who will have theretofore played a passive role in that
process, with techniques to initiate and control it, if only occasionally. But
that all belongs to the future, and not the near future at that. The only thing
certain for now is that the process varies in relation to both the subject and
the object of knowledge.
It is impossible to encompass the compassless. I can speak here only of those
varieties of the process with which my own life has brought me into contact.
Although I would prefer to avoid it, I must, therefore, introduce to this book a
greater autobiographical element. In doing so I will focus on three types of
religious knowledge: metahistorical, transphysical, and ecumenical. However, it
will be impossible, as well as unnecessary, to draw a clear boundary between
them.
First of all, what exactly is meant here by metahistory? According to Sergei
Bulgakov, perhaps the only Russian thinker to address the question openly,
metahistory is "the noumenal side of that universal process, one aspect of
which reveals itself to us as history (1. S. Bulgakov, Two Cities, Moscow, 1911,
p. 103.).
However, I think that the application of Kantian terminology to questions of
this type can hardly help to clarify the essence of the matter. The concepts of
the noumenon and phenomenon were formulated by a different train of thought and
engendered by different philosophical needs. Objects of metahistorical
experience can be fit into the system of that terminology only through recourse
to procrustean methods.
It would be just as ill-advised to equate metahistory with some variety of the
philosophy of history. The philosophy of history is just
that—philosophy—while metahistory is always concerned with myth.
In any case, in this book the term metahistory is used in two senses. First, it
is the sum of processes—as yet outside the field of vision, interest, and
methodology of science—that take place on planes of variobeing existing in
other time streams and other dimensions and are sometimes discernible through
the process we perceive as history. Those otherworldly processes are bound in
the closest fashion to the historical process, and to a significant degree they
determine it. But by no means are they identical with it. They are most fully
revealed by means of that same method of knowledge that is called metahistorical.
The second meaning of the word metahistory refers to the teaching about those
variobeing processes, a teaching, obviously, in the religious, not scientific,
sense of the word.
It should come as no surprise that the ability to apprehend these processes
varies from individual to individual in accordance with a number of
psychological and perhaps even physiological factors. We are clearly dealing
here with a kind of inborn predisposition; we have as little chance of summoning
or destroying it as, for example, we do an inborn gift for music. Such a gift,
however, can in the course of one's life be stifled or simply left unused like
the talent buried in the ground. Or it can be fostered, sometimes in an
extremely accelerated fashion. The educational system possible in the future
would promote the development of that ability.
As it is now, we have little choice but to grope almost blindly for some means
to influence that ability in a conscious fashion, and there would still probably
be no noticeable progress toward that end in the whole course of one's lifetime
if not for certain forces that, acting in concert with our efforts, take upon
themselves the tremendous task of cultivating within us the corresponding organs
of perception. Nevertheless, it appears quite probable that something else
besides inborn traits and the active cooperation of Providential powers,
something we ourselves must acquire—for example, a modest yet definite store
of positive historical data—is necessary for the process of metahistorical
knowledge to take place. The metahistorical method is closed to any person
totally unaware of and having no opportunity to recognize his or her link with
history, whether that person lives in the Australian desert or within the
labyrinths of modern-day megalopolises. The role of science in the psychological
process under examination (or to be more exact, in the preparation for the
process) is for now limited to participation in the accumulation of that same
store of historical data. The process itself, or at least that variation of it
with which I am familiar, has no relation whatsoever to scientific forms of
knowledge. I wish to repeat and emphasize that.
The process consists of three consecutive stages.
The first stage is a sudden inner experience that occurs involuntarily and, it
would seem, without any preparation, although, of course, in reality such
preparation must have already taken place beyond the limits of our
consciousness. The experience consists of revelations—lightning-quick yet
encompassing enormous stretches of historical time—of the essence of great
historical phenomena. This essence cannot be divided into categories or
expressed in words. The experience may take a minute or an hour, and it
overflows with dynamically bubbling images. The individual feels like a person
long confined to a quiet, dark room who is suddenly thrust outside at the peak
of a storm—a storm terrifying in its power and immensity, almost blinding, and
at the same time brimming with a feeling of breathless euphoria. Before such an
experience, an individual will have had no idea of the fullness of life, of even
the possibility of such fullness. Entire eras—in a manner of speaking, an
entire metahistorical cosmos of those eras with great powers battling within
it—are simultaneously captured and synthesized. It would be a mistake to
assume that these images must always take visual form. A visual element and,
perhaps, an aural element, as well, are a part of them. But the images are to
those elements what, for example, an ocean is to the hydrogen of which its water
is composed. Because of the lack of close analogies with anything more familiar,
it is extremely difficult to convey to the reader an idea of the experience.
The experience has a tremendous effect on one's whole inner being. Its
revelations so far surpass everything else that previously entered the range of
the individual's consciousness that they will nourish the inner world of the
person who underwent the experience for many years to come. They will become his
or her inner treasures.
This first stage of metahistorical knowledge might be called metahistorical
enlightenment. Such a designation, however, should not be seen as an attempt to
attach a positive connotation to the said psychological phenomenon. I will speak
more on that a little later.
The yield of the enlightenment is stored in the depths of one's mind, not as
memories but as something vital and alive. From there, individual images, ideas,
and entire systems gradually, over many years, float up into the range of one's
consciousness. But far more remain deep down, and the individual understands
that no mental framework will ever be able to encompass and exhaust the cosmos
of metahistory that has come ajar for him or her. It is these images and ideas
that become the focus of the second stage of the process.
The second stage does not have the same momentary character as the first. It is
a sort of chain of inner states—a chain running through weeks and months, its
links appearing almost daily. It is inner contemplation, intense
familiarization, rapt examination— sometimes joyful, sometimes painful—of
historical images, which are perceived not in isolation but in the context of
the second metahistorical reality that lies behind them. I am using the word
examination here provisionally, while by the word images I again mean not merely
visual perceptions, but synthesized perceptions that possess a visual element
only in so far as what is being examined can have a visually perceptible form at
all. In connection with this, it is extremely important to note that the objects
of such contemplation consist of a significant number of phenomena from
variodimensional planes of materiality. Clearly, these cannot be perceived with
the physical organs of sight and hearing; they are perceived with other organs,
which are part of our being but are usually separated from our waking
consciousness by a thick wall. If the first stage of the process was
characterized by the passive role of the individual, who became, as it were, the
inadvertent witness to an astonishing spectacle, at the second stage it is to a
certain extent possible to consciously manipulate the process. For example, one
might choose one or another object for contemplation. But more often, and as it
so happens, during the most rewarding hours, the images surface involuntarily,
radiating, I would say, such mesmerizing power and revealing such multileveled
meaning that the hours of contemplation turn into watered-down versions of the
minutes of enlightenment. In the case of a subject with a creative bent, the
images can become the source, lever, or axis of artistic works. And no matter
how dark or bleak some of them might be, the power of the images is such that it
would be difficult to find something equal to the pleasure afforded by their
contemplation.
It seems to me that the second stage of the process might be called just that:
metahistorical contemplation.
The composite arrived at in that manner is similar to a painting on which
certain individual figures and perhaps the overall motif may be well-defined,
but other figures are blurred, and there are gaps between them, while other
sections of the background or individual details are missing altogether. The
need then arises to explain the unclear links, to fill in the remaining blanks.
The process enters its third stage, the one most independent of the influence of
suprapersonal and supranational powers. For that very reason, the most errors,
unwarranted additions, and overly subjective interpretations will then occur.
The main trouble is the inevitable distortion by reason. Its effects are almost
impossible to escape entirely. But it is sometimes possible to discern the inner
logic of metahistory and redirect even the work of the reason along its lines.
It would be natural to call that third stage metahistorical formulation.
Thus, metahistorical enlightenment, metahistorical contemplation, and
metahistorical formulation are the three stages on the path to knowledge under
question here.
I will mention yet another kind of possible state, one variety experienced
during the first stage. It is a special kind of enlightenment associated with
revelations of the demonic in metahistory. (Some demons have great power and a
wide sphere of activity.) That state, which could accurately be called an "infraphysical
breach of psyche," is extremely painful and is for the most part fraught
with a feeling of singular horror. But, as in the other cases, it too is
followed by stages of contemplation and formulation.
The books that I have written in a purely literary style are based on the
metahistorical knowledge revealed personally to me. The worldview that forms the
skeleton of this book has been derived in its entirety from those revelations.
Where did I come up with its images? Who instilled these ideas in me, and how?
What right do I have to speak with such confidence? Can I provide some kind of
proof of the authenticity of my experiences? Now I will attempt to answer these
questions as best I can. Going into autobiographical detail holds no attraction
for me, so I will try to keep such details to a minimum. But that minimum will
include, of course, a brief account of where, when, and under what circumstances
I experienced my hours of metahistorical enlightenment.
The first experience of that kind—an experience that played a colossal and, in
many respects, even decisive role in the growth of my inner world—took place
in August of 1921, before I was fifteen years old. It happened in Moscow, as the
day waned, when I, who by that time had come to very much love wandering
aimlessly around the city daydreaming, stopped by a wall along one of the
gardens that encircled the Church of Christ the Saviour and overlooked the river
embankment. Muscovite old-timers will still recall what a wonderful view it gave
onto the river, the Kremlin, and Zamoskvorechye, with its dozens of bell towers
and colorful domes. It must have been already past six, for the church bells
were ringing for vespers. The experience revealed before me, or, rather, above
me, a raging, blinding, incomprehensible world that melded the historical
reality of Russia into a strange oneness with something immeasurably larger
above it.
For many years afterward, my inner self was nourished on the images and ideas
that gradually floated within the range of my consciousness. My reason could
long make no sense of them, attempting to create newer and newer constructs that
were supposed to reconcile the contradictory nature of the ideas and interpret
the images. The process entered the formulation stage too quickly, almost
bypassing the intermediate stage of contemplation. The constructs turned out to
be flawed, my reason proved unequal to the ideas bombarding it, and more than
three decades of supplementary and illustrative revelation were needed for me to
arrive at a correct understanding and explanation of the depths of what had been
revealed to me in my youth.
I had a second experience of that nature in the spring of 1928, in the Church of
Our Lady of Levshin, where I first stayed for the early liturgy after the Easter
matins. That service, which begins at about two o'clock in the morning, is
notable for the annual reading of the first chapter of the Gospel of John:
"In the beginning was the Word." The Gospel is recited line by line in
different languages—both living and dead—by all the serving priests and
deacons in turn, who stand in different parts of the church. That early liturgy
is one of the pinnacles of Russian Orthodoxy, of Christianity as a whole, and of
religious services on Earth as a whole. If the matins that precede it can be
compared to the sunrise, then the early liturgy is verily a spiritual midday,
full of light and joy. The inner experience I am describing was altogether
different from the first, both in tone and content. It was much broader, linked,
as it were, with the entire panorama of humanity and with the apprehension of
Global History as a single mystical stream. Through the exultant movements and
sounds of the service being performed in front of me, I was able to perceive
that higher region, that heavenly land in which our entire planet appears as the
Great Church and where an eternal liturgy is celebrated without cease by
enlightened humankind in splendor beyond our imagination.
In February of 1932, during my brief employment at a Moscow factory, I fell ill,
and one night, while feverish, I was the recipient of a revelation that the
majority of people will of course consider nothing more than delirium. But for
me it was horrifying in content and unquestionably authentic. As in my previous
books, I will use the expression "the Third Witzraor" to refer to the
creature that the revelation concerned. I did not think up that strange,
foreign-sounding name by myself. It came to me at the time. Simplified, I would
define that gigantic creature, which somewhat resembles the monsters of ocean
depths, yet far surpasses them in size, as a demon of state power. That night
was to remain for a long time afterward one of the most painful experiences I
have ever known. I think the term infraphysical breach of psyche would be quite
applicable to that experience.
In November of 1933 I chanced to stop by a small church on Vlasevsky Lane.
There, an acathistus to St. Serafim of Sarov was in progress. Hardly had I
opened the door when a warm wave of choral music descended on me and surged
straight to my heart. I was overcome by a state that is very difficult for me to
write about, let alone describe without tears. Although I had previously
disdained to engage in genuflection—my emotional immaturity having led me to
suspect something servile in the custom—an irresistible impulse caused me to
kneel. But even that was not enough. And when I prostrated myself on the rug,
which was faded and worn by thousands of feet, some secret door in my soul swung
open, and tears of blissful rapture, comparable to nothing else I had ever
known, gushed forth uncontrollably. In truth, I do not really care how experts
of various kinds of ecstasies label what then followed, and into what categories
they place it. During those minutes I was raised to Heavenly Russia and
presented before its Synclite of the enlightened. I felt the unearthly warmth of
spiritual rays pouring from the center of the land, which is accurately and
fittingly called the Heavenly Kremlin. The great spirit who had at one time
lived on Earth in the person of Serafim of Sarov, and who is now one of the
brightest lights on the Russian Synclite, approached and bent down to me,
wrapping me, as if with a vestment, in streaming rays of light and gentle
warmth. For almost a whole year, until the church was closed down, I went every
Monday to the acathistus of St. Serafim and, incredibly, experienced that same
state every time, again and again, with undiminished strength.
In early 1943 I took part in the crossing of the ice of Lake Ladoga by the 196th
Rifle Division and, after a two-day journey across the Karelia Isthmus, entered
besieged Leningrad late at night. During our march through the dark, deserted
city to our station, I experienced a state whose content was reminiscent of the
experience in my youth by the Church of the Saviour, but it was colored far
differently. It was bleak and dark in tone. It burst through the distinctive
nocturnal wartime setting, at first showing through it and then swallowing it
up. Within it two irreconcilable camps—one of Darkness and one of
Light—confronted each other. Their staggering size, and the great demonic
being that glared at the rear of one of the camps, made me tremble with fear. I
saw the Third Witzraor clearer than ever before, and only the first glimmers
from its approaching enemy—our hope, our joy, our protector, the great
national guiding spirit of our homeland—saved me from a complete mental
breakdown (I tried to depict that experience in my poem "Leningrad
Apocalypse," but the dictates of art forced me to unwind, as it were, the
individual threads from the fabric of the experience. The opposing images that
appeared simultaneously could only be portrayed in temporal succession, and a
number of elements that, though they did not go counter to the essence of the
experience, were in fact absent from it, were added to the general tableau. The
bombing of the Engineer's Castle (at which I was not present) as well as the
wounding of the protagonist of the poem can be numbered among those arbitrary
additions.).
Lastly, something similar, but completely devoid of metahistorical terror,
happened to me one night in September of 1949 in a small prison cell in
Vladimir, while my lone cellmate was sleeping. The experience reoccurred several
times between 1950 and 1953, again at night, and in a communal cell. The
experience I had acquired on the previously described path, of knowledge was
insufficient to write The Rose of the World. But movement along that path
brought me to the point where I was able from time to time to interact
consciously with certain members of the Providential forces, and the hours of
those spiritual meetings became a source of more precise metahistorical
knowledge than the path I have just described.
The ether body's departure from its physical vessel and its travel through other
planes of the planetary cosmos occurs comparatively often to many people during
deep sleep. But on waking the traveler does not have any clear recollections of
what was seen. These recollections are stored only in deep memory, which is
sealed off tightly from the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of
people. Deep memory (the anatomical center of which is located in the brain) is
the repository of memories of the soul's prior existences and of transphysical
journeys similar to the above. The psychological climate of certain cultures,
such as those of India and the Buddhist countries, and the centuries-long
religious-physiological study they have conducted have enabled them to weaken
the barrier between deep memory and waking consciousness. If one puts aside easy
skepticism, it is impossible to ignore the fact that in these same countries one
can often hear claims, even from very simple folk, that knowledge of their prior
lives is not completely closed to their waking consciousness. For
Europeans—raised first on a Christianity that circumvented the issue, and then
on secular science—there was nothing to weaken the barrier between deep memory
and waking consciousness except the individual efforts of rare people.
I must say straight out that I personally have not made even these efforts, for
the simple reason that I did not know where to begin and I had no teachers to
consult. But for me there was something else instead, something that I no doubt
owe to the efforts of unseen executors of Providential will: a small opening, a
narrow crack, as it were, in the door between my deep memory and consciousness.
No matter how unconvincing this may sound to the vast majority of people, I do
not intend to hide the fact that weak, disjointed, yet indisputably genuine
flashes from my deep memory began to inform my life from my childhood years,
became more frequent in early adulthood, and finally, at the age of forty-seven,
began to illumine the days of my existence with a new light. That does not mean
that my organ of deep memory became completely unblocked—I am still a long way
from that— but the meaning contained in the images that surfaced from it
became so tangibly clear, and the images themselves sometimes so lucid, that
their qualitative, fundamental distinction from ordinary memories and the work
of the imagination is, for me, beyond question.
How can I not feel gratitude toward destiny, which consigned me for a whole
decade to conditions that are cursed by almost all who experience them? Those
conditions were hard for me, too, but they at the same time served as a powerful
lever to budge open the spiritual organs of my being. It was in prison, in my
isolation from the outside world, with my unlimited free time, my fifteen
hundred nights spent lying awake in bed among sleeping cellmates - it was in
prison that a new stage in metahistorical and transphysical knowledge began for
me. The hours of metahistorical enlightenment became more frequent. Long rows of
nights were transformed into sessions of uninterrupted contemplation and
formulation. Deep memory began to transmit clearer and clearer images to my
consciousness, illuminating with a new meaning both the events of my own life
and those of history. Waking up in the morning after a short but deep sleep, I
knew that my sleep had been full not of dreams but of something else, of
transphysical journeys.
If one embarks on such travels through the demonic planes without a guide, while
under the influence of the dark desires of one's soul or in answer to the
treacherous call of the demonic, then, upon waking, one has no clear
recollection of anything, bringing back from the journey only an alluring,
seductive, sickeningly sweet sensation. Actions that will, in the afterlife,
long bind the soul to those worlds may later sprout, as from a poisonous seed,
from that sensation. There were occasions in my youth when I strayed onto those
planes, and the journeys gave rise to such actions. I deserve no credit for the
fact that the winding path of my life on Earth subsequently led me further and
further away from those plunges into the abyss.
If the descent is undertaken with a guide—with one of the members of the
national Synclite or the World Synclite - if it has a Providential purpose and
function, then travelers, waking and experiencing sometimes the same sickeningly
sweet, alluring sensation, are at the same time aware of their temptation.
Moreover, they are able to find in their memories a counterweight to the
temptation: the comprehension of the terrible meaning of those worlds and of the
genuine face behind their mask. They do not try to return to those lower planes
by means of moral transgressions during their waking existence. Instead, they
turn the experience into an object of religious, philosophical, and mystical
formulation, or even into material for their artistic works, which, along with
other meanings, necessarily fulfill a cautionary function.
At forty-seven years of age I recalled and grasped the meaning of some of the
transphysical journeys I had completed earlier. Until then my memories of them
had been mostly vague, patchy, jumbled, and incoherent half-images. As for the
more recent journeys, they frequently left a clear and authentic trace in my
memory, exciting my whole being with the feeling of secrets revealed, as no
dream, even the most vivid, can leave.
There is an even more advanced mode of travel through the planetary cosmos,
involving the same departure of the ether body, the same journeys with a great
guide through planes of ascent or descent, but with full maintenance of waking
consciousness. Upon their return, such travelers bring back memories even more
indisputable and, so to speak, exhaustive. This is possible only in those cases
when the spiritual organs of the senses are already completely unblocked and the
locks on deep memory are broken for good. This is true clairvoyance. I, of
course, have not experienced such a thing.
As far as I know—and I may be mistaken—of European writers Dante alone was
blessed with this gift. It was his mission to write The Divine Comedy. But his
spiritual organs came completely unblocked only toward the end of his life, when
the monumental labor on his poem was already nearing completion. He saw the
numerous mistakes and inaccuracies, the vulgarization of meaning, and the
gratuitous anthropomorphism of his images, but he had neither the time nor the
energy to correct them. Nevertheless, the basic features of the framework he set
out can be taken as a panoramic view of the variomaterial planes of the Roman
Catholic metaculture.
Without daring even to dream of anything similar for myself, I did, however,
have the greatest of good fortune to talk with some of those who left us long
ago and at present belong to the Synclite of Russia. I hesitate to set down in
writing the overwhelming experience of having them near. I will refrain from
giving their names, but the presence of each of them was colored with an
inimitable and individual tone of feelings. Our meetings occurred in the daytime
as well as the night, and I in my crowded prison cell was forced to lie down on
the bed with my face to the wall to hide the tears of breathless joy streaming
from my eyes. The presence of one of the great brothers caused my heart to pound
and my body to tremble with exultation and veneration. My whole being welcomed
another with warm, tender love, as a dear friend who saw through my soul and
loved it and brought me comfort and forgiveness. The approach of the third made
me feel a need to kneel before him as someone powerful who had ascended
incomparably higher than I, and his presence was accompanied by a solemn feeling
and unusual sharpening of my attention. Lastly, the approach of the fourth gave
rise to a feeling of joyful celebration and tears of rapture. There is much I
can call into question and much I can doubt about the authenticity of my inner
life, but not those meetings.
Did I actually see them during those meetings? No, I didn't. Did they speak with
me? Yes, they did. Did I hear their words? Both yes and no. I heard them, but
not with my physical sense of hearing. It was as if they spoke from somewhere in
the depths of my heart. I repeated many of their words back to them, especially
unfamiliar names of various planes and spiritual hierarchies in Shadanakar,
trying as closely as possible to convey their sounds through physical speech,
and then asking, "Is that right?" I was forced to repeat some names
and words several times; there were also some that I was unable to reproduce
accurately with the sounds of the Russian language. Many of the strange words
pronounced by the great brothers were accompanied by light effects—not
physical light, although one could compare them in some cases to flashes of
lightning, in others, to a distant glow, and in still others, to moonlight.
Sometimes they were not at all like words in the sense to which we are
accustomed, but entire chords, as it were, of phonetic consonances and meanings.
Translating such words into our language was out of the question, and all I
could do was select one meaning and one syllable from all the meanings and all
the harmoniously sounding syllables. But our talks consisted not of single
words, but of questions and answers, of entire sentences expressing very complex
ideas. Entire sentences undivided into words seemed to flash and imprint
themselves on the silver paper of my consciousness, illuminating with an unusual
light the gaps and ambiguities that my questions addressed. In truth, they were
more like pure thoughts than sentences, thoughts that were transmitted to me
directly, without words.
Thus, my path of metahistorical enlightenment, contemplation, and formulation
was supplemented with transphysical journeys, meetings, and talks.
The spirit of our century will waste no time in responding: "Let's grant
that what the author calls his experience appears genuine to him. But can it
have any more objective significance than the "experience" of a
resident of a mental asylum? Where is the proof?"
But there is something strange here. Do we demand proof for all manifestations
of spiritual life and culture? And if not for all, then why for this particular
one? We do not, after all, demand proof from an artist or composer for the
"authenticity" of their artistic vision or musical inspiration. In the
same way, there are no proofs in the communication of religious and, in
particular, metahistorical experience. Those people whose inner world is even
slightly consonant will believe the experience of another without any proof.
Those to whom that inner world is foreign will not believe it and will demand
proof, and even if they are given proof they will continue to disbelieve. Only
science insists on faith in its testimony, forgetting at the same time how often
today's conclusions are overturned by the conclusions of tomorrow. Other spheres
of the human spirit—art, religion, metahistory—reject the necessity of such
faith. They offer limitless inner freedom.
On the other hand, it would be the grossest of errors to mix these spheres
together, to suppose, for example, that the metahistorical mode of knowledge is
some unique and rare variety of artistic creativity. They may interact at
certain stages, it is true. But it is possible for the metahistorical process of
knowledge to be entirely free of elements of artistic creativity, while examples
of artistic creativity that have no relation to metahistory are innumerable
indeed.
But in the realm of religion, as well, there have been only a few varieties
truly enriched by metahistorical knowledge. It is interesting to note that the
word revelation, which is synonymous with the Greek apocalypse, has not
prevented the latter from becoming firmly entrenched in the Russian language.
Each word has traditionally carried a special shade of meaning. The word
revelation possesses a more general meaning. If we do not confine ourselves
within narrowly religious limits, we will have to include such events as the
visions and ecstasies of Muhammad and even the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha
in the list of historical instances of revelation. As for apocalypse, is only
one kind of revelation: the revelation not of regions of universal harmony, or
of spheres of absolute wholeness, or even of groups of stellar or other cosmic
hierarchies. It is revelation of the destinies of peoples, realms, churches,
cultures, all humanity, and of those hierarchies that take part in these
destinies in a most active and direct manner. It is the revelation of
metahistory. Apocalypse is not as universal as ecumenical revelation; it is,
hierarchically speaking, lower. It deals with the more particular, with what
lies closer to us. But for that very reason it answers the burning questions of
those people whose destiny it is to be thrown into the crucible of historical
cataclysms. It fills the gap between one's apprehension of universal harmony and
the dissonances of historical and individual existence.
As is known, only a few peoples at rare times were rich in such revelation:
apocalyptika seems to have arisen among the Jews about the sixth century B.C.,
gripped early Christianity, and endured longest of all in medieval Judaism,
feeding off the fiery spirit of its messianism.
As for Christianity, and in particular the Eastern Church, the apocalyptic mode
of knowledge almost entirely disappeared as early as the beginning of the Middle
Ages. It suddenly burst into small, wavering, smoking flames again in the first
century of the Great Russian Schism. This is not the place to analyze the
complex and numerous reasons for that tragedy, but it is impossible to ignore
the link with the antihistorical attitude prevalent in the religious
consciousness and in the world of religious feelings of that time. We can
observe this attitude as far back as the time of the Byzantine Fathers of the
Church. It is glaringly evident among even the greatest representatives of
Russian Orthodoxy, those whose sanctity and higher spiritual experience is not
subject to doubt. Antihistoricism approached the status of an obligatory canon
of religious thought. It is instructive to recall the unresolved conflicts
between the official antihistoricism of the Russian Church and the inherent,
irrational pull toward the apocalyptic mode of knowledge and metahistory in the
spiritual and artistic life of such lay Orthodox writers and thinkers as Gogol,
Khomyakov, Leontyev, Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Solovyov, and Sergei Bulgakov.
But there is comfort in the fact that contact with metahistory can be made in
ways altogether different from what has been discussed here. The element of
metahistorical experience that one can uncover at times underneath the
enormously thick layer of antihistoricism, be it seeming or genuine, testifies
to that fact. Tyutchev wonderfully describes the feeling of being a participant
in some kind of historical and mystical drama, a participant in the creative
work and struggle of the great spiritual, or rather, transphysical powers that
most fully manifest themselves at crucial junctures in history. Could Joan of
Arc have really performed her heroic deeds without having experienced that
feeling? Could St. Sergi of Radonezh—an avowed hermit and ascetic in every
other respect—really have taken upon himself such a decisive, leading role in
the political tempest of his time? Without that feeling could the greatest of
popes have tried, century after century, to bring the idea of a global
hierocracy to fruition? Could Loyola have fathered an organization that
consciously strove to gain control of the mechanism guiding the historical
progress of humanity? Without that feeling, with reason alone, could Hegel have
written The Philosophy of History and Goethe, the second part of Faust? Could
the self-immolation of Old-Style Believers have been conceivable if the icy wind
of eschatological, metahistorical horror had not chilled in them all attachment
to this world, which, it seemed to them, had already fallen under the sway of
the Antichrist?
A vague metahistorical feeling, unillumined by contemplation and formulation,
often leads to distorted ideas and contradictory actions. Do we not sense a
certain metahistorical fervor in the tirades of French Revolutionary leaders, in
the doctrines of utopian socialism, in August Kont's cult of Humankind, or in
the calls for global renewal by means of the destruction of all established
order? (On the lips of Bakunin, such calls took on a tone reminiscent of the
passionate appeals of the Jewish prophets, although me nineteenth-century valor
attached a new meaning to those appeals, one directly counter to the ethic of
those ancient prophets.) There are hundreds more similar questions one could
ask. The answers that necessarily follow lead us to two important conclusions.
First, it becomes clear that an undercurrent of apocalyptic experience can be
uncovered throughout both Western and Russian culture in a countless number of
phenomena that are at first glance even alien to it in spirit. Second, it
becomes clear that metahistorical feeling, metahistorical
experience—unconscious, vague, confused, contradictory—is from time to time
woven into the creative process—artistic, religious, social, and even
political.
In speaking of the metahistorical method of knowledge, I unintentionally touched
upon the transphysical. The journeys and meetings I spoke of belong in part to
the realm of transphysical knowledge. As I said earlier, it is by no means
always possible to classify these phenomena into distinct categories. Indeed,
were it not for the desire to introduce some clarity to a complex and
little-studied group of problems, it would be entirely unnecessary.
Perhaps some readers are puzzled by my use of the term transphysical instead of
the more common word spiritual. But in the strict sense of the word, spiritual
properly refers only to God and monads. As for the term transphysical, it is
used in reference to everything that possesses materiality, but materiality
different from ours, and in reference to all those worlds that exist in
different dimensions and time streams. By transphysics (in the sense of an
object of knowledge) I mean the sum of those worlds, irrespective of the
processes taking place within them. Metahistory comprises those processes that
are linked with the evolution of Shadanakar; those linked with the evolution of
the Universe make up metaevolution; the knowledge of metaevolution is ecumenical
knowledge. Transphysics, in the sense of a religious teaching, refers to the
teaching on the structure of Shadanakar. Objects of metahistorical knowledge are
related to history and culture; those of transphysical knowledge are related to
our plane's natural environment and the environment of other planes in
Shadanakar; those of ecumenical knowledge relate to the Universe. Thus, those
phenomena that I called transphysical journeys and meetings can be classified,
depending on their content, either as metahistorical, transphysical, or
ecumenical modes of knowledge.
Now, after that brief aside, nothing hinders us any longer from moving on to an
examination of the two remaining types of religious knowledge—but only, of
course, those varieties with which I am personally familiar.
2.2 A
Brief Description of the Transphysical Method
THERE WOULD APPEAR to be among people an endless
variety of attitudes toward nature-individual attitudes that sometimes
harbor internal contradictions. But if we trace the evolution of those attitudes
throughout the history of global culture, from the invention of writing up to
the present day, we may detect a number of patterns, or rather, phases. I will
permit myself here to outline, in a very simplified manner, the general features
of three or four of the most important phases as I see them. It will not be a
painstaking reproduction of how attitudes have changed over cultures and time
but only a few quick brush strokes, the purpose of which is more to introduce
the reader to the issues involved than to provide him or her with the necessary
historical background.
The earliest phase was characterized by a conception of the universe as
extremely small and of the Earth as the only inhabited planet. The world,
however, possessed, besides our physical plane, a number of other planes, also
material but with a materiality of a different nature and possessing different
properties than ours. This was the first approximation of the transphysical
reality of Shadanakar. None of the planes, including ours, were thought to
evolve. They had been created once and for all and were inhabited by good and
evil beings. Humans lay at the center of those beings' interests and were, so to
speak, their apple of discord. Humans were not conscious of Nature as something
distinct from themselves and did not contrast themselves with it. Individual
natural phenomena evoked, of course, one or another feeling-fear, pleasure,
awe-but it seems that Nature was almost never perceived as a whole, or was
perceived so in a purely aesthetic sense, and even then only by individuals who
were highly gifted artistically. For that reason, one rarely finds among
artistic works of those eras lyrical poetry about Nature, and even more rarely
does one find landscape painting. In the main, the cultures of antiquity, as
well as certain later cultures in the East, belong to that phase. As for
religion, polytheism was typical of this first phase.
Typical of the second phase were the monotheistic systems, which either ignored
Nature or else were hostile to it. The growth of individuality led to the
conception that humans could grow spiritually. Nature, on the other hand, showed
no signs of spiritual growth. It was stagnant and static; it was amoral and
irrational; it was under the power of the demonic; and if the spirit itself was
not to be vanquished, that part of a person's being that was cosubstantial with
Nature had to be vanquished by the spirit. This was the antinature phase. The
Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu peoples all passed through it; Jewry (meaning
believers in Judaism) still remains in it. The latter, however, like the Muslim
peoples, did not so much declare war on Nature as simply snub it.
The Semitic attitude to nature has, generally speaking, been marked by a poverty
of feeling. It has long been remarked how lacking the authors of the Bible and
the Quran were in their feeling toward nature compared to those who wrote the
great epics of ancient Greece and of India in particular. The Semites gave
Nature what they considered its due, sanctioning procreation with the blessing
of their religion, but in their religious philosophy and art they strove to
ignore it, and with grave consequences. They virtually banned sculpture and
portraiture because they feared anthropolatry and abhorred the deification of
nature. Along with other Semitic elements, this anti-nature mindset spread to
Europe with Christianity, stamped out the nature cults of Germanic and Slavic
paganism, and reigned there until the end of the Middle Ages.
But the East was also to pass through that phase, though those societies colored
it in their own way. The asceticism of radical varieties of Hinduism, the
struggle of Buddhism to liberate the human self from the power of Nature-all
this is too well known to dwell on here. Thus, we can say that in the first
phase people were almost never conscious of Nature as a whole, and only
poeticized and deified individual natural phenomena, while in the second phase
they viewed it as hostile and under the sway of the demonic.
The third phase is associated with the era of scientific supremacy and with the
impoverishment of the world of religious feelings. Having inherited a hostile
attitude toward nature from Christianity, people of the third phase freed it of
its religious overtones. They did not undertake to overcome the elements of
Nature in their own being. They established a strictly utilitarian view of
Nature. Nature was, first of all, an object of rational (scientific) research;
second, it was a mass of lifeless powers to be harnessed for human use. Our
physical horizons expanded immeasurably, knowledge of the structure and laws of
our plane reached dizzying heights; that is the value of the third phase.
But there is no point in speaking of natural scientists' love of Nature. One can
experience intellectual love only for products of the intellect: one can love
with one's mind an idea, a thought, a theory, or a scientific field. In such a
manner one can love physiology, microbiology, even parasitology but not a lymph
node, or bacteria, or a flea. Love of Nature can be of a physiological nature,
of an aesthetic nature, and lastly, of a moral and religious nature. But one
thing it cannot be is intellectual. If individual specialists in the natural
sciences do love Nature, then that feeling has no relation whatsoever to their
specialty or, more generally, to the scientific method of knowledge of Nature.
Rather, it is a feeling of a physiological or aesthetic nature.
Civilized (or at least, Western) humanity attained the greatest degree of
alienation from Nature not, as it might seem, in the twentieth century but in
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Never were fashions
so artificial as in the age of the powdered wig. Never were sections of Nature
neighboring humanity disfigured so rationally and unnaturally as in the age of
the Park at Versailles. It is just as impossible to picture an aristocrat from
the age of Louis XIV sunbathing or walking barefoot as it is to imagine a
Spartan woman from the period of the Greco-Persian wars wearing a corset and
high-heeled shoes. The ascetic attitude toward Nature that had become ingrained
in Christianity was wholly responsible, but it was an attitude that in the
course of development had replaced spiritual snobbery with the snobbery of
civilized society and replaced religious pride with the pride of reason,
experiencing nothing but amused contempt for anything that did not bear the
stamp of rationality.
The philosophy of Rousseau marks the turning point. But another century and a
half had to pass and the world had to enter the age of the metropolis in order
for most of humanity to experience a longing for Nature. The Lake poets of
England, Goethe and the Romantics in Germany, Pushkin and, especially, Lermontov
in Russia loved Nature with a higher aesthetic, and for some, pantheistic love.
The Barbizon school of painting emerged, and by the end of the nineteenth
century aesthetic love had become firmly established in culture.
In the twentieth century bodily love came into its own as well Passive
contemplation of Nature became insufficient; the need arose to experience it in
a tactile, active manner, with one's whole body and through the exercise of
one's muscles. The need was in part met by hiking and sports. Finally, in the
first half of our century, the beach, with its physiological evaporation of
people into a mixture of sunlight, warmth, water, and play, became an entrenched
and lasting part of our everyday life. It is the same enjoyment of the beach
that in the days of Ronsard and Watteau would have appeared to be the indecent
eccentricities of lunatics and in the Middle Ages would have been equated with
the witches' sabbat on Bald Mountain or with a Black Mass. If one imagines
Torquemada suddenly transported as a spectator to the beach in Osten or Yalta,
then there can hardly be a doubt that into the mind of that guardian of human
souls would pop the thought of promptly organizing an auto-da-fe for those
thousands of brazen heretics.
Perhaps nothing so graphically illustrates the narrowing of the rift between
humans and Nature during the last hundred years as the evolution of fashion.
Overcoats and headwear, at one time the inseparable accompaniments
of"cultured" people, even on summer middays, began to be used only
when climate dictated. Fifty years ago it seemed improper to leave the house
without gloves; now people use them only in cold weather. In place of suits and
starched fronts, which our grandfathers roasted in for the sake of decorum even
in ninety-degree heat, people began going to work in short-sleeve shirts with
open collars. Feet that had been, cramped in fashionable boots were treated to
the delight of slippers and sandals. Women were liberated from the nightmare of
corsets. Dresses shortened at the legs and open at the neck became the fashion
in summer, while long dresses survived only as evening wear. Boys whose
great-grandfathers had at the same age paraded about wearing school blazers and
a cap even in July now run about barefoot, with no top, kissed dark by the sun.
People in large cities, separated from Nature as never before by such great
distances and missing its warm embrace, have begun returning to it, as yet
almost unconsciously, propelled by an instinctive bodily love, but carrying the
seeds of a new, more mature relationship with Nature within the historical
experience amassed in their hearts. That is the fourth phase.
Thus, there have been roughly four phases: the pagan, the ascetic, the
scientific-utilitarian, and the instinctive-physiological.
We can summarize thus: by the second half of our century in the educated and
semi-educated classes of those nations belonging to the Roman Catholic, German
Protestant, and Russian spheres of cultural influence, two attitudes toward
Nature that thus far have almost never conflicted with one another have become
entrenched. One of them, the scientific-utilitarian attitude, which is utterly
devoid of love, is older. It has focused its attention on exploiting the energy
resources contained in Nature and measures everything against the criterion of
material benefit for humanity or, what is still worse, for certain antagonistic
groupings within it. From that point of view, it also approves of sport, the
beach, and hiking. Partisans of that attitude calmly dissect live cats and dogs
out of a desire to answer the question, "How does that work?" and
shoot rabbits and partridge to satisfy an atavistic hunting instinct. Perhaps in
the former case love for humanity is also involved. An Everest of canine corpses
may yield, in the end, a grain of knowledge concerning, for example, conditional
reflexes. That is the cost to be paid, as is said, to enlighten the inquisitive
mind and spur medical progress. But there is not even a hint of love for Nature
to be found there. I will go further: such an attitude toward Nature is immoral
because, besides humans, the interests of no living being are taken into
account, and because it leads to a view of all Nature as a cow to be milked.
Fortunately, that attitude has begun to be tempered by a newer one: an
unconscious egoistic-bodily love of nature, at times mixed with aesthetic
elements.
But that evolution has not yet brought people to a recognition that it is
possible and necessary, while maintaining the older shades of love of Nature
(with the exception, of course, of the amoral utilitarian attitude), to
infinitely enrich our attitude with moral and religious meaning. Not with
pantheistic meaning, in which people have but a vague intuition of the presence
of some impersonal, evenly distributed divine force in Nature. No. That stage is
past, and prehistoric protoanimism is proof that the pantheistic feeling
possessed by some people nowadays is nothing other than a modification of the
ancient experience of arungviltaprana. No! We are dealing with something
different here. We are dealing with an attitude that is incomparably more moral
and conscious, more coherent, developed, and refined, more joyful, more
responsible. It can be founded only on the experience people have when they come
into direct contact, through Nature, with the rich and multifarious worlds of
the elementals. By "come into contact" I mean to enter into a
relationship with the elementals, understanding better and better the
opportunities for rewarding and creative friendship with them, our wonderful
responsibility toward them, and our grievous, age-old guilt.
True, a vague feeling of guilt toward Nature, and animals in particular, has
begun to have some effect. Societies for the humane treatment of animals have
sprung up, love for them has even begun to be encouraged within the school
curriculum, and that renowned wellspring of love known as the State has assumed
guardianship of the environment. Unfortunately it is doing so only out of
economic considerations. As for the humane treatment of animals, these
charitable organizations were taught a brutal lesson by the natural scientists:
after heated debate, vivisection without prior authorization has occupied a
leading place among the methods of science. Citing the benefits to humanity as
justification, scientists have firmly established this disgrace to all humanity
in universities, laboratories, and even in those same high schools where
children are taught to love cats and dogs.
What is the attitude toward Nature of the
worldview that could serve as the foundation for the teachings of the Rose of
the World?
This is a very broad question, but it is not difficult, I think, to deduce what
the chief component of that attitude will be. The perspectives of the Rose of
the World are, after all, distinguished first and foremost by a sense of the
transparency of the physical plane, by the experience of the transphysical
planes showing through it, by a passionate love of that experience and its
painstaking cultivation. That sense of transparency, in encompassing the fields
of culture and history, will be molded into a metahistorical teaching. In being
directed toward the Sun, the Moon, and the starry sky, it will become the basis
for an ecumenical-that is, metaevolutionary-teaching. In encompassing
terrestrial Nature, it will find expression in the teaching about elementals.
The teaching about elementals is but one branch of a broader teaching about the
structure of Shadanakar-a transphysical teaching.
No matter how much the ancient beliefs about elementals (nature spirits in the
broadest sense) were muddied by impurities introduced by the limitations of the
human mind and imagination, no matter how many aberrations distorted the images
of nature divinities in the pantheons of polytheistic religions-at the very
heart of these beliefs lies the truth.
But it is our task, of course, to apprehend and show reverence for the worlds of
elementals in a manner completely different from that of the peoples of
antiquity. Subsequent experience has enriched us, broadened our knowledge, and
sharpened our mystical awareness.
The chief distinctions between our belief in elementals and the belief of
ancient peoples are as follows.
The ancients anthropomorphized their images of elemental divinities. We will no
longer feel the need to attribute human forms to them.
The ancients viewed these worlds as forever constant and unchanging. We will
recognize that they evolve, though in a manner unlike the evolution of our
organic world, and we will strive to apprehend the path of their evolution.
The ancients were able to experience their link with individual planes of
elementals but drew ill-defined boundaries between them, and they had no idea
about the spiritual growth of these monads. Strictly speaking, they had no clear
conception of the plurality of these planes. For us, the plurality of and
interconnection between these planes and the spiritual growth of monads abiding
on them will become objects of transphysical knowledge.
The ancients were incapable of drawing a rough map of our planetary cosmos. We
will distinguish each plane in a much more precise manner and include it
together with all its unique features in the overall panorama of Shadanakar.
The ancients were unable to reconcile belief in these worlds with belief in the
One God. For us there will be no conflict between these two beliefs.
It should also be added that the ancients regarded propitialion and praise, and
nothing else, as their spiritual duty toward elementals. For our part, we will
strive to actualize our link with them through a readiness to participate in
their play and creative work, through encouragement of their beneficent
participation in our lives (possible paths to achieving that will be set forth
in the relevant chapters) and last, through aid to elementals of Light and
through work in enlightening dark elementals.
Such an attitude toward Nature combines a paganistic joy for life, monotheistic
spirituality, and the breadth of knowledge of the scientific age. All these
elements will come together in a higher synthesis through the spiritual
experience of the emerging sum religion.
There is a widespread misconception that all religious outlooks are hostile to
this life and that they substitute the values of the afterlife for the values of
this world. There is no more justification for that generalization than for the
claim, for example, that the art of painting distances one from this world, a
claim based on the fact that it is partly true of the painting of the Middle
Ages. Only religious credos of a particular phase have been hostile to life, and
even then only in their more extreme manifestations. This outlook I am speaking
of will not distance people from this world but will teach them to love it with
a passionate and selfless love. It does not contrast "other worlds"
with this one but sees them all as a magnificent whole, as a necklace on the
breast of God. Do we like a crystal icon lamp less because it is transparent?
Will we really love our world less because other worlds show through it? For
people who feel that way, this life is good, and death is not an enemy but a
dear guide, for a worthy life on earth predetermines an ascent to other worlds
fuller, richer, and more wonderful.
But in what manner, on what paths, can humans achieve transparent perception of
the world? Does it come independently of our will and efforts, like a lucky gift
of fate, or can we knowingly cultivate it within ourselves and whole
generations?
Until the combined efforts of a great many people are channeled into that
cultivation, the joy of transparent perception will indeed remain a matter of
the grace of God, and we will expend hardly any effort in acquiring it. Only
through the protracted labor of the invisible friends of our heart, the
executors of Providential will, do organs capable of such perception come
unblocked in some of us, though often, much more often, the organs occasionally
open a narrow crack and then close back up. But even these small cracks are
enough for transparent perception of the physical world to begin and for those
fortunate enough to experience it to resemble the blind who can see.
To initiate the process entirely at will-in oneself or others— is hardly
possible, at least for the present. But we can work in such a way that in each
one of us and in our children our labors will complement the labors of the
Providential powers. Thus, a tunnel through the psychophysical strata will be
dug, as it were, simultaneously from two ends: by us and by the friends of our
heart.
The colossal task of creating such a pedagogy can at present only be designated
as one of the tasks of a future civilization. An immense amount of preliminary
work related to the study and systematization of experience in that area is
still needed. I will treat that in greater detail in one of the last sections of
the book. At this time I will only provide some necessary information concerning
two or three possible varieties of that methodology These varieties and many
others not mentioned here can, of course, be combined to complement each other.
There is one prior condition without which efforts in this direction will lead
nowhere. It is the desire personally to apprehend the transparency of that
crystal vessel we call Nature. The process is therefore open either to those who
themselves admit the possibility that worlds of elementals exist (otherwise one
would not seek the transparency of the physical plane, but, to the contrary,
would hope for nothing to happen, so that one's scientific skepticism could
triumph) or to children, provided their trust of the elements and love of Nature
is reinforced from an early age by the example of their elders. Naturally, they
who deny beforehand the existence of those worlds will not waste time and energy
on such experiments. And even if, for the sake of experiment, it entered their
heads to make some efforts toward that end, they would achieve nothing, because
their personal disbelief would constantly inform the results obtained They would
ascribe the results to self-suggestion or something of that sort. It would be no
more than a step forward followed by a step backward, or running in place.
Thus, if that necessary inner condition is met, we must then concern ourselves
with creating the necessary external conditions. It is easy to guess that what
we are referring to here are those periods (six to eight weeks a year) when
modern-day men and women are freed from earning a living and can permit
themselves time alone in Nature. I would think that summer conditions are more
conducive, because it is in summer, with its longer days, lush plant growth, and
full awakening of earth and water, that the elementals' activity increases many
times over as more and more planes become reanimated. Also, is usually
summertime when people go on vacation-that is, they have the chance, if only for
a month, to spend time with Nature. But it should be stated from the start that
one will not make much headway in a month, and there is no point whatsoever in
embarking on such efforts during a two-week holiday. Of course, those who feel
more affmity for the winter months' should make allowances for that preference.
Someone might be expecting precise instructions from me: get up at such a time,
go to bed at such a time, keep to such and such a daily schedule. I would prefer
to avoid going into such niggling recommendations. What is our task? It is to
immerse ourselves as deeply as possible in Nature, in the life of the elements,
not as a sower of death or inquiring researcher but as a son or daughter who has
returned home after years of wandering in foreign climes. To accomplish that
task one individual will find it more natural and effective to do one thing,
someone else, another. I would only like to relate what circumstances aided me
personally.
Having secured for my summer holidays a "homebase", as they say, in a
beautiful and, obviously, remote place, I first of all endeavored to avoid
cluttering my heart and mind with sundry worldly cares. I minimized my links to
the outside world, listened to the radio less often, and tried to get by as long
as possible without newspapers, provided of course the world was not in the
midst of a dangerous crisis. It was imperative to simplify my lifestyle, wear as
little clothing as possible, and forget completely about the existence of shoes.
I bathed two or three times a day in a river, lake, or the sea, finding a spot
where it was possible to be alone with Nature.
I read books that induced a peaceful, benevolent mood and helped my thoughts
attune themselves to Nature. Literature dealing with the natural sciences would
be of no help during such times, as it puts one in a completely different frame
of mind. The study of the exact sciences and technology would lead one even
further astray. Best of all is good poetry and certain classics of prose:
Turgenev, Dickens, Erckmann-Chatrian, Tagore (but not Stendhal, Zola, Swift, or
Shedrin, and the like). It is a good time to reread children's classics, such as
Tom Sawyer or Treasure Island, and books about children. All in all, spending
lots of time with children and playing and talking with them can only help
matters. I may scare off some with one injunction, but unfortunately it is firm:
minimal consumption of meat and fish products and moderation in the use of
alcohol. And one categorical requirement: no hunting or fishing whatsoever.
That was the atmosphere in which my travels began. It doesn't feel right to use
the words "hike" or "excursion" to describe them. I would be
gone for the entire day, from sunrise to sunset, or on a three-or four-day
trip-in the forest, roving down country roads and field paths, over meadows,
through woods, villages, farms, across rivers on slow ferries. These travels
included chance meetings and casual conversations, and overnight camping,
perhaps beside a campfire on the banks of a river, or in the fields, or in
haystacks, or on some village hayloft. I tried to avoid any sort of contact with
machines, conversations on technical topics, and reading of that sort, with the
exception of occasionally resorting to mechanized transport. Then back to my
remote homebase for a few days of rest and relaxation, listening to the crow of
roosters, the rustle of tree tops, the voices of children and villagers, reading
tranquil, deep, and innocent books-then off for more of the same roving.
That style of living can sometimes arouse in others puzzlement and snickering.
One should not expect to be understood. People busy with farm work will even be
inclined to view such eccentrics as no-good loafers: the majority of countryfolk
are as yet capable of viewing only their own duties as real work. One should not
take it too much to heart. One must know enough to ignore the opinions of others
when sure of the rightness of one's actions.
But those are all external considerations. You can spend the whole summer
tramping over hill and dale till you drop and still end up with nothing to show
for it. Outside circumstances must be supplemented by efforts of the heart and
mind. What sort of efforts are needed?
What people need to do is gradually train themselves to perceive the sounds of
an ocean of trees, the swaying of the grass, the glide of clouds, and the flow
of rivers, every voice and movement of the visible world, as alive, fully aware,
and kindly-disposed toward them. A feeling that invariably oversees the
emergence of new thoughts and feelings will grow stronger, gradually enveloping
all one's days and nights: a feeling that, in lying down on your back, you are
letting your head sink lower and lower into soothing depths that glimmer with
soft light-loving, intimate, depths that have existed since time immemorial. A
feeling of simple joy, of profound calm will absorb the smallest spill of
everyday cares. These are good times to lie on the bank of a river, oblivious to
time, and gaze lazily at the cool water glittering in the sunlight. Or, lying
somewhere under ancient pines to listen to the organ-like music of the treetops
and the knocking of woodpeckers. One must have faith that the elementals of
Liurna are overjoyed at your coming and will speak to your body as soon as it
enters their flowing bodies, that the elementals of Faltora and Arashamf are
even now singing you songs through the rustle of leaves, the buzzing of bees,
and warm breaths of wind. When you are returning home from a long hike at dusk
over fields smelling of freshly cut hay, climbing sun-warmed knolls and
descending into the coolness of ravines, and a soft mist begins to flood over
everything but the tops of haystacks-it feels good to take off your shirt and
let your hot body be caressed through the mist by those who are fashioning the
mist above the nodding meadows.
I could describe hundreds of other such times-from sunbathing on the sand to
berry-picking, my mind divided between action and contemplation-but whoever
embarks on that carefree and bright path will recognize them without any prior
description. After all, such a path is possible not only in Central Russia but
in the countryside of any country, from Norway to Ethiopia, from Portugal to the
Philippines and Argentina. Only the specifics of the path will vary, but they
can vary as well within the confines of a single region, depending on one's
personal preferences. What is important is to generate that radiance and
easygoing frame of mind within oneself and if possible to repeat those periods
each year.
"What utter nonsense!" some will say. "As if we were not in
possession of definite facts concerning why and how mists, the wind, or dew come
about. As if we didn't know by what processes rain, rivers, and vegetation
occur. To serve up such fairy tales with a straight face in the middle of the
twentieth century! No wonder the author hints that he feels more at ease in the
company of children: an adult would never put up with listening to such
drivel!"
They are mistaken, those absolutists of the scientific method of knowledge: not
the slightest contradiction of science is to be found here. To repeat: I mean
here objective and critical science, as distinct from the philosophical doctrine
of materialism. After all, if some rational microscopic being existed that was
studying my body and was itself a part of it, it would be right in saying the
moment I moved my arm that the arm is a lump of matter composed of such and such
molecules that moved because certain of its parts-the muscles-contracted. They
contracted because such and such a reaction occurred in the nerve centers and
the reaction arose from such and such reasons of a chemical nature. And there
you are! Clear as day. And naturally the researcher would be scandalized if it
occurred to anyone to point out that the "lump" moved because such was
the wish, free and conscious, of its owner, while the muscles, nerves, chemical
processes, and the rest merely served to transmit the owner's will.
Physiology is concerned with the study of the mechanics of the process. That
does not preclude the existence of psychology— the science dealing with the
consciousness that puts the mechanics to use. Meteorology, aerodynamics,
hydrology, and a number of other sciences concern themselves with the study of
the mechanics of natural elements. That should not and will not interfere in
time with the emergence of a teaching about elementals, about those
consciousnesses that put the mechanics to use.
It all began for me personally near the town of Tripolye in the Ukraine on a
sultry summer day in 1929. Weary but content after a hike of many miles through
open fields and over slopes with windmills, from where a panoramic view opened
onto the bright-blue branches of the Dnieper and the sandbars between them, I
climbed the ridge of yet another hill and was all of a sudden literally blinded.
Before me, motionless under the streaming rays of the sun, stretched a vast sea
of sunflowers. At the same moment, I sensed an invisible ocean of vibrant joy
quivering above that magnificent scene. I stepped up to the very edge of the
field and, my heart pounding, pressed two bristly sunflowers to my cheeks. I
stared at the thousands of earthbound suns, almost breathless with love for them
and for the beings whose joy I felt above the field. I felt something strange: I
felt that those invisible beings were leading me with joy and pride, like a
guest of honor, to a fantastic celebration that resembled both a ceremony and a
feast. I gingerly took a couple of steps into the midst of the flowers and,
closing my eyes, listened to their touch, to their barely audible rustle, and to
the celestial heat that was blazing all around.
It all began with that. True, I can recall experiences of that kind from my
younger days, when I was a teenager, but they were not nearly as powerful. But
both before and after the experience in Tripolye-not every year, but sometimes
several times in the course of one summer-minutes of strange, inebriating joy
came upon me while alone in Nature. They occurred, for the most part, when I had
already covered hundreds of kilometers on foot and then chanced upon unfamiliar
places distinguished by the lushness and wildness of vegetation growing
unchecked. Transported by ecstasy and trembling from head to foot, I made my
way, oblivious to everything, through dense thickets, sunbaked marshes, and
prickly bushes, finally throwing myself down into the grass to feel it with my
whole body. The most important thing was that during those minutes I was aware
with all my senses that the invisible beings whose existence is mysteriously
linked to the vegetation, water, and soil loved me and flowed through me.
In the years that followed, I spent the summers, for the most part, in the
Bryansk Forest region. The memory of all that happened to me there is the joy of
my life. But I am particularly fond of recalling my encounters with the
elementals of Liurna, which at the time I called river spirits.
Once, during a drought, I set off alone on a one-week camping trip in the
Bryansk Forest. The smoke of forest fires stretched out in fingers of bluish
black, and sometimes whitish puffs of smoke, slowly curling and twisting, would
rise above the huge fir forests. It so happened that I walked for several hours
along a hot dirt road without seeing a spring or brook. The heat, as stifling as
in a greenhouse, gave me an agonizing thirst. I had brought a detailed map of
the area, and I knew that I would soon come across a small stream-one so small
that even on my local map it did not have a name. Sure enough, the woods began
taking on a different look: fir trees gave way to maples and alders. Suddenly
the scorching road that was burning my feet began to slope down, the green of a
meadow appeared up ahead, and skirting a clump of trees, I caught sight of a
bend of the long-anticipated stream a dozen meters ahead. The road crossed it at
a ford. What a pearl of creation, what a delightful child of God laughed at my
coming! A few steps wide, shaded everywhere by the low-hanging branches of old
willows and alders, it streamed as if through green caverns, softly gurgling and
glittering with thousands of sparkles of sunlight.
Throwing my heavy knapsack down on the grass and tearing off my light clothing
on the run, I entered the water up to my chest. When my overheated body plunged
into the cool wetness, and dapples of shadow and sunlight flitted over my
shoulders and face, I felt some invisible being, composed of what I don't know,
embrace my soul with such innocent joy, with such laughing playfulness, as if it
had long loved me and been waiting for me. It was like the rarefied soul of the
river-all flowing, all trembling, all caressing, all coolness and light,
carefree laughter and tenderness, joy and love. And when, after my body had long
been in its body, and my soul in its soul, I lay down with eyes closed on the
bank under the shady branches of the trees, my heart felt so refreshed, so
cleansed, so purified, so blessed as it could only have been during the first
days of Creation, at the dawn of time. And I realized that what had happened to
me this time was no ordinary bathing in a river but a true ablution, in the very
highest sense of the word.
Some might reply that they, too, have spent time in the forests and bathed in
rivers, that they, too, have walked through woods and fields and, standing on
the mating ground of grouse, have felt at one with Nature, but that they have
never experienced anything resembling elementals. If it is a hunter speaking, it
is no wonder: the elementals see only an enemy and desecrator in that destroyer
of Nature, and there is no surer way of repelling them than taking a hunting
rifle into the forest. If those who speak are not hunters, let them carefully
reconstruct the weeks they spent in Nature and they will discover their own
breaches of the conditions I set forth at the start.
It is impossible, of course, to predetermine the duration of the stages of that
process of knowledge: the lengths of time vary depending on many circumstances,
both objective and individual. But sooner or later the first day will arrive,
and you will suddenly feel all of Nature as if it were the first day of Creation
and the Earth were celebrating its heavenly beauty. It could happen at night by
the campfire or during the day in the middle of a rye field, in the evening on
the warm steps of a porch or in the morning in a dewy meadow, but the nature of
the moment will everywhere be one and the same: the dizzying joy of one's first
cosmic awakening. It will not yet mean that your inner vision has come unblocked
for good. You will still see nothing besides the customary landscape, but you
will experience with your whole being its multiplaned reality and permeation by
spirit. The elementals will become even more accessible to those who undergo
that first awakening. Such people will become more and more aware of the
constant proximity of those wonderful beings through organs of the soul that
have no names in our language.
But the essence of a first awakening lies in something else, something higher.
It concerns not only transphysical knowledge but also what I am unable to find a
name for other than the old word ecumenical. Many authors have attempted to
throw light on similar states. William James calls it a breakthrough of cosmic
consciousness. It can clearly take on very different shades for different
people, but the experience of cosmic harmony lies at its heart. The methods I
have described in this chapter are, to a certain extent, capable of hastening
that hour, but there is no reason to hope that such joys will become frequent
guests in the home of our soul. On the other hand, a soul can be overcome by
such a state without any conscious preparation Such an instance is described,
for example, by Rabindranath Tagore in his Memoirs.
It is easy for people who have more than once experienced a feeling of general
harmony with Nature to think that this is what I am referring to. No, far from
it. A breakthrough of cosmic consciousness is an event of colossal personal
significance, such as can occur in a person's lifetime only an extremely limited
number of times. It comes on one suddenly. It is neither a mood nor pleasure nor
happiness nor even a joy of astonishing dimensions-it is something bigger. More
so than the breakthrough itself, recollections of it will have a powerful effect
on one's being. The breakthrough itself is full of such bliss that it would be
more accurate to speak of it not as astonishment but enlightenment.
Such states occur when the Universe-not the Earth alone, but the whole
Universe-reveals itself in its higher aspect, reveals the divine spirituality
that permeates and envelops it, erasing all the painful questions of suffering,
conflict, and evil.
In my life such an experience took place on the moonlit night of July 29, 1931,
on the banks of the Nerussa, a small river in the Bryansk Forest. I usually try
to be alone when in Nature, but that time it so happened that I had taken part
in a camping trip with a small group. It was composed of teenagers and young
adults, including an aspiring artist. Each of us was carrying a knapsack with
food, and the artist had also brought along a sketch pad. We wore nothing
heavier than pants and shirts, and some had even taken off their shirts. We
walked along quickly and silently, in single file, like tribespeople along the
wild paths of Africa. We were not hunters or explorers or mineral prospectors-we
were simply friends who wanted to camp by a fire on the famed banks of the
Nerussa.
As always happens in the Bryansk Forest along the flats of a river, a fir forest
as vast as the sea gave way to a deciduous wood. Century-old oaks, maples, and
ashes rose up before us; aspens that resembled palm trees, with their crown of
leaves at a dizzying height, enchanted us with their grace and stature; the
roundish canopies of kindly willows shone silver as they hung over the water of
creeks. In individual clumps, thickets, and glades, the forest approached the
river as though with loving care. There were no villages, no signs of
civilization. The wilderness spell was broken only by the barely distinguishable
path left by mowers and by the rounded tops of haystacks, rising here and there
in the fields in preparation for the winter, when they would be transported by
sled to the villages of Chukhrai or Neporen.
We reached the banks of the river at the close of a hot, cloudless day. We took
a leisurely dip, then gathered brush, and, building a fire two meters from the
quietly flowing river under the canopy of three old willows, prepared a simple
meal. The sky darkened. A low July full moon glided out from behind the oaks.
Little by little the conversations and stories died down; one by one my
companions fell asleep around the crackling wood. I was left awake at the fire,
lazily waving a branch to ward off the mosquitoes.
When the moon, noiselessly moving behind the finely patterned, leafy branches of
the willow, entered the range of my vision, those hours that come close to being
the most wonderful of my entire life began. Breathing softly, having laid back
on a handful of hay, I heard the Nerussa flowing not behind me, a few paces
back, but as if through my own soul. That was the first unusual thing I noticed.
Everything on Earth and everything that must exist in the heavens poured
exultantly and noiselessly through me in a single stream. In bliss barely
supportable by the human heart, I felt as if slowly revolving, graceful spheres
glided through me in a universal dance, and everything I could think of or
imagine merged in a jubilant oneness. The ancient forests and clear rivers, the
people sleeping by the fire, the peoples of countries near and far, cities
waking up and busy streets, cathedrals with sacred icons, seas tossing
tirelessly, and steppes with blowing grass— everything indeed was within me
that night, and I was within everything. I lay with eyes closed, and beautiful
white stars, large and blossoming, not at all like those we are used to seeing,
also floated along the world-turned-river like white water lilies. Although the
sun was not visible, it was as if it, too, were flowing somewhere just outside
the range of my vision. Everything was suffused not by its glow but by a
different light, one I had never seen before. Everything flowed through me and
at the same time rocked me, like a child in a cradle, with all-soothing love.
In trying to express in words such experiences, one understands better than ever
the poverty of language. How many times have I attempted through poetry and
prose to convey to others what happened to me that night! And I know that no
attempt, including this one, will ever succeed in communicating to anyone else
the true significance, dimensions, and profound effect that occurrence had on my
life.
Afterward I tried with all my might to summon the experience again. I recreated
all the same outside circumstances under which it took place in 1931. Many times
in the years that followed I camped in the exact same spot on the very same
nights It was all in vain. But twenty years later, just as unexpectedly, it came
on me again. This time it was not during a moonlit night by a forest river but
in a prison cell.
Oh, that is only the beginning. It is not yet the enlightenment after which a
person seems to become someone new, a person enlightened in the higher sense of
the word, the sense attached to the word by the great peoples of the East. This
is the holiest and most mysterious of enlightenments it is the opening of one's
spiritual eyes.
There is no greater joy on Earth than the complete opening of one's inner
vision, hearing, and deep memory. The joy of people born deaf or blind who
suddenly, in middle age, experience the opening of their physical eyes and ears
is but a dim echo of it.
I can only repeat what I know of it by what others have said There is a
wonderful passage in Edwin Arnold's book The Light of Asia in which such a state
is described, a state that turned one searcher of the truth into the one now
known by all humanity as Gautama Buddha.
Here is the description. It deals with Buddha's entry into the state of abhidjna:
Insight vast
To spheres unnamed,
System on system, countless worlds and suns
Moving in splendid measures, band by band
Linked in division, one yet separate,
The silver islands of a sapphire sea
With waves which roll in restless tides of change.
He saw those Lords of Light who hold their worlds
By bonds invisible, how they themselves
Circle obedient around mightier orbs
Star to star
Flashing the ceaseless radiance of life
From centers ever shifting unto cirques
Knowing no uttermost. These he beheld
With unsealed vision
Cycle on epicycle, all their tale
Of Kalpas, Mahakalpas-terms of time
Which no man grasps
Sakwal by Sakwal, depths and heights he passed
Marking-behind all modes, above all spheres,
Beyond the burning impulse of each orb—
That fixed decree of silent work which wills
Evolve the dark to light, the dead to life,
To fullness void, to form the yet unformed,
Good unto better, better unto best
By wordless edict; having none to bid,
None to forbid; for this is past all gods
Immutable, unspeakable, supreme,
A Power which builds, unbuilds and builds again,
Ruling all things accordant to the rule
Of virtue, which is beauty, truth, and use."
What is there left to say? It would be not pride
but sheer naivete to hope even in the innermost corner of our heart that someday
such an hour will strike for us as well. Yet comfort can be taken from the fact
that every human monad without exception, sooner or later, even if after an
almost endless period of time, perhaps in another, nonhuman form, in another
world, will attain that state, surpass it, and continue on.
In the meantime it is our duty to share with others the best that we possess. My
best is what I experienced on the paths of transphysical and metahistorical
knowledge. That is why I am writing this book. In these last two chapters I have
described as best I could the major signposts on my inner path. Everything that
follows will be the presentation of what was understood on that path about God,
about other worlds, and about humanity. I will try to avoid any further
discussion of how it was understood; the time has come to speak of what was
understood.
MultiplanedReality
OUR PHYSICAL PLANE-a concept synonymous with
what astronomy calls the Universe-is characterized, as we know, by
threedimensional space and one time stream. In the terminology of the Rose of
the World, the physical plane is called Enrof.
In modern science and philosophy debate continues about the infinity or
finiteness of Enrof in time and space and whether the whole Universe is
contained within Enrof, whether all forms of being are exhausted by its forms.
The discovery of antimatter; the appearance and even extraction of physically
material particles from out of a physical vacuum, particles that had hitherto
existed in the world of negative energy; the experimental corroboration of the
theory that the physical vacuum of space in Enrof is awash with oceans of
particles of a different materiality-all these facts are signposts on the route
that plodding science is following away from the ideas of classical materialism
toward those that differ greatly both from them and from the views of the old
idealistic philosophy. It is highly probable that the muddle the proponents of
the philosophy of materialism have made of the issue by claiming that all its
opponents are merely rehashing the old arguments of idealism is one of the
tactics in the last stand of the materialistic consciousness before it
"steps on the brakes," as they say, abandoning one position after
another, and at the same time reassuring all that the classic thinkers of
materialism had foreseen and long affirmed those very same things. It will be
particularly interesting to see what acrobatics philosophy will have to resort
to in the near future, when it is forced by the weight of evidence to
incorporate antimatter into its system.
The primacy of matter over consciousness, the knowability in principle of the
entire Universe, and at the same time, its infinite and eternal nature-these
naive doctrines of materialism, which were conceived during past stages of
science, are still regarded as current owing only to contrived manipulations
and, more important, to the intervention of authorities that are associated not
so much with philosophy as with the police state. On the other hand, many
doctrines of traditional religion will not bear up under the scrutiny of modern
science to the same degree. The new methods of knowledge-metahistorical and
transphysical-will not intrude on fields of scientific knowledge or in any way
contradict science in its essentials. At the same time they will anticipate
science's answers to certain questions.
A conception of the Universe as multiplaned lies at the heart of the Rose of the
World's worldview. By plane is meant a material world whose materiality differs
from that of other planes by virtue of the number of its dimensions and time
streams. For example, there are interconnected planes neighboring ours, planes
in which space has the same three dimensions but time has not one stream, as on
our plane, but several. That means that on such planes time flows as several
parallel streams of differing speed. On such a plane events take place
simultaneously in all its time streams but their locus is situated in only one
or two of them.
It is not easy, of course, to visualize what this means. The inhabitants of such
a plane, although they act predominantly in one or two time streams, exist in
and are aware of them all. The synchronicity of their being wakens them to the
fullness of life to a degree unknown to us. At the risk of getting slightly
ahead of myself, I will add that a large number of time streams in combination
with a minimal number (one or two) of dimensions has the opposite effect,
causing the inhabitants of such planes suffering. This suffering resembles an
awareness of one's limitations, a searing feeling of powerless spite, a constant
reminder of the enticing opportunities one is not in the position to take
advantage of. Some of us would call it being "so close yet so far" or
recognize it as the torment of Tantalus.
With a few exceptions, such as Enrof, the number of time streams on a plane far
exceeds the number of dimensions. If I remember correctly, there are no planes
in Shadanakar with more than six dimensions. As for the number of time streams
on the highest of the planes in the bramfatura it rises to an astronomical
height of 236.
In extrapolating the specific features of Enrof onto other planes, it would be a
mistake to think that all partitions separating plane from plane must be as
difficult to pass through as the partitions separating Enrof from planes of
different dimensions. True, there are partitions surrounding some planes that
are even more difficult to pass through and that block them off from others even
more securely. But such planes are few. There are far more groups of planes in
which movement from plane to plane does not require death or a difficult
material transformation, as with us, but only the attainment of special inner
states. There are also those from which movement to neighboring planes requires
no more effort than, say, travel from one country of terrestrial Enrof to
another. Several of those planes together form a system. I am accustomed to
using the Indian term sakwala when referring to each of those systems of planes
or series of worlds. Along with sakwalas, however, there also exist solitary
planes like Enrof.
Planes and entire sakwalas also differ from each other in the amount of space
they occupy. Not all of them encompass the same cosmic area Enrof does.
Difficult as it is to imagine, many of them do not extend beyond the limits of
our solar system. Others are even more localized: they are immured, as it were,
within the confines of our planet. There are even several that are linked not to
the planet as a whole but to only one of its physical strata or regions. There
is obviously nothing on those planes that can be likened to the sky.
Bound together by shared metahistorical processes, the majority having two rival
spiritual poles, as it were, all the planes of every heavenly body together form
a gigantic, tightly integrated system. I have already mentioned that such
systems are called bramfaturas. In some of them the total number of planes does
not exceed single digits, while in others it numbers several hundred. Besides
Shadanakar, where the total number of planes now stands at 242, bramfaturas of
the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, the Moon, and certain moons orbiting
the larger planets exist at present in the solar system. The bramfatura of Venus
is in the embryonic stage. The remaining planets and moons are as lifeless on
their other planes as they are in Enrof. They are either the ruins of former
bramfaturas that were abandoned by all their monads or else they have never been
bramfaturas.
Multiplaned systems of materiality somewhat analogous to bramfaturas, but
incomparably larger, encompass certain solar systems-for example, the majority
of the stars of Orion or the system of Antares' double suns and its many
planets. Even larger are the galactic systems and the system of the entire
Universe. They are macrobramfaturas. There are macrobramfaturas known to have an
enormous number of variomaterial planes-up to eight thousand. There is nothing
in the macrobramfaturas that can be likened to so-called vacuum, areas of
extreme material paucity in Enrof. It is easy to see that macrobramfaturas are
beyond the comprehension of even the greatest of the great human souls that now
dwell in Enrof. No one can directly glean any concrete information about them
except in the form of distant presentiments. Such information sometimes comes to
us from the higher spirits of Shadanakar, those immeasurably greater than us,
through the medium of the invisible friends of our heart. But even these
accounts are extremely difficult for us to comprehend. Thus, it was nearly
impossible for me to understand the strange and sorrowful communication that
there is in the macrobramfatura of our Galaxy a material plane where space
exists but time does not— a kind of hole in Time, where movement is yet
possible. It is the plane of torment of great demons, the realm of eternal
darkness. But it is eternal not in the sense of endlessly flowing time, but in
the sense of the absence of any time (I would like to point out in passing that
the difference between these two senses of the word eternity has thus far barely
been grasped in our philosophical thought).
That eternity is not absolute, as Time can arise there, and therein lies one of
the tasks of the grand cycles of cosmic evolution. For only the emergence of
Time will make it possible to liberate the great sufferers imprisoned in their
galactic hell.
Molecules and some types of atoms form microbramfaturas: minute systems, whose
existence in our time is sometimes exceedingly brief. They are, however, quite
complex worlds, and one should be aware of the fact that elementary particles
are living beings, some of whom possess free will and intelligence. But it is
practically impossible to communicate with them, let alone personally enter
microbramfaturas directly. There is no being in any of the planes of Shadanakar
who is capable of that at the present time: it surpasses for now even the power
of the Planetary Logos. Only in the macrobramfaturas of the Galaxy are there
spirits of such unimaginable power and grandeur that t hey are capable of
descending simultaneously into multitudes of microbramfaturas. To do so such a
spirit must, while maintaining its oneness, incarnate simultaneously in millions
of those minuscule worlds, revealing itself in all its fullness in each one of
them and within the tiniest fractions of time.
I have, in one way or another, been talking exclusively about material planes,
since spiritual planes as such do not exist. The difference between matter and
spirit is more a question of degree than of kind, although spirit is created by
God alone and emanates from Him, while monads create materiality. In its initial
state, free of any coating we could call material, spirit takes the form of a
substance that we could roughly, and only as a first approximation, compare to
the subtlest of energy. Only God and monads are of the spirit-monads being the
countless hosts of God-born and God-created higher selves, indivisible spiritual
entities. They differ from each other in the degree of their inborn potential,
the inexhaustible variety of their material coatings, and the paths their lives
take. A monad that has ascended to great heights can be here, there, at many
points of the Universe at once, but it is not omnipresent. Only the Divine
Spirit is truly omnipresent. It abides even where there are no monads— for
example, in those ruins of bramfaturas abandoned by all monads. Nothing can
exist without Him, not even matter we call dead. If the Divine Spirit left it,
it would cease to be-not in the sense of a transformation into another form of
matter or energy, but absolutely.
The Origin of Evil, Planetary Laws, Karma
If we examine the myth of the rebellion and fall
of Lucifer within the context of the spiritual history of Shadanakar, it fails
to shed light on anything. Never in the metahistory of our planet have any
events taken place that could be said to have been mirrored in that myth.
Something else did take place once, a long time ago, and recollections of it,
though distorted, have been preserved in certain other myths-for example, in the
legend of the revolt of the Titans. That will be discussed in more detail,
however, in regard to something else. As for the legend of the rebellion and
fall of Lucifer, those events took place at one time on an ecumenical scale, on
the level of that macrobramfatura that encompasses the Universe, a level that
surpasses all categories of our reason. What happened was translated by the
seers of olden times into narrow human concepts specific to their era and took
shape as the myth. Those time-specific conceptions have become outdated as the
scope of our knowledge has broadened immeasurably, and if we now wish to discern
the eternal and true seed of the idea within the myth, we must disregard all the
time-specific features introduced into it and focus only on the one central fact
affirmed by it.
It was only natural that the knowledge even the wisest of those times possessed
concerning the magnitude and structure of the Universe lagged so far behind
contemporary knowledge that the ecumenical information that filtered into their
minds through the efforts of the invisible friends of their heart was flattened
and compressed into the narrow confines of their empirical experience, of their
powerful, but as yet unenlightened and unsubtle, minds. On the other hand, the
task of anyone who attempts nowadays to convey in human words and concepts even
an echo of the ecumenical mystery of the rebellion of the so-called Morning Star
could hardly be much easier. Such an attempt would consist of two stages: first,
a search in the ocean of our concepts for words and phrases that mirror better
than others that fantastic reality; second, a search in the ocean of our
language for words and phrases that are capable of even slightly mirroring, in
turn, those elusive concepts. But the success of such an undertaking is
dependent on a person's inner growth and on his or her ecumenical insight. It
cannot be accomplished on a whim.
I feel myself capable of only the beginning stages of such a work. I therefore
cannot state anything concerning ecumenical events of that nature except to give
simple confirmation of an event that at one time occurred. Back in the forgotten
depths of time, a spirit, one of the greatest, whom we call Lucifer or Satan, in
exercising his free will, which is the inalienable attribute of every monad,
rejected its Creator in order to create another universe according to its own
plan. He was joined by a host of other monads, both great and small. They began
to create another universe within the confines of this one. They tried to create
worlds, but those worlds proved unstable and collapsed, because, in rebelling,
the monads that turned from God in so doing also renounced love-the single
unifying, bonding principle.
The ecumenical plan of Providence leads a great many monads up to a higher
oneness. As they ascend the steps of being, the forms of their unions evolve:
love for God and for each other bring them closer and closer together. When each
of them immerses itself in the Universal Sun and co-creates with Him, the most
perfect of unions takes place: merger with God without the loss of one's unique
self.
The ecumenical design of Lucifer is exactly the opposite. Each of the monads
that allied themselves with Lucifer is but a temporary ally and a potential
victim. Every demonic monad, from the greatest to the lowest, clings to the
dream of becoming the ruler of the Universe; pride prompts it to think that it
is the one with the potential to be the strongest of all. It is ruled in its
actions by a kind of categorical imperative, which can to a certain extent be
reduced to the formula, There is I and not-I; all not-I must become I. In other
words, everything and everyone must be swallowed up by that single, absolutely
self-asserting self. God gives of Himself; the powers that rejected God try to
absorb everything into themselves. That is why they are first and foremost
vampires and tyrants, and that is why a tyrannical tendency is not only inherent
in any demonic self but is one of its essential attributes.
Therefore, demonic monads temporarily join forces, but deep down they are rivals
to the death. That antagonism surfaces when some limited power is seized by
their group. A free-for-all then begins, and the strongest triumphs.
The hopelessness of the demons' cosmic struggle also springs from the fact that
God is always creating more and more monads and, since the demons are incapable
of creating even one, the balance of power is constantly shifting against them.
There are not nor will there ever again be any more falls. That is absolutely
guaranteed, and I deeply regret that the extreme complexity of the question
prevents me from finding the concepts necessary to present it in some kind of
intelligible manner. In any case, all the demonic monads are of very ancient
origin. They are all veterans of that great rebellion. True, something like a
fall but in fact different has taken place since and takes place now: a
highlyconscious being, sometimes even a whole group of them, temporarily choose
to oppose Providential will. That choice against God is not made by the monad
itself but by the lower self, by a limited mind. For that reason, its rejection
of God takes place not in the spiritual world but in the material worlds, which
are subject, by the will of those same demons, to the law of retribution. The
mutiny is thus doomed to failure, and the mutineer embarks on a long road of
atonement.
Gradually, in the course of their struggle, the futility of trying to create
their own universe became apparent to the demonic forces. So while continuing to
create individual worlds and expending incredible amounts of energy to stabilize
them, those forces set themselves another goal: to take over worlds already in
existence or in the process of being created by the Providential powers. Their
goal is the takeover, not the destruction, of those worlds. But destruction is
the objective end result. Bereft of the bonding principles of love and
co-creation, held together only by the conflicting principle of coercion, such
worlds cannot exist for any extended period of time. There are galaxies in the
process of disintegration even now. And when astronomy begins to observe
intergalactic nebulae over a longer period of time than it does now, the process
of those galactic catastrophes will be revealed to science. There are planets
either dead or dying-Mars, Mercury, Pluto-the ruins of bramfaturas. All the
monads of Light were driven from those systems, which had fallen under demonic
rule, after which a final catastrophe ensued, and the demon legions were left to
roam homeless in space, seeking a new bramfatura to invade.
On the other hand, there are macrobramfaturas and whole galaxies where the
legions of the rebel have been unable to force a breach. Orion-a macrobramfatura
of extraordinary spiritual Light-is a solar system within our Galaxy that has
entirely freed itself of the demonic. Those who gaze through a telescope at the
great nebula of Andromeda will see with their own eyes a galaxy that has never
been invaded by demons. It is a world that from start to finish has been
ascending steps of ever-increasing bliss. There are many such worlds among the
millions of galaxies in the Universe, but our Galaxy, unfortunately, is not one
of them. Long ago expelled from the macrobramfatura of the Universe, the forces
of the rebel are waging a continuous, relentless war against the forces of Light
in the worlds of our Galaxy. This war has taken millions of forms. Shadanakar
also came to be a war front.
Shadanakar became a front far back in those distant times when the Earth was no
more than a semimolten globe in Enrof, while other planes in Shadanakar, as yet
numbering in the single digits, had only just been created by the great
hierarchies of macrobramfaturas. There was no law of survival on those planes.
There, in the worlds of those beings now known to us by the generic term angels,
the principles of love and friendship between all ruled. There was no law of
death: everyone moved from plane to plane by means of a painless material
transformation that did not rule out the possibility of returning. In those
worlds-which at the time had only three dimensions and were consequently almost
as dense as Enrof-there was no law of retribution: mistakes were rectified with
the help of the higher powers. A glimmer of recollections of that time, floating
up into the consciousness of ancient sages from their treasury of deep memory,
but vulgarized and simplified by that consciousness, became crystallized in the
legend of paradise lost. In reality, it was not paradise but a gorgeous dawn
rising not over terrestrial Enrof, which back then was devoid of organic life,
but over the world that is now called Olirna. The dawn glowed and was preserved
in the memories of those few human monads who did not, like most, come later to
Shadanakar, but who began their journey in times before the distant past-and not
in Enrof, but in angelic Olirna. That community of protoangels can be called, in
a certain sense, the first humankind of Shadanakar.
A great demon, a cohort of Lucifer's named Gagtungr, irrupted into Shadanakar
with legions of lesser demons. The long and fierce battle that ensued ended in a
partial victory for him. He was unable to drive the forces of Light from the
bramfatura, but he did succeed in creating several demonic planes and turning
them into impregnable fortresses. He succeeded in tampering with the emergence
and evolution of life on terrestrial Enrof and in leaving his mark on the animal
world. The planetary laws that the forces of Light were using to create organic
life on Enrof were warped beyond recognition. It is wrong and blasphemous to
attribute the laws of survival, retribution, and death to the Godhead, for
"God is Light and in Him there is no darkness."
From God comes only salvation. From God comes only joy. From God comes only
grace. If we are shocked by the cruelty of the world's laws, it is because the
voice of God cries out in our soul against the work of the Great Torturer. The
infighting between demonic monads, the victory of the strong over the right, and
the expulsion of the vanquished down into the chasm of torment— that law of
Lucifer's forces was carved on the face of organic life in Enrof and took the
form of the law of survival.
All the suffering that beings experience, all their pain and agony, emit
radiations-both here, in Enrof, and there, in the worlds of the afterlife. Every
feeling, every emotional response necessarily emits corresponding radiations.
Radiations from anger, hate, greed, or animal and human lust sink to the demonic
planes, replenishing the energy of their various classes and groups of
inhabitants. True, those radiations are barely sufficient to replenish the
energy of individual demonic groups. But the radiation from suffering and pain,
or gavvakh, is capable of satisfying hosts of demons of almost all types and
sizes. Gavvakh is essentially their food.
In laying his claws on Shadanakar's laws, Gagtungr warped them in such a way as
to generate and increase suffering. He made them onerous, cruel, and unbearable.
He resisted the establishment of the law of transformation in Enrof; death arose
as the resultant vector of the two opposing forces and became law. He resisted
the principle of universal friendship: the law of survival arose as the
resultant vector of the two forces and became a law of life. Finally, the
demonic forces tampered with the life of other planes in Shadanakar-those planes
through which travel beings who have incarnated at least once on terrestrial
Enrof. Those planes were transformed into worlds of retributton, where
tormentors reign and imbibe the pain of those who suffer there.
Among the various types of gavvakh, the one associated with the shedding of
physical blood occupies a particularly significant place. When people and
animals bleed, a burning radiation of especial intensity is released in the
first few minutes. Therefore, certain categories of demons are not so much
interested in the death of living beings in Enrof, or in the suffering of their
souls in the afterlife, as they are in bloodshed. Not one bloodbath in history
has occurred or will occur without the subliminal instigation of those
bloodsuckers of the afterlife. Further, the bloody sacrificial rites of some
ancient cultures were horrifying not only because of their cruelty but also
because it was not gods but those very same demons that were feeding on them.
To replenish the power of Light, the Planetary Logos-the first and greatest of
Shadanakar's monads-created a new plane and laid the foundations for a new
humankind. Enrof was left to the animal world; the new plane was populated by
Titans, whose external appearance was similar to ours, only larger and more
majestic. In a world resembling Enrof, but one still wrapped in twilight, their
glowing figures moved against the backdrop of a bluish-gray sky up the slopes
and around the curves of the desert hills they worked on. The Titan humankind
numbered a few thousand. They had no gender-the birth of new Titans was in no
way connected with the sexual union of two adults. But Gagtungr succeeded in
fomenting among them a mutiny against Providence. They were motivated by the
idea that they were the seed and nucleus of a new universal power, a third power
that opposed both God and the demons. They hungered for absolute freedom but
despised the cruelty and malice of the demons. The mutiny ended with the forces
of Gagtungr invoking the law of retribution to draw the Titan's souls down to
deep planes of torment. Their suffering lasted more than a million years, until
with the aid of the Providential powers they were able to break out of
captivity. The majority of them are now completing their journeys among
humanity, standing out from the general mass o people by the magnitude of their
genius and its somber, though far from dark, tint. Their creative work is marked
by dim recollections of their struggle against God, scorched, as it were, by a
ancient fire. It is astonishing in its power. Their spirit differs from demonic
monads in its striving for Light, its scorn for the base and its thirst for
divine love. (I could name a few such people from among the number of giants of
world culture: Aeschylus, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Goethe,
Beethoven, Wagner, Ibsen, Lermontov, and Lev Tolstoy.)
In the last millennium before Christ, the power of Gagtungr was so great that
retribution was stripped of its temporality in the afterlife planes of many of
humanity's metacultures. All exit from the planes of torment were shut tight,
and the sufferer there were deprived of all hope.
The law of retribution, the iron law of moral cause and effect— those effects
that can manifest themselves in one's present life but most fully manifest
themselves in the afterlife and even in subsequent reincarnations-can be
referred to by the Indian term karma. Karma is just as much a result of two
opposing wills as are the law of death and the law of survival. If the demonic
forces had not encountered continuous resistance from their enemies, the laws
would be even harsher, because the demonic purpose of the laws is to generate
gavvakh and paralyze any manifestation of Light by the souls that fall afoul of
them. The laws have another side-their cleansing nature, a vestige of the
ancient protolaws of Light laid down by the great hierarchies that created the
world. The goal of those hierarchies, and of all the forces of Light in
Shadanakar, was and is the mitigation and enlightenment of the laws. The goal of
the demonic forces is their harshening.
Providence's design is to save all victims. Gagtungr's design is to turn all
into victims. The theohumankind of the next global era will be a voluntary union
in love of all. The satanohumankind—its rise at the end of the current era
appears to be unavoidable-will be an absolute dictatorship of one.
The cosmos is the maturating ground of monads. The anticosmos is a universal
union of rivals and a host of crippled monads of Light held captive by them in
worlds over which demons rule. The captives have been deprived of the most
sacrosanct of their attributes: freedom of choice.
Gagtungr is not dismayed by the disparity in magnitude between himself and
Lucifer. He, like all demonic monads, sees his comparatively small stature as
only temporary. Blind faith in his boundless growth and ultimate victory is an
inseparable part of his self. Every one of those monads, no matter how minuscule
it may be at present and no matter what lowly post it may occupy within the
rebel hierarchy, believes in like manner in its future macrogalactic triumph.
For that reason, all of them, including Gagtungr, are tyrants not only in their
dreams and not only at a given moment, but at every stage of their path to the
extent permitted by the power they wield at that stage.
Tyranny produces a more copious supply of gavvakh than any other form of rule.
The ingestion of gavvakh increases the energy of demons. If they were to
replenish their energy by imbibing other psychic radiations-from joy, love,
self-sacrifice, religious devotion, ecstasy, or happiness-their essence would be
transformed and they would cease to be demons. But that is exactly what they do
not want. Through tyranny and tyranny alone can they bridle the centrifugal
forces within the legions of demons subordinate to them. For that very reason,
defections from and uprisings against Gagtungr by individual demonic monads
sometimes take place in metahistory (and are reflected in history). The forces
of Light cannot come to the aid of such uprisings, since any one of those monads
has the potential to become just such a planetary demon. If it proved stronger
than Gagtungr, it would become an even worse tormentor than he. One should bear
in mind, however, that incidences of uprisings by individual demonic monads not
against Gagtungr, as such, but against the demonic world order in general are
not so rare. Such uprisings are nothing other than the conversion of demonic
monads to Light, and it goes without saying that they are afforded every
available means of help from the Providential powers.
Despite all the satanic cunning of Gagtungr's cosmic designs, those designs are
flawed for the reasons given above. The chances that the planetary demon will be
able to master all the demonic monads of the universe, and eventually Lucifer
himself, are incredibly slim. But his relentless pursuit of dominion over the
Universe affords him the only joy he can understand: he experiences such joy
every time the smallest victory appears to bring him another step closer to the
ultimate goal. Those victories consist of his enslavement of other monads or
their souls: the demonic monads as half-allies, half-slaves, and the monads of
Light as prisoners and objects of torment. As far as Gagtungr can picture the
future of the cosmos, he sees himself as a kind of sun around which countless
monads orbit, one after another falling into him and being swallowed up, with
the entire Universe entering into orbit around him and being swallowed up, world
by world, by the monstrously swollen hypermonad. The demonic mind is powerless
to picture anything further. The smaller demonic monads are incapable of
visualizing even that apotheosis. With unshakable faith in their own ultimate
victory over the Universe, they focus their will and thoughts on stages that are
more immediate and easier to envision.
There exists a misconception, a particular mindset held by a large number of
people in our time, that has been assiduously inculcated into the minds of many
peoples over the last four decades. It is a train of thought that leads the
thinker to the conclusion, which in time grows into an axiom and dogma, that
religion supposedly deprives people of their freedom, demands blind obedience to
higher powers, and makes them wholly dependent on those powers. Furthermore, so
the thinking goes, since those powers are only figments of the imagination, it
is people's dependence on all the very real human institutions that endeavor to
exploit the ignorance of the masses that is actually increased. That is the
essence of"religious slavery," from which humanity is supposedly
liberated by science and the philosophy of materialism.
To dispute this argument would require writing a tract refuting the basic tenets
of materialistic philosophy. Such tracts have already been written, and if they
have been insufficiently known in Russia, then the reason for that has more to
do with politics than philosophy.
As for the claim that all religions demand submission to higher powers, there is
no doubt that some religious doctrines have indeed preached predestination and
the virtual absence of free will among humans. That is a fact, and I least of
all am inclined to defend without discrimination any and all religious forms.
But to make that charge against religion as a whole is no more justified than to
claim, for instance, that literature is essentially reactionary, and to
substantiate that claim by citing examples of individual reactionary writers and
schools.
I would like to explain forthwith the fallaciousness of such an accusation in
relation to the worldview of the Rose of the World.
First, I would like to voice some puzzlement: no science or philosophy (except
subjective idealism), materialism included, disputes the assertion that the
human will is dependent on a host of material factors. That very same philosophy
of materialism even takes special pains to emphasize the will's heavy dependence
on economic factors. Yet, no one is bothered by human subordination to natural
and historical necessity. No one expresses outrage at humanity's bondage to the
law of gravity, the law of the preservation of matter, the law of evolution, the
laws of economic development, and so forth. Everyone understands that there is
still enough room for the exercise of our will within the bounds of these laws.
The worldview of the Rose of the World, however, does not add a single new,
supplementary factor to the list of factors that determine our will. What is
important is their interpretation, not their number. That boundless and
endlessly diverse something that is summed up by the phrase "the higher
powers" acts on our will not so much through supernatural intrusions as
through the medium of those same factors-those same laws of nature, evolution,
and so forth-that we have just agreed to regard as objective facts. To a great
extent those sets of factors determine not only our consciousness but our
subconsciousness and superconsciousness as well. They are the origin of the
voice of conscience, duty, instinct, and the like, which we hear within
ourselves and which determine our behavior in a tangible manner. That is how the
link between "the higher powers" and our will operates. True, there
are some phenomena that could at first glance appear to be violations of the
laws of nature by the higher powers. They are called miracles. But in cases when
such phenomena, as opposed to tricks of the mind, do occur, they are not at all
"arbitrary" violations of natural laws by the higher powers but the
actions of those powers through a number of other laws as yet unknown to us.
What frequently appears to us to be the single, monolithic, and indivisible
mover of our actions-for example, conscience— is in reality the extremely
complex result of the interaction of various factors. Conscience is primarily
the voice of our monad. But whether it gains access to our waking consciousness
is determined by other factors-for example, some incident that serves as a shock
to waken us to the monad's voice: a manifestation of Providence, the action of
powers of a Providential nature.
Thus, people's choices are predetermined by three sets of forces: the
Providential powers, which utilize the laws of nature
and history to achieve their purposes and which gradually enlighten those laws;
the demonic powers, which utilize those same laws and work to strengthen them
more and more; and the will of our own monad, transmitted within the range of
our consciousness by the voices of our heart and reason with the help of the
Providential powers. Therefore, whether we view the laws of nature and history
as mechanical, lifeless necessities or as the tools of living, individual,
variomaterial or spiritual beings, the degree of our freedom will neither
decrease nor increase.
It follows that the degree of our freedom of choice is no less from the point of
view of the Rose of the World worldview than it is from the point of view of
materialism. But the determining i:> factors are interpreted differently and
are more precisely broken down into their component parts.
If the materialist is not bothered by the limitations placed on our freedom by
utterly impersonal and lifeless laws of nature, then how can we view as
demeaning the limitations placed on our freedom by the will of the Providential
powers? Only the limitations placed on our freedom by the will of the demonic
powers can gall us. It does indeed gall us, but after all, they are those
powers, those age-old enemies of ours, the disarming, conversion, and
enlightenment of whom is our goal. We will cease to feel galled only when we
render ourselves insusceptible to their influence. The evolution of life on
Earth raises groups of beings up from a minimal degree of freedom among the
simplest forms. The voice of a microbe's monad almost always fails to reach its
embryonic consciousness, and its behavior is primarily determined by demonic
powers acting on it through the medium of the laws of nature. The higher animals
are much freer than a microbe; the amplitude of their conscious action is far
greater. In humans conscious action is increased to an incomparable degree.
Opponents of religion as such argue that it demands the renunciation of our
individual will and the subordination of that will to God's. In regard to some
religions of the past, they are right. But the Rose of the World is not a
religious teaching of the past. It is a religious and social-moral teaching of
the future. The Rose of the World will not demand submission to the will of God,
for only what humans do voluntarily, not under compulsion, is of value.
It will not be demands for slavish submission to God's will that will sound from
the churches of the sum religion. From there will sound forth a call to
universal love and free divine co-creation.
The Divine Spirit is our unchanging, inexpressible, and highest yearning. It is
the power that creates spirit, that is active in all souls, that is not silenced
even in the depths of demonic monads, and that is directing worlds and
worlds—from microbramfaturas to supergalaxies—toward something more perfect
than good and something higher than bliss. The higher the stage reached by a
monad, the closer its will coincides with the creative will of God. And when,
having begun its cosmic journey from the simplest forms of animate matter, it
passes through the stages of human being and national, planetary, stellar, and
galactic demiurge, it merges, through the agency of God the Son, with God the
Father, and its will completely coincides with God's will, its power with God's
power, its image with God's image, and its work with the work of God.
Divine co-creation is the creative work of Light of all ascending monads of the
Universe, from humans, elementals, and enlightened animals to giants of
unimaginable grandeur, the galactic demiurges. That is why one sees here so
often the word Demiurge, a word almost never used in the older religions.
Everyone who works for the greater glory of God, out of love for the world and
its Creator, is a demiurge.
God is absolutely good. The old theology also asserted that God is omnipotent.
But if God is omnipotent, He is then responsible for the evil and suffering in
the world. Therefore, He is not good.
It would seem impossible to find a way out of that vicious circle.
But God creates of Himself. All the monads flowing out of His depths possess, as
inalienable attributes, all the properties of those depths, including absolute
freedom. Thus, divine creation itself limits the Creator, it fixes His power at
a line beyond which the freedom and power of His creations begin. But freedom is
freedom for the very reason that it offers the possibility of different choices.
For many monads, it took the form of a negative choice, through their assertion
of self only, through their rejection of God. That is the origin of what we call
evil in the world, the origin of suffering, the origin of barbaric laws, and
therein lies the possibility that evil and suffering can be overcome. The laws
protect the world from descending into chaos. The demons, too, are forced to
operate within them, if worlds are not to crumble into dust. For that reason,
they do not try to overturn laws but to strengthen them. Laws are blind. And
they cannot be enlightened in the blink of an eye, not by a miracle, not by
divine intercession. They can be enlightened through the protracted cosmic
process whereby monads that have rejected God renounce their evil will.
In God, all-embracing love and inexhaustible creativity are blended into one.
All living beings, humans included, draw closer to God through the exercise of
three divine properties innate to each: freedom, love, and divine co-creation.
Divine co-creation is the goal, love is the means, and freedom is the condition.
Demonic monads are as free as all monads, but their love is grossly disfigured.
It is directed exclusively inward: a demon loves only itself. And since the
entire great reservoir of love in its spirit is focused on that single object, a
demon loves itself with a degree of intensity no human is capable of achieving.
Demonic monads have also not lost their ability to create. But divine
co-creation evokes nothing in them but extreme hostility. Every demon creates
for its own sake and in its own name only.
People's creative work becomes divine co-creation from the moment and to the
extent that their irresistible creative impulse is guided by their will and
faith not toward the attainment of one or another egoistic goal—fame,
pleasure, riches, the service of a cruel and base teaching—but toward the
service of the God of Love.
Freedom, love, and divine co-creation are the three words that sum up the Rose
of the World's perspective on art, science, education, marriage, family, nature,
and even on those aspects of modern life ignored by all religions: social
justice and harmony.
Being and Consciousness
What I have said supplies us with a new point of
view on the centuries-long debate over the primacy of being or consciousness.
"Consciousness determines being," was the formula of the idealistic
schools. During the next, secular stage of culture, the formula was turned on
its head, but its content remained untouched. It was the same juxtaposition of
two components, and so the new formula inherited the simplism of its
predecessor. The question is much more complex than those formulas. At the same
time, it is simpler than the ungainly edifices of premises and conclusions
constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the extraction of
such modest gains.
"Being determines consciousness." "Consciousness determines
being." Whose being? Whose consciousness? Of a specific individual? Of
humanity? Of the world? Of living, conscious matter? Everything is so jumbled,
so imprecise.
The consciousness of specific individuals (for simplicity's sake we will speak
only of humans) is not determined by any one consciousness or by being in
general but by a set of factors. These factors are
(a) the individual's own physical being;
(b) the being of the individual's natural and cultural environment;
(c) the consciousness of a large number of people, both living and dead, for by
their efforts these consciousnesses determine, to a significant extent, the
cultural milieu in which the individuals live and that affect their being and
consciousness;
(d) the consciousness of x number of other beings who influence the natural
environment and transform it;
(e) the being and consciousness of the hierarchies that create worlds;
(f) the superconscious individuality inherent in the monad of the individual;
(g) the being-consciousness of the One God, in Whom being and consciousness are
one, rather than different, conflicting categories.
If the question refers not to individuals and their being and consciousness but
to the Universe (or to be more exact, the emergence of consciousness in the
organic matter of worlds in the Universe), then clearly, since the Universe is
determined by the nature of the One God, the conflict between being and
consciousness vanishes, for the above-mentioned reason. Since the Universe is
determined by the work of God-created monads, the question concerning the
emergence of consciousness after some period of unconscious existence becomes
irrelevant. For if there were no God-created monads with their consciousness and
being, then no matter, neither organic nor inorganic, could come into being
either.
We could today afford to chuckle over the simplism of the classical formulas if
one of them had not become the philosophical dogma of political despotism and
caused untold harm, stifling the independent thought of a host of people and
barring spirituality from access to their consciousness. The other formula, just
as flawed, is nevertheless not as dangerous for the very reason that it is more
spiritual. But that does not at all excuse the older religions and their
philosophizing, their waste of so many centuries on intellectual speculation
without coming a step closer to understanding the relationship between being and
consciousness.
The Variomaterial Composition of Humans
Among the numerous planes of Shadanakar, there
is a multidimensional world where human monads—indivisible and immortal
spiritual entities, the higher selves of humans—abide. Created by God and God
alone, with some (a very few) mysteriously born of Him, they enter Shadanakar,
coating themselves in rarefied matter, or rather, energy. This is a substance
that permeates all of Shadanakar; every individual spirit, in entering our
bramfatura, must coat itself in it. The world where our monads abide is called
Iroln.
Creative work toward the eventual enlightenment of the Universe is the task of
every monad, except demonic ones. There are no demonic human monads. Human
monads carry out that enlightening work in lower worlds assigned to them,
creating material coatings for themselves there and acting on the environment of
those planes by means of the coatings.
The monad first creates a shelf from five-dimensional materiality, then an
astral body from four-dimensional materiality. We often group these two coatings
together under the word soul. A shelf is the material vessel of the monad with
all its divine properties and capacities. It is not the monad, which remains in
fivedimensional Iroln, but the shelf that begins the journey on the lower
planes. The shelf is created by the monad alone.
Mother Earth, the great elemental, takes part in the creation of the astral
body. She takes part in the creation of astral bodies for all beings of
Shadanakar: humans, angels, daemons, animals, elementals, demons, and even the
great hierarchies, when the latter descend to planes where an astral body is
required. The astral body is the higher instrument of the shelf. Concentrated
within it are the gifts of spiritual sight, spiritual hearing, spiritual smell,
deep memory, the ability to levitate, to communicate with the Synclites,
daemons, elementals, and angels, and to perceive cosmic panoramas and
perspectives.
Mother Earth, fertilized by the spirit of the Sun, next creates an ether body
for the incarnating monad. No life in three and four dimensional worlds is
possible without it. When the shelf with all its coatings, including the ether
body, abandons the physical body—the last, outermost, and shortest-lived of
its vessels— nothing but a corpse remains in Enrof. Our physical body is
created for us by the angelic hierarchies—they create the matter— and by
Lilith, the great elemental of humanity, who forges the family chain from
three-dimensional materiality. The monad itself, through the shelf, contributes
to the process by bestowing individuality on a given link in the chain.
Once the process of descent has concluded, the process of ascent begins. A monad
can assume a physical body either just one time or over and over again. An ether
body is created anew only if the bearer, in falling afoul of the law of
retribution, is forced to embark on a journey through the great planes of
torment. As for the path of ascent, the ether body accompanies the bearer
through all the worlds of Enlightenment, all the way up to the zatomis—the
abodes of enlightened humankind, the celestial cities of the metacultures. The
ether body is composed of a living substance that is not everywhere uniform,
differing as it does in all three and four dimensional worlds. It would be
proper to call it, in recalling the ancient revelation given to humanity,
arungvilta-prana.
The astral body accompanies the bearer higher, up to and including the sakwala
of Higher Purpose. Higher than that, only the shelf is left to achieve final
enlightenment and merge with the monad. Then the monad departs from Iroln and,
coated with an extremely rarefied shelf, rises up the stairway to the highest
worlds of Shadanakar.
All these planes will be discussed in later parts of the book; many of them will
be described in as much detail as possible. But I am, unfortunately, incapable
of throwing more light on the interaction between the various coatings of the
monad and on their functions and structure.
Metacultures
The structure of Shadanakar (a vast area of
investigation that we shall soon enter) will remain unintelligible at the most
basic of levels if the meaning of the words suprapeople, metaculture, and
transmyth is not firmly grasped beforehand.
The term suprapeople refers to a group of nations united by a common, jointly
created culture, or to an individual nation, if that nation alone has created a
culture that has reached a high level of distinction and maturity. It goes
without saying that completely isolated cultures do not exist. Cultures interact
with each other. But on the whole each culture is entirely unique and, despite
the influence it exerts on other cultures, it remains, in all its fullness, the
achievement of only one suprapeople, which is its creator.
It would not be necessary to introduce the suprapeople concept if it did not
possess metahistorical, as well as historical, significance. Its metahistorical
significance rests in the fact that the distinctiveness of a suprapeople is not
limited to its own cultural sphere of influence in Enrof but also affects many
variomaterial planes, both of ascent and descent, for certain parts of those
planes are subject to the activities of one suprapeople alone. One should bear
in mind that the term suprapeople not only includes those individuals, our
contemporaries, who belong to it now. A great many of those who belonged to it
earlier, even at the very dawn of its history, and who afterward, in the
afterlife, have acted and act now on transphysical planes linked to that
suprapeople. A staircase of planes common to all suprapeoples rises above
humanity, but the complexion, landscape, and function of each plane varies above
each suprapeople. There are even planes that only exist above a single
suprapeople. The exact same is true of the demonic worlds of descent, which
exist, as it were, beneath suprapeoples. Thus, a significant portion of
Shadanakar consists of individual multiplaned segments. In each of those
segments the Enrof plane is occupied by only one suprapeople and its culture.
Those multiplaned segments of Shadanakar are called metacultures.
Every suprapeople has its own myth, which does not take shape in the culture's
infant stage alone. Since the traditional use of the word myth does not match
the meaning attached to it here, it is necessary to explain carefully in what
sense I use the word.
When we speak of a tightly integrated system of rich symbols that embody some
comprehensive international teaching and that find expression in legends and
ritual, in theology and philosophy, in monuments of literature and art, and
lastly, in a moral code, we are speaking of myths of the great international
religions. There are four such myths: Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim.
When we speak of a tightly integrated system of rich symbols that define the
relationship of one suprapeople to Enrof and to the transphysical and spiritual
worlds, a system molded into a definite religion that has played an enormously
significant role in the history of the given suprapeople but has rarely spread
beyond its boundaries, we are speaking of national religious myths of individual
suprapeoples. Such are the Egyptian, ancient Iranian, Jewish, Germanic, Gallic,
Aztec, Incan, Japanese, and some other myths.
When we are referring to symbols just as rich and perhaps also tied, although
not as closely, to ideas of a religious and moral nature, which, though they
have not evolved into a strictly formulated system, reflect, nonetheless, a
group of common moral, transphysical, metahistorical, or cosmic truths in
connection with the specific nature and role of that culture, we are dealing
with shared myths of suprapeoples. Such are the myths of the South-Western
(Roman Catholic) suprapeople, the North-Western (Germanic Protestant)
suprapeople, or the Russian suprapeople (In some cultures, the Greco-Roman or
Babylonian-Canaanite, for example, their myths had already passed the
"shared" stage of development but did not take shape in a system
strictly formulated enough to allow the Olympic or Babylonian myths to be
numbered among the national religious myths of suprapeoples).
Last is the fourth and final group—shared national myths. They are myths of
individual ethnic groups within a suprapeople that have created, as a supplement
to the shared suprapeople myth, their own particular, very restricted variations
of that myth, variations that have not evolved into any strictly formulated
system or religion. One could cite as examples the pagan myths of the Slavic
tribes, the Finnish tribes, the Turkish tribes, as well as the myths of some
isolated and primal tribes in India. Ethnic myths in their embryonic state can
be observed among many ethnic groups, but they rarely achieve any clear
expression.
We will not use the word myth in reference to any other phenomenon in the
history of culture.
The last three groups of myths are concerned with one specific culture. The
first group—the myths of international religions— are (with one exception)
mystically linked to planes in Shadanakar above those segmented sections called
metacultures.
It seems to me that the concept of national religious myths can be grasped
without too much difficulty. As for the shared myths of suprapeoples, for the
sake of clarity, a pair of supplementary definitions are in order.
Defined inductively, the shared myth of a suprapeople is the sum of its beliefs
concerning the transphysical cosmos and the part the given culture and each self
belonging to that culture play within it (The very concept "given
culture" can be no more precisely formulated than it was, for example, by
the Greco-Romans, who distinguished between themselves and the rest of humanity,
whom they lumped together as barbarians).
The culture elaborates these beliefs, molding them into cycles of
religious-philosophical ideas, iconography, social-moral systems,
state-political institutions, and cycles of national lifestyle manifested in
ritual, daily routines, and tradition.
Defined deductively, the shared myth of a suprapeople is an awakening by the
suprapeople, in the person of its most creative representatives, to a second
reality above them, of which the suprapeople is a part and in which the
direction of its growth and the roots of its fate are hidden. This awakening is
made groggy by additives foreign to it issuing from unattuned human nature. We
can give that second reality, which serves as the object of transphysical,
metahistorical, artistic, and philosophical apprehensions, the provisional name
of transmyth.
It goes without saying that the discrepancy between myth and transmyth can vary
considerably. The limitations of those who apprehended the transmyth through
intuition, dreams, artistic inspiration, religious meditation, or metahistorical
enlightenment; the national, temporal, class, and individual peculiarities of
their conscious and subconscious minds (the latter playing an active part in the
process); the impossibility of finding words or three-dimensional images to
convey precisely the reality of variodimensional worlds—can not all that lead
to countless aberrations, to the cluttering of the myth with a mass of chance,
inaccurate, anthropomorphic, simplistic, and even simply wrong ideas? But myths
are dynamic. They exist in time, evolving and changing in appearance, and their
later phases, as a rule, approach more closely the transmyth, because the minds
that apprehend it have over the centuries become subtler, richer, keener, and
broader.
But in the meantime, the transmyth is also evolving. The reality behind our
reality is seething with movement, and there can be no question of it remaining
static. The landscapes, edifices, and activities within a transmyth at the time
of its emergence differ from those at the end of its metahistorical development
as much as the city-fortresses of the Merovingians differ from modern-day Paris.
But two different realities, two different planes, two poles of the metacultural
globe exist at every stage of the transmyth development together with the people
on Enrof who apprehend it.
There are also other planes around those planes and between them, but each of
them either appeared at a later time or has undergone radical changes. Some have
even disappeared. Only three realms are stable and enduring. First, the
suprapeople in Enrof; second, the abode of its enlightened souls, the holy
cities and celestial land of its metaculture in the variodimensional space above
them; and third, down below, in the worlds of descent, the antipode of the
heavenly land—a bastion erected in worlds bound to strata deep within the
planet's physical body. It is the focal point of the demonic in the given
metaculture. The heavenly lands and everything contained within them are called
zatomis; the subterranean bastions are called shrastrs.
Of these two poles, it is the zatomis that are usually reflected in a more
detailed and distinct manner in myths. The images of shrastrs often do not take
a finished form. As for the zatomis, the abode of the Synclites of metacultures,
they can be found in the myths of every suprapeople, in both religious and
shared myths. Such is Eanna of the Babylonians: the ziggurat in the city of
Erech was, in the view of the Sumero-Akkadians, a model of the mountain of the
gods, Heavenly Eanna. Later, the Babylonians saw an analogous meaning in the
chief religious edifice of their great city—the seven-storied temple of
Esagila. Such is Olympus of the Greeks and Romans. Such is Sumera, or Mount Meru,
of the Indians—the Indian Olympus, on the slopes of which glitter the
celestial cities of Hindu gods. Such are the images of Paradise and Eden in the
Byzantine and Roman Catholic metacultures, Jannet in the Arab-Muslim metaculture,
Shan Ti in the Chinese metaculture, Monsalvat in the North-Western metaculture,
and Kitezh in the Russian metaculture.
As we attempt to descry the heavenly land of the North-Western metaculture
through the thick haze of art, religion, mythology, and social systems, we
should always bear in mind that suprapeoples, while they exist in Enrof, never
cease creating their myths. The forms of expression change. New groups of people
enter the historical scene as depictors of the myths. From the anonymous
creators of folklore and customs, the task of myth-building passes to thinkers
and artists, whose names are washed by waves of national love. But the myth
lives on. It lives on, deepening, injected with new content, revealing new
meaning in old symbols and introducing new symbols, in accordance with the
higher level of overall cultural development of those apprehending it and,
secondly, with the continuing metahistorical growth of the transmyth itself.
The heavenly land of the North-Western culture appears to us as Monsalvat, an
eternally illuminated mountaintop where, through the centuries, righteous
knights have guarded the Holy Grail, which contains the blood of the Logos
Incarnate that Joseph of Arimathea collected at the Crucifixion and which was
committed to the charge of the pilgrim Titurel, the founder of Monsalvat. In the
distance towers an eerie castle built by the sorcerer Klingsor. This is the
focal point of the forces that reject God and strive with dogged resolve to
crush the power of the Monsalvat community—the keepers of the greatest of the
holy relics and mysteries. These are the two poles of the shared myth of the
North-Western suprapeople, which came down from the anonymous composers of Old
Celtic legends, through Wolfram von Eschenbach, and down to Richard Wagner. The
claim that Wagner's Parsifal is the last word on the myth is far from
indisputable and surely premature. The Monsalvat transmyth is evolving; it is
becoming ever more magnificent. We can only hope that thinkers and poets whose
metahistorical enlightenment will allow them to apprehend and depict the
heavenly land of Monsalvat as it is today will yet emerge from among the peoples
of the North-West.
It is easy to see that the majority of even the greatest human images in the
North-Western myth do not and cannot have a direct connection to the image of
Monsalvat. To expect a direct connection in every case would be to reveal a
narrow and formalistic approach to the question, even a complete failure to
grasp what a shared myth of a suprapeople (not a national religious myth) is.
Basically, every human image created by a great writer, artist, or composer, an
image that continues to live on in the conscious and subconscious minds of
millions of people and has become the inner acquisition of all who creatively
perceive the image—every such image is a mythical image. Kriemhild and
Ophelia, Macbeth and Brandt, Rembrandt's Esther and Goethe's Margaret, Egmont
and Mr. Pickwick, Jean Christophe and Jolyon Forsyte are mythical to the same
degree as Lohengrin and Parsifal. But what is the connection between the
iconography, as well as the philosophical and social ideas, of the North-Western
culture and the poles of the North-Western myth-Monsalvat and Klingsor's castle?
The poles of every suprapeople myth are ringed by a large number of circles, by
whole worlds of images whose connection with the myth's focal point springs from
their inner affinity with it—not from the role they play in the particular
story—and from our ability to interpret and apprehend them through
metahistorical contemplation within, or next to, the center of the myth.
Faust, of course, is not Merlin; Byron's Cain is not Klingsor; Peer Gynt is not
Amfortas; and it would be strange indeed, at first glance, to compare
Hauptmann's Emmanuel Quint with Parsifal. The image of Kundry, so central to the
myth, has not been given equal treatment anywhere on the myth's outskirts. On
the other hand, we will not find any prototypes of Hamlet or King Lear, of
Margaret or Solveig within the center of the North-Western myth. But their gaze
is directed toward it. One can make out a reddish glow on their clothing, a
reflection of either the Holy Grail or the sorcerous fires of Klingsor. These
colossal figures, rising up from various stages of artistic realism, at various
stages of mystic illumination, resemble sculptures that guard the approach up
the landings of the stairway to the sanctuary where the greatest mystery of the
North-Western peoples is kept: the holy relic that sends out spiritual waves of
Providence and grace to countries wrapped in thickening gloom.
Do we really discern the glow from the light of the holy relic— or from the
light of the other pole of the myth, the satanic castle of Klingsor—on the
legends of the Knights of the Round Table alone? Or on the Bayreuth operas
alone? If Monsalvat ceased to be for us a mere poetic image among images, just
an enchanting tale or musical melody, and assumed its true significance—the
significance of a higher reality—we would discern its glow on Gothic abbeys
and Baroque architecture, on the canvases of Ruisdal and Durer, in the
landscapes of the Rhine and Danube, Bohemia and Bretagne, in the stained glass
windows behind church altars, and in the austere liturgy and ritual of
Lutheranism. The glow would be visible to us as well in the sanitized, soulless
palace grounds of the Sun King and in the skylines of cities rising across the
ocean like a Palmir of skyscrapers. We would see it in the lyrical poems of the
Romantics and in the works of the great playwrights, in Masonry and Jacobism, in
the systems of Fichte and Hegel, even in the doctrines of Sainte-Simon and
Fourier. It would require a separate volume to illustrate how the power of
contemporary science, the wonders of technology, and the ideas of socialism,
even communism, on the one hand, and Nazism on the other, are contained within
the myth of Monsalvat and Klingsor's castle. Nothing, no modern scientific
discoveries, including the splitting of the atom, takes North-Western humanity
outside the limits circumscribed by the prophetic symbolism of its myth. I
imagine that other interconnections, as yet undisclosed, will reveal themselves
to those who read through this book.
I have touched on one of the metacultures with its myth and transmyth only to
help readers comprehend in a concrete manner the concept of the heavenly lands
of humankind located on enlightened planes at the summits of the respective
metacultures and to help them grasp the significance of their antipodes—the
bastions of the powers that reject God, that are actively engaged in
constructing their anticosmos and in struggling with the forces of Light within
all the suprapeoples of Enrof, on every plane, and in every metacultural region.
But the stairway of planes in Shadanakar does not end where the segments of
metacultures reach their zenith. Above them rise five and six-dimensional
worlds, which have also been reflected, though hazily, in the religions and
myths of humanity. The title transmyth is also used in that sense in reference
to many of these planes. But the word transmyth is used in a narrower and higher
sense in reference to one sakwala in particular: a system of fivedimensional
worlds with an immense number of time streams. It consists of five magnificent,
wondrous, translucent pyramids, which seem to glow with an inner light and which
tower imposingly over Enrof. From there, not only Enrof but the heavenly lands
of the metacultures, too, seem to be shrouded in murk far below. Those worlds
are the highest aspects of three (not four) great international religions and of
two religions that have, for a number of historical reasons, almost never broken
out of their national confines, but that are illuminated by the glow from both
their zatomis and that incomparably higher sakwala. More will be said about that
sakwala in one of the later chapters.
I would also like to mention something as an aside. I imagine that many readers
of this book are wondering why all the new words and names used to refer to the
lands of the transphysical world and the planes of Shadanakar, even the names of
almost all the hierarchies, do not sound Russian. That is because the Russian
metaculture is one of the youngest. By the time its Synelite had begun to form,
everything had already been named by others. One most often hears in these words
sounds suggestive of Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, and sometimes
even more ancient tongues of which no philologist as yet has any inkling. I
don't know them either, of course. I have based my judgments concerning their
strange phonetic construction only on individual words.
It now seems to me that everything necessary has been said to allow subsequent
parts of the book to be fully intelligible. We have before us four parts almost
wholly devoted to a description of the structure of Shadanakar—a kind of
transphysical geography. Only by gaining an understanding, if only approximate,
of the theater of and participants in the metahistorical drama can we proceed to
those parts that are devoted to the metahistorical processes themselves—in
particular, the metahistory of Russia and its culture, as well as the
metahistory of modern times. This is connected with the tasks and concrete
program of the Rose of the World and with an account of those historical paths
that make possible the bloodless unification of humanity, global prosperity, the
ennobling education of younger generations, and the transformation of the planet
into a garden and the global state into a family. From there a bridge will be
built to the final chapters: to certain distant historical prognoses, to the
problem of the final catastrophe of global history, and to the inevitable,
cataclysmic passage of Enrof to a higher material) a different plane of
existence. The last few pages are devoted the cosmic panorama that will unfold
when that happens.
3. The
structure of Shadanakar: Worlds of Ascent
3.1 The
Sakwala of Enlightment
I have at times met people who have the same
kind of cracklike opening in their deep memory, but not one of them has summoned
the courage to speak of it with any but those closest to them. It has never even
occurred to them to attempt to set those recollections down in writing. What has
prevented them was both a conviction that such disclosures would evoke only
ridicule and the natural diffidence of the inner self, which shrinks from
holding up to the judgment of skeptical strangers what is intimate, inviolate,
and at the same time unverifiable. For a long time I, too, viewed the matter in
the same light, and even now I am undertaking the task without the least
pleasure. But since positively everything I speak of in this book comes from the
same unverifiable source, I see no reason to remain silent about the breaches in
my deep memory. I should either have not begun the book at all or, once having
started, I should, despite my apprehensions, speak of everything. In addition, I
am encouraged by the hope that those readers who do not trust me stopped reading
during the first chapters and that only people who are favorably disposed will
continue to read further.
My last death occurred approximately three hundred years ago in a country at the
head of a different, very old, and powerful metaculture. I have suffered my
entire present life, since earliest childhood, from homesickness for my former
homeland. It may be that I feel that homesickness so strongly and deeply because
I lived not one but two lives in that country, and very full lives at that. But
in departing from Enrof three hundred years ago, I was, for the first time in my
entire journey through Shadanakar, free of the obligation of expiatory descents
after death to the depths of planes where sinners unravel—sometimes for
centuries, even millennia—the karmic knots they tie during their lives. For
the first time, I succeeded in unraveling the knots in time—that is, while
still in Enrof—having paid for the wrongs and mistakes of my youth with long
years of suffering and painful personal losses. For the first time, I died with
a light heart, though according to the religious beliefs of that country a truly
horrific afterlife should have been awaiting me. But I already knew that,
through expulsion from my caste and a forty-year life lived among the pariahs, I
had atoned for everything. My death was replete with serenity and hope.
It was a prophetic hope, the kind that does not deceive. To the present day, I
have been unable to recall anything about the first hours, even the first few
days, of my new existence. But I do remember some sections of the new plane on
which I existed for a long time afterward.
Although it is common to all the metacultures, this plane differs widely from
one metaculture to another. In the ancient, tropical, immense metaculture that
twice played host to my life on Earth, it resembled the metaculture's natural
environment in Enrof, only milder, without its extremes of harshness and
splendor, without its violent tropical storms and the deadly aridity of its
deserts. I remember white clouds of unusually full and glorious forms on the
horizon, towering almost motionless up to the middle of the sky. Days and nights
passed, and still the gigantic, radiant towers hovered there, their outlines
barely changing. The sky was not light or dark blue, but a deep green. And the
sun there was more beautiful than here. It glittered with slowly and smoothly
alternating colors, and I am unable to explain why the color of the light source
had no effect on the color of what the light illuminated: the landscape looked
almost the same as ours, the dominant colors being green, white, and gold.
There were rivers and lakes. There was an ocean, though I never did get a chance
to see it: once or twice I made it only as far as the shore of a sea. There were
mountains, forests, and wide open spaces reminiscent of the steppe. But the
vegetation in these areas was almost transparent and as sparse as in the
northern forests of Enrof in late spring, when plants have only just begun to
don their leafy mantle. The mountain ranges and even the soil were just as airy
and translucent, as if they were the ether bodies of those elements whose
physical bodies we know so well in Enrof.
But there was no trace of bird, fish, or animal. Humans were the sole
inhabitants. I say "humans," meaning not such as we are while in Enrof
but such as we become after death in the first of the worlds of Enlightenment.
On that plane I at last discovered firsthand that the comfort older religions
offer us in the prospect of being reunited with loved ones in the afterlife is
neither fable nor delusion, but it occurs only if our actions during our
lifetime do not draw us down to the woeful planes of atonement. Some of my loved
ones were there waiting to welcome me, and whole periods of my life on that
plane were taken up by the joy of being with them. The plane is a very old one,
at one time having been the home of the angelic protohumankind. It is called
Olirna, and that melodious word seems to me a fitting choice for its name. Being
with loved ones did not give rise to any of the tension, sorrow, petty worries,
or misunderstandings that tarnish it here. The experience was true communion,
sometimes accompanied by speech, but more often by silence, the kind we know
here only at especially tender moments with the few to whom we are joined by an
especially deep love.
Our life was entirely free of worries about the daily necessities of life,
worries that play such a pivotal role in Enrof. The mildness of the climate
eliminated any need for shelter. That may not be true in the Olirna of some
other metacultures, but I cannot say for sure. The wonderful vegetation served
as food, and springs and brooks, which, as I recall, tasted different from our
water, served as drink. Clothing-or rather, that beautiful, living, softly
glowing material that we try to replace in Enrof with garments of wool, silk, or
linen—was produced by our very own body, by that same ether body of which we
are here almost never aware, but which in the afterlife becomes just as visible
and seems just as vital as the physical body is for us. Life is impossible
without it both in the worlds of Enlightenment and in Enrof.
Nevertheless, my first while in Olirna was clouded by thoughts of those I had
left behind in Enrof. I had left behind children and grandchildren, friends, and
my elderly wife—the woman I treasured above all other people in Enrof, the
woman for whom I had violated the laws of caste and become an untouchable. After
our separation, I was constantly beset by anxiety for their fates, but I soon
learned to distinguish their figures through the haze as they stumbled down
thorny paths in Enrof. Some time later, it was my turn to welcome my wife, as
young as she had once been, only more beautiful. Her journey in Enrof had come
to an end a few years after mine, and now there was nothing to tarnish the joy
of our reunion.
One after another new sense organs came unblocked: not those organs of sight and
hearing that in the ether body coincide exactly with the corresponding organs of
the physical body. No! These organs of sight and hearing had been working since
the first minutes of my arrival, and it was with them that I perceived Olirna.
What came unblocked were those organs we call spiritual vision, spiritual
hearing, and deep memory; what the wisest of the wise strive to unblock in Enrof
and what is successfully unblocked by only a few out of millions; what gradually
comes unblocked in each one of us in Olirna. Spiritual vision and hearing can
penetrate the partitions between many planes. It was with them that I perceived
the life of those I had left behind on Earth—as yet hazily, but perceived
nonetheless.
I enjoyed spending time in the enlightened natural surroundings—never have I
seen such picturesque beauty in Enrof. But strangely enough, I felt there was
something missing, and soon I realized what: a variety of life. With sadness I
recalled the singing and chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, the darting
of fish, the graceful bodies and unconscious wisdom of the higher animals. Only
then did I realize how much the animal world means for us and our relationship
with nature. However, I was assured by those who knew more than I that
humanity's ancient, vague dream about the existence of planes where animals are
enlightened and intelligent is not a dream at all but an intuition of the truth.
In time I, too, would be able to enter those planes.
Later-quite recently in fact-I was reminded about certain areas in the Olirna of
all metacultures. They are regions that resemble rolling steppe, and those who
were too engrossed in their own personal growth in Enrof, whose karmic knots
have been unraveled but whose soul is too constricted and cramped, remain there
for a time. Now nothing prevents them from redressing that inner imbalance
amidst the transparent, silent hills and under the magnificent sky, absorbing
the rays and voices of the cosmos and stretching the limits of their
everexpanding selves.
I was also reminded about areas in Olirna that resemble alpine country. Those
who were able only after death to believe in-or to be more precise, to
personally experience-the existence of a different reality, work on themselves
there, in the valleys. From down below, they gaze up to the mountaintops,
mountains that appear not as we see them but in their spiritual glory. The
powerful spirits that hold sway there pour forth into the gazers streams of
their own energy. And the faculties of the gazers' souls, which had been
paralyzed by a lack of faith, come unblocked over days and years of direct
contemplation of the multiplaned universe and of the glorious majesty of other
worlds. But I have no clear recollection of all that, perhaps because I was only
a guest there. Also, I cannot be entirely sure from the source of the
information that the information itself was not simplified and thus distorted to
facilitate my understanding of it.
Besides enjoying nature and the company of humans, I also spent time working on
my own body. I needed to prepare it for transformation, as the path out of
Olirna to the next, higher worlds lies not through death but through
transfiguration. I
understood that the verses in the Gospel that tell of the Ascension of Jesus
Christ hint at something similar. His Resurrection from the dead altered the
nature of His physical body. Upon His ascension out of Olirna, it was
transfigured a second time, together with the ether body. I, like everyone else,
was to undergo the transfiguration of my ether body alone, a transfiguration
similar to the one the Apostles once saw with vision that penetrated into Olirna
but could not yet reach the worlds lying beyond. How else could the Evangelists
have expressed the passage of our Savior from Olirna to higher planes if not by
calling the event His Ascension into heaven? And I, raised under strict
Brahmanism, began to understand what strange and inexhaustible truth the
Christian myth contained.
The image of the great betrayer, which I had hitherto taken to be mere legend,
became reality in my eyes. I learned that he lives there in total seclusion, on
a desert island amidst the seas of Olirna. His journey through the planes of
torment took more than sixteen centuries. He was hurled down to the deepest of
them all by the weight of his karma, a karma unparalleled in its gravity, and
neither before nor after did he encounter a solitary human being. He was
subsequently raised by the One he had betrayed on Earth, but only after the
Betrayed had attained in His afterlife the incredible spiritual strength needed
for it, strength that no one in Shadanakar had ever attained before. Raised
higher and higher up the stairway of purgatories by the forces of Light, he
finally reached Olirna, having atoned in full for his betrayal. Having not yet
had any contact with its inhabitants, he is preparing himself on the island for
his further ascent. I saw the island from a distance: it has a forbidding
appearance. Strange cliffs, the tops of which all point in one direction, rise
upon it. The tops are jagged, and the cliffs are a dark color, even black in
places. But no one in Olirna has seen Judas himself: only the glow from his
vigils can be seen above the island at night. In the future, when the rule of
the one whom it has become customary to call the Antichrist has begun in Enrof,
Judas, accepting an important mission from the hands of the Betrayed, will be
born again on Earth and, after performing his task, will die a martyr's death at
the hands of the Prince of Darkness.
But I am unable to say through what exact efforts I arrived at my own
transformation and what actually happened to my body at that moment. At present,
I am only able to recall what then took place before my eyes: a crowd of people,
perhaps hundreds, gathered to see me off on my journey upward. The attainment of
transformation by anyone living in Olirna is always a cause for, celebration for
others as well; a bright and joyous atmosphere surrounds the event. As I recall,
it took place in the afternoon, on a height like a hill and, as with everything
else in Indian Olirna, in the open air. I remember the rows of human faces
turned toward me slowly beginning to blur as they seemingly receded into the
distance, though it must have been I rising above the ground who was moving away
from them. I could see a mountain range far away on the horizon, translucent as
ever, as if it were of crystallite. Suddenly I noticed that the mountains had
begun to radiate a marvelous light. Quivering rainbows crisscrossed the low
horizon, out of nowhere wondrous luminaries of different colors appeared high
above me, and the resplendent sun could not outshine them. I remember
experiencing a mixed feeling of breathtaking beauty, incomparable joy, and
astonishment. When my gaze wandered down, I saw that the crowd of well-wishers
was no longer there beneath me; it was a different landscape altogether, and I
realized that the moment of my passage to the next, higher plane was already
past.
I had earlier been told that my stay on that plane would be very short, as all
those passing through it leave after only a few hours. But during those hours
the entire plane-it is called Faer-would be immersed in rejoicing for me, who
had reached it. It is a great celebration prepared for every ascending soul—
not only for human souls but also for those of other monads of Shadanakar that
are climbing the stairway of Enlightenment, even those of higher animals. Faer
is in a certain sense a parting of the ways: reincarnations in Enrof can still
take place afterward, but only when there is a definite mission to perform.
Subsequent falls or revolts are not precluded. Neither is a deeply
conscious—and thus all the more grave—betrayal of God. A blind fall,
however, will never be possible again, and spiritual paralysis is struck from
the list of potentialities forevermore. This spiritual paralysis, which
manifests itself in the psyche of those living, has through the centuries
changed its complexion and name in Enrof. In our century it is primarily, but
not exclusively, defined as materialism.
If one searches for a familiar image even distantly analogous to what one sees
in Faer, it is impossible to settle for anything less than a holiday fireworks
display. There is hardly a need to add that the most lavish fireworks display on
Enrof compared to Faer are no more than a few lamps compared to the
constellation Orion.
I saw a great many beings in their doubly and triply enlightened forms. They had
come there from higher planes out of a desire to share in my joy. The
enlightened are capable of sharing others'joy to an incomparably greater degree
and intensity than we are. Every soul that reaches Faer arouses rejoicing in
millions of those who have already passed through it. How can I convey my
feelings when I saw hosts of the enlightened rejoicing because I, insignificant
I, had reached that world? It was not gratitude, not embarrassed joy, not even
shock—it was more like waves of that blissful emotion that causes mortals in
Enrof to burst into silent tears.
I do not recall the time or manner of my passage to the next plane. The
overpowering experience of Faer brought on a deep exhaustion and a relaxation,
as it were, of the tissue of my entire soul. Everything that I can now
reconstruct from my memory of the experiences at the next stage of my ascent can
be reduced to a single state, yet one that lasted very long, perhaps for many
years.
Radiant calm. Does it not sound like a contradiction in terms? We associate an
abundance of light with activity, not rest—with movement, not calm. But that
is here, in Enrof. It is not like that everywhere. Besides, the word
"radiant" itself is not as precise as I would like. For the light of
this next plane, called Nertis, is radiant and at the same time inexpressibly
gentle. It combines the enchanting softness of moonlit nights with the bright
airiness of blue springtime skies. As if lulled by something more soothing than
the softest music, I sank into a contented sleep, feeling like a child who,
after months of neglect, suffering, and undeserved pain, is cradled in his or
her mother's lap. Feminine tenderness permeated everything, even the air, but it
radiated with particular warmth from those who hovered around me, like
caregivers who look after the sick and weary with inexhaustible love. They were
beings who had earlier risen to even higher planes and had descended from there
to Nertis, to such as me, to perform works of tenderness, love, and joy.
Nertis is the land of great rest. Imperceptibly, without any efforts on my part,
but as a result only of the work of the friends of my heart, my ether body
slowly underwent changes, becoming ever lighter, more permeated with spirit, and
more obedient to my wishes. It is in Nertis that our ether body acquires the
form it takes in the zatomis, the heavenly lands of metacultures. And if the
loved ones I had left behind in Enrof could have seen me, they would have known
it was I. They would have caught an elusive resemblance between my new
appearance and the one they were familiar with, but they would have been
astounded to the bottom of t heir hearts by the otherworldly brightness of my
transfigured self.
What remained from before? My facial features? Yes, but now they shone with
everlasting, unearthly youth. The organs of my body? Yes, but two soft blue
flowers, as it were, glowed on my temples-my organs of spiritual hearing. My
brow seemed to be decorated with a magical glittering jewel-my organ of
spiritual sight. My organ of deep memory, located in the brain, was not visible.
The changes that my internal organs underwent were also not visible, as all
those adapted to feeding and procreation either disappeared altogether or were
subjected to radical changes and took on new functions. Eating resembled
breathing, and I replenished my energy by absorbing radiations of Light
emanating from the elementals. Procreation as we know it is not to be found in
any of the worlds of ascent. There is something else, and I will speak of it
when we have reached the chapter on Heavenly Russia.
After a long period of time, I began to feel with joy my strength growing ever
greater, as if mysterious and long-awaited
wings were opening. The reader should not take me too literally: I am not
referring to anything resembling the wings of flying beings on Enrof. I refer to
the ability to move freely through four-dimensional space. It was still only
something to look forward to—immobility lay on me as before—but the
possibility of flight turned from a vague dream into a definite prospect.
I learned from the friends of my heart that my stay in Nertis was drawing to a
close. It seemed to me that the cradle-like something in which I was resting
began slowly to swing up and down, as it were, with every swing higher than the
previous one. The motion aroused in me an eagerness to taste the even greater
happiness I was soon to experience, and I realized that I was already on another
plane, in Gotimna, the last of the worlds in the sakwala of Enlightenment. It
was filled with gigantic flowers, as it were, whose size did not deprive them of
a wonderful softness, and the spaces between them revealed endless heights and
expanses of nine colors. All I can say about the two colors that lie outside our
spectrum is that the impression produced by one of them is closest to a sky
blue, and the impression from the other is distantly reminiscent of our gold.
Entire forests of the enormous flowers of Gotimna bob up and down, swing and
sway, making sounds of unimaginable rhythm. Their rustling is like the softest
of music, never wearying, as peaceful as the sound of forests on Earth. Yet it
is full of inexhaustible meaning, affectionate love, and concern for all those
living there. We moved with a lightness and ease no being in Enrof is capable of
approaching, gliding, as it were, between the singing flowers in any one of the
four directions of space or pausing to talk with them, for we came to understand
their language and they understood ours. There, in sky-blue meadows or next to
huge, softly glittering gold petals, we were visited by those who descend to
Gotimna from the zatomis to prepare us, their younger brothers and sisters, for
the next legs of our journey.
Gotimna is called the Garden of Higher Fate, for the destiny of souls for a long
time to come is decided there. I arrived at a crossroads, one that lies on the
path of all who ascend to that plane. For many centuries afterward it is
impossible to change.
That was the path I chose. I understood that I had agreed to shoulder a burden
that would be impossible for me ever to throw off without serious repercussions
for myself and others.
From the Indian Gotimna I was taken to the Russian Gotimna, where preparation
for the mission my higher self had undertaken was to be completed. But falls,
revolts, and betrayals are possible after moral lives of Light as well, because
what slept in the sunlight can later awaken in the soul. Such falls also took
place on my journey after Gotimna. I will have to shed light on that, however,
in other chapters of the book. Now it is time to speak of the zatomis, the
heavenly lands of the metacultures.
I have been able to speak of the sakwala of Enlightenment on the basis of what I
have been able to recall from experience. In contrast, my memory contains only
infrequent, sporadic images of the zatomis sakwala, images imprinted in my mind
much later, during the transphysical travels I made while asleep here, in the
Enrof of Russia. Those hazy images were supplemented by another, invaluable
source of information: transphysical meetings and talks. The autobiographical
style is not suited to the presentation of this material. Thus, the following
chapters will unfortunately be formal and dry, like the chapter on points of
departure.
THE SUMMITS OF METACULTURES, the zatomis,to a
certain extent follow the geographical contours of their respective cultures in
Enrof. All zatomis have four dimensions, but they each differ in their number of
time streams. The materiality of the sakwala is created by the Principalities,
one of the angelic hierarchies. The zatomis themselves are slowly built through
the combined efforts of hierarchies, heroes, geniuses, saints, and a broad
spectrum of people capable of creative work, both while the suprapeople that
produced them continues its historical journey and after, when that journey
comes to an end and millions of its immortal monads continue to ascend from one
height of universal knowledge and creative work to another. Each of the zatomis
was founded by a great human spirit.
From a distance the planes bear a remote resemblance to our natural environment.
The natural element on Earth that best describes the zatomis landscape is clouds
in the sky. Regions of soft mist glowing with an inner light are the equivalent
of our oceans and seas. They are the souls of marine elementals. The place of
rivers of Enrof is taken by the rivers' own souls, forms of inexpressible beauty
to which the words "shimmering mists" do not do justice. The
vegetation bears little resemblance to ours: it is the souls of elementals,
which we will speak of later. I think it sufficient for now to state that the
souls of some elementals abide in the zatomis in the intervals between
incarnations.
The alternation of night and day takes place on the planes in the exact same
manner as here, resulting as it does from the identical rotation of the planet
on its axis. The weather fluctuates between pleasant and gorgeous.
Higher humankind—the Synclites of metacultures—is our hope, our joy, our
buttress, and our aspiration. Saints, as well as some visionaries and heroes,
enter the zatomis almost immediately after their death in Enrof, quickly passing
through the worlds of Enlightenment. History makes no mention of the
overwhelming majority of such souls, those who lived quiet lives among the
people, leaving no traces in chronicles or legend but only in the memory of
those who knew them or heard of them from eyewitnesses. They are the unsung
heroes of our life. To think otherwise—in other words, to picture the Synclite
of a metaculture as a kind of"celebrity" gathering—would only go to
show that our moral-mystical mind is still fast asleep.
Others, in particular the recipients of special gifts, who have fallen into the
depths of purgatories after death are raised up by the forces of Light, which
shorten the duration of their expiatory cleansing so they may join the Synclite.
Some geniuses of the arts, many visionaries and heroes, and all saints unraveled
their karmic knots while still in Enrof, having expiated the weight of their
sins. For them, death was a wide-open gate to the zatomis.
Death caught others still burdened, and thus unprepared, for the higher planes.
Such people must first pass through a series of planes in the upper purgatories
(upper relative to the terrible circles of magma and the Earth's core, but lower
relative to where we are). After finally reaching Gotimna, thousands of those
souls do not choose to descend anew to Enrof, choosing instead to work and
contribute to the great struggle from within the zatomis communities.
A third group of people did not burden their souls in Enrof with any mortal
sins, but their outlook, the scope of their knowledge, and their sense of the
cosmic—expanded though they were in Olirna—need to grow still more. For them
departure from Olirna marks the beginning of travels, sometimes long, lasting
even centuries, until they are capable of internalizing the tasks and wisdom of
their Synclite. Thus, from the time of their death in Enrof until they join the
Synclite, these souls do not undergo atonement but the expansion and enrichment
of their selves.
Reincarnation is far from a universal law. The majority of monads do proceed
along that path, however. They have already undergone a number of births among
different peoples in Enrof, in different metacultures, even in different
millennia in different corners of the globe, and many of them journeyed through
other dominions of Shadanakar before their human cycle. Their shelts could even
have presided over beings of the plant or animal worlds. Others have
experienced, in times immemorial, incarnations as Titans, protoangels, or
daemons. Recollections of their garland of births are stored in their deep
memory, and the spiritual stature of such monads is especially great, the well
of their memories is especially deep, and their future wisdom is distinguished
by particular breadth. All recipients of a higher gift of artistic genius have
woven such garlands of past reincarnations. Saints of Christian metacultures,
unlike the saints of some Eastern metacultures, embark primarily on a different
journey of ascent, one that brings them to Enrof but once. But during travels
through other planes, that journey reveals to their eyes such heights of the
universe that the memory burns within them like a star, and its rays disentangle
their hearts from all webs of darkness during their one life in Enrof.
The activities of the Synclites are boundless in variety and scope and are in
many respects beyond our power to comprehend. I can point to three branches of
their activities: help, creative work, and struggle.
Help is for everyone who has not yet reached the zatomis. The angels of
darkness, keepers of the purgatories, would not release their victims for
centuries to come if not for the tireless efforts of the Synclites. Those
suffering in the horrifying worlds of the magma and the Earth's core would be
imprisoned there right up until the third global period. (We are now only
approaching the end of the first.) If it were not for the Synclites, those
living in Enrof would be encased in an almost impenetrable shell of spiritual
darkness.
But that work—rescuing and relieving some, protecting and enriching others,
and enlightening still others—is only one branch. Another branch is the
creation of independent things of value, the significance of which cannot be
exaggerated. But contemplating, let alone understanding, the works of the
Synclitesis possible for us only to a minimal degree. To convey their meaning
using our concepts is completely out of the question.
Somewhat easier to grasp is the third branch of the Synclites's activities:
their struggle with the demonic powers. One might say that they fight in the
literal sense, but their weapons, of course, do not have a single thing in
common with weapons in Enrof. They vary greatly according to both the degree of
control they have over one's own being and those against whom they are directed.
They all operate on the same principle, however, which is the concentration of
volitional radiations to paralyze the adversary. Synclite members cannot die in
battle. In the case of defeat, what can happen is prolonged captivity in the
dungeons of demonic strongholds.
The zatomis landscapes are dotted with a sort of equivalent of cities. They bear
little resemblance to ours, however, especially since there is no housing in the
strict sense of the word. The buildings there serve a very special function:
they are primarily meeting places for Synclite members and the spirits of other
hierarchies from other worlds. The buildings where their enlightened meetings
with monads of elementals take place are called sheritals.
Zatomis architecture is nevertheless suggestive of styles we are familiar with,
only raised to an incomparably higher level. It is the result of two parallel
processes that are difficult, but necessary, to understand. It so happens that
the great architectural masterpieces of Enrof, in being saturated with the
radiations of many human psyches, acquire a soul, or more precisely, an astral
body. These astral bodies abide in the zatomis. But there are also buildings in
the zatomis that have no twin in Enrof, for example, these same sheritals. There
are also those structures that builders in Enrof envisioned, designed, and set
about constructing on Earth, but history placed insurmountable barriers in their
path.
Synclite members can penetrate as far down as the magma in the worlds of descent
and can rise up to very high planes known as the Highest Aspects of the
Transmyths of the Global Religions.
Oral communication takes place in each zatomis in the transfigured language of
the corresponding country in Enrof, but it is a language both of sound and
light. There would be nothing strange in applying our concept of"vocabulary"
to these languages, but their vocabulary, with its distinct, incomparably richer
store of concepts, differs greatly from ours. Besides these metacultural
languages, there is also a lingua franca: the names of the planes, beings, and
hierarchies have their origin in it. The speed and ease with which foreign
languages are mastered there cannot be compared to the same process in Enrof,
for it takes place effortlessly, by itself. It is customary to call the zatomis
lingua franca the language of the World Synclite, though the name is not
entirely accurate: the World Synclite, which we will speak of much later,
possesses methods of communication that have nothing in common with any kind of
oral language. But the members of the World Synclite descended from their
heights to the zatomis of metacultures to oversee the creation of a common
zatomis language, and that is why the provisional name of the language is
associated with them.
Besides the Synclites, other beings abide in the zatomis: future angels. They
are wondrous creations of God, and if we recall the Sirins and Alkonosts of
Russian legends, we will approach an image of those whose presence adorns life
in the Byzantine and Russian zatomis, an image of beings destined later to
become "solar archangels." Other beings, no less beautiful, abide in
other zatomis.
There are nineteen zatomis, and I shall say something here of each.
Maif is the oldest of the zatomis, the heavenly land and Synclite of the
Atlantis metaculture, which existed in Enrof from approximately the twelfth to
the ninth millennium B.C.
Atlantis was an archipelago; the largest and most important of its islands
approached Sicily in size. It was populated by a socalled Red people. It was a
slave-based society, which at first comprised a number of lesser states that
were later unified under a dictatorship. Its worldview was polytheistic, with an
important role reserved for magic. Its pantheon of gods and religious life were
tainted by devil worship. Of those cultures known to us, Atlantis most closely
resembled Egypt and, in part, the Aztec civilization, only grimmer.
Architecture, sculpture, and dance were the principal art forms. Their
civilization could by no means be called advanced, though its people, taking
advantage of the chain of small islands running between Atlantis and America,
maintained contact with the continent of their origin. Later they were to reach
West Africa, and the legend of Atlantis subsequently came to Egypt via the
ancient Sudanese civilization, which remains unknown to this day but whose ruins
may still be unearthed in the future. Images of merciless and greedy divinities
left their mark on the moral code of Atlantis, and ritual cannibalism played an
important role in their religious life. In a late period of its history,
semi-esoteric religious movements of Light emerged. But because of the active
presence of the demonic, the overall spiritual picture was rather bleak.
The main island and the smaller ones surrounding it were destroyed by a series
of catastrophic earthquakes. A few small groups of inhabitants escaped to
America, and one group to Africa, where it was assimilated into the black
population of Sudan. At present, Maif, which has already existed for almost
fifteen millennia over a certain section of the Atlantic Ocean, has attained
immense power of Light. Its emblem consists of a red temple on a black
background; four white-clad figures stand in front of the temple with arms
upraised. The figures represent the cults of the four divinities of Light. It
was through these cults that spirituality flowed down into the Atlantis culture.
Linat is the name of the zatomis of Gondwana, by which I mean not the ancient
continent that existed in the Indian Ocean long before the emergence of humans
but rather the metaculture whose centers in Enrof were Java, Sumatra, South
Hindustan, and certain cities that now lie on the ocean floor. The Gondwanese
culture existed as late as the sixth millennium B.C.
This culture was composed of a federation of states—a commercial oligarchy
with a slave-based economy. In addition, the advanced state of Gondwanese marine
navigation enabled it to establish commercial and cultural links with the coast
of Indochina, Ceylon, and many Indonesian islands. As in Atlantis, polytheism
was dominant, as were the same three art forms, though in Gondwana dance
developed into religious drama. But the bloodthirstiness and demonic, mystic
cruelty of Atlantis was alien to Gondwana. They were a sensuous, sanguine,
lifeloving people, richly gifted in the arts, and possessed of a very active sex
life. Sexual mysticism permeated both their religious and everyday life, and
attained genuine sumptuousness at the civilization's height. Not Atlantis, not
even Babylon or Egypt knew such luxury. It seems to me that the Gondwanese race
could be called pro/o-Malaysian. In any case, taut, brown' skin covered their
high cheekbones and full lips, their oblong eyes were slightly slanted, and
their bodies were well proportioned and muscular, with broad shoulders, slender
waists, and very strong calves. They were a people blessed with the full-blooded
and passionate beauty of the south.
Some millennia later, the Indo-Malaysian culture arose in the same region, which
in some ways resembled its predecessors, but was much more spiritually mature.
The emblem of Linat is a violet-clad woman and a green-clad man on a gold
background. They are under the lower half of a red sun, their arms around each
other's shoulders.
Violet here represents a mix of dark blue and red. Dark blue symbolizes the
powers of Universal Femininity, Whose emanation into the Gondwanese metaculture
marked the first time in the existence of humanity that such an event had taken
place with such intensity. Red symbolizes the elements—not the elementals of
Nature but the extremely active presence of certain elementals linked with
humanity. Green represents the same intense activity by elementals of Nature.
Gold is the hieratic background that speaks of the already developed spiritual
reality existing behind the suprapeople.
Ialu is the zatomis of the metaculture of Ancient Egypt. (If I remember
correctly, it also has another name, which sounds something like Atkheam.) This
culture, which utterly eclipsed Atlantis in size and splendor, had created, even
before the end of its historical existence, a huge Synclite and dazzling zatomis.
The demonic powers, however, dealt it a serious blow in the fourteenth century
B.C., when the Providential powers, operating through the great visionary leader
and prophet Akhenaton, made the first attempt in world history to enlighten the
minds of the people with the truth of the One God. If Akhenaton's reforms had
succeeded and met with worthy successors Christ would have undertaken His
mission several centuries earlier, and he would have done so not on the banks of
the Jordan but in the Nile River valley.
I would like to mention that the Egyptian belief in the Heavenly Nile was based
on experience of a higher reality. The magnificent river flowing through Ialu,
the mythical Land of the Blessed—that is, the metaculture's zatomis—is
multiplaned: it is both the great spiritualized elemental of the terrestrial
Nile and the Collective Ideal Soul of the Egyptian people.
The emblem of Ialu depicts a white barge with sails on a blue river that flows
into the sun.
Eanna is the zatomis of the ancient Babylonian-AssyrianCanaanite metaculture,
which arose, it appears, in the fourth millennium B.C. The seven-tiered
temples/observatories, which were the centers and pinnacles of the great cities
of the Tigris-Euphrates region, mirrored, like a terrestrial reflection, the
grandiose heavenly city built by the Synclite of the zatomis. But the ziggurats
in the cities of Babylonia and the collective of initiates who absorbed the
radiations of the cosmic powers of Light on top of their mystical observatories
were also not shielded from the extremely harmful radiations coming from the
galactic anticosmos, whose center in Enrof is located in the Antares system.
That tainted the already ambivalent religion even more and injected a subtle
poison into the essence of those exposed, encrusting and weighting their inner
self with doubt and pessimism.
The Babylonian metaculture was the first in which Gagtungr was able to effect
the incarnation of a Witzraor, a powerful demonic being, in the subterranean
four-dimensional plane bordering the Babylonian shrastr. The descendants of that
demon have played and continue to play a huge and deadly role in the metahistory
of humanity. To a significant degree the Witzraor was to blame for the general
spiritual decline that distinguished the culture in Enrof. And although
Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, was defeated in the end by Astarte,
the goddess of Light, who, in a burst of sacrificial love, descended to the
Babylonian transphysical planes of torment, their beliefs about the afterlife of
all human souls, excluding those of kings and priests, was nevertheless steeped
in a pessimistic, almost nihilistic despondency: it was an intuitive
understanding of the paralyzing power of the demonic.
The emblem of Eanna pictures a seven-tiered white ziggurat. The seven stories
represent the seven planes that were clearly intuited by the religious
consciousness of the Babylonian suprapeople.
Shan Ti is the zatomis of the Chinese metaculture, which has existed in Enrof
since the second millennium B.C. It began to grow significantly in strength in
the last centuries prior to Christ, when Confucianism created a lasting code of
morality and everyday conduct that enabled the people's overall moral level to
rise. However, a very low ceiling was placed on the free development of the
higher aspects of the soul. Confucianist law, in gradually fossilizing, became
not so much a vehicle for ascent as a brake to it. This explains why the size
and strength of the Chinese zatomis, in spite of its long history, are not as
great as one would expect. Another zatomis that coexists with Shan Ti encroached
upon geographical China after the spread of Buddhism. In the last few centuries
it has admitted many more enlightened souls than the national zatomis. The
emblem of Shan Ti is the face of a beautiful woman wearing a lotus-shaped crown.
Sumera, or Meru, (I do not know which of these names should be considered
correct) is the zatomis of the Indian metaculture, the most powerful of all
zatomis in Shadanakar. In earliest mythology, the summit of Mount Sumera was
topped by the city of Brahma and the cities of other Hindu deities were on its
slopes. But Heavenly India was not limited to them, for it encompassed several
large tracts of land separated by water.
At present Heavenly India overlooks a geographical area of Enrof that stretches
far beyond the borders of the Indian state.
Over the course of 4,000 years the spiritual life of the Indian peoples, who are
exceptionally gifted in the religious sense, has resulted in two metacultures
separating from it and becoming independent systems of planes. In the meantime,
Heavenly India itself has been reinforced by such a huge number of enlightened
that by the twentieth century the influence of its Synclite had come to outweigh
the power of all the demonic forces combined. India is the only culture in Enrof
that has unwaveringly developed along a high moral path. Much earlier the power
of the Indian Synclite prevented the forces of Gagtungr from creating, as they
did in the other metacultures, planes of eternal torment. Before Christ, it was
the one metaculture with purgatories and the only one whose lower extremity did
not extend as far as the magmas.
Meru has two major centers—one above the Himalayas and one above the Nilgiri
mountains in central India—and a host of lesser ones. In addition, the Indian
Synclite possesses a stable base of support in Enrof in the form of a fluid
collective of people that moves along a kind of geographical curve from age to
age. Prior to the Second World War it was located in Pamir, and it is now
located in south India.
The landscape of Heavenly India resembles that of Heavenly Russia, but the
natural environment is lusher. Both the tropical character of the corresponding
countries in Enrof and the zatomis' longer history account for this. The
Heavenly Ganges, which has the same double meaning for the Indian metaculture as
the Heavenly Nile has for Egypt, flows through the entire zatomis.
The emblem of Sumeru depicts three white mountain chains, each higher than the
previous one, each topped by golden cities. The first chain is the zatomis, and
the second and third are very high worlds, the highest aspect of the Hindu
transmyth.
Zurvan is the zatomis of the ancient Iranian (Zoroastrian) metaculture.
The insufficiently precise formulation of the idea of the One God in this
nevertheless lofty and pure religion did not allow it to lay the necessary
groundwork for Christ's mission to take place in Iran. A later attempt by the
Iranian metaculture to make up for that failure through the creation of a new
international religion— Manichaeanism—ended in a second failure, when
demonic emanations gained access to the creative consciousness of its founders.
By the time of the Muslim conquest, the Iranian culture had exhausted its
forward momentum. During the centuries that followed, its only base of support
in Enrof has been a Parsi community in India. As one would expect, the number of
people entering Zurvan through the worlds of Enlightenment is now extremely
small, while Zurvan itself has almost detached from its geographical area in
Enrof.
Zurvan's emblem: a sacrificial altar with a burning fire.
Olympus is the zatomis of the ancient Greco-Roman metaculture. The name Olympus
refers both to the center of the zatomis, a great city of the enlightened that
is indeed connected to the geographical site of Mount Olympus, and to the entire
heavenly land of the Greco-Roman metaculture. Having been, at the time of
ancient Greece and Rome, the abode and theater of activity of those nonhuman
hierarchies that were reflected in the persona of the Greco-Roman pantheon, the
zatomis gradually became, in the millennium after Christ, the abode of the
Synclite. The hierarchies that at one time abided there have, in the course of
centuries, completed a great journey of ascent. They now abide and work in
incomparably higher worlds, and at the same time they overlook Olympus and
emanate beneficent energy to its Synclite.
Apollo is the name of the demiurge of the Greco-Roman metaculture. Pallas Athena
is the name of the Collective Ideal Soul of the suprapeople.
The emblem of Olympus is a white temple, in the classical style, on a mountain
against a blue sky.
Nikhord is the zatomis of the Jewish metaculture. It is the lower plane of the
Synclite of Israel.
The great human spirit Abraham was the founder of Nikhord. The ancient teachers
of Judaism were inspired by the demiurge of the suprapeople, but the purity of
the inspiration was tainted first by elemental emanations from the
"genius" of the Sinai mountains and then by emanations from the Jewish
Witzraor.
Nonetheless, one should still regard the I of the Old Testament as the Almighty.
Monotheism, as the soil without which Christ's task could not be carried out in
Enrof, was essential for all humanity. Nikhord was able to instill the idea of
the One God into the people's consciousness at the cost of a massive expenditure
of energy, which exhausted it for a long time afterward. That is the reason for
their not always successful struggle with the demonic and of the tragic nature
of Jewish history. In the century that witnessed the life and death of Jesus,
that geographically small region was the site of a ferocious battle between the
forces of Gagtungr and God. That will be discussed in more detail elsewhere.
Christ's Resurrection was greeted in Nikhord with great rejoicing. The attitude
of theJewish Synclite toward the Planetary Logos is the same as in all other
zatomis—there can be no question of any other. But the revelation of Christ's
truth awaits those in Olirna who are destined to enter Nikhord later. They did
not accept this truth while on Earth and it is so astonishing that many are
unable to come to terms with it for a long time afterward.
The destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom gave rise to mourning in
Nikhord, but with an awareness of the logic of events. No other fate was
possible for the aggressive but weak Jewish Witzraor after it entered into
irreconcilable battle with the demiurge of the suprapeople during the years of
Christ's mission on Earth. There have been no more Jewish Witzraors since the
final defeat of the Jews by Hadrian. But behind the Witzraor stood another, more
terrible demonic hierarchy—the spawn of Gagtungr and true rival of the
demiurge—which continued to influence Jewry even during the diaspora. Medieval
Judaism continued to develop under the influence of two opposing wills: that
demon and Nikhord. At present, Nikhord admits a very small number of new
members, who do nevertheless enter the worlds of Enlightenment through Judaism.
Geographically, Nikhord is still linked to the Palestine region. But the
refounding of the state of Israel in the twentieth century has nothing
whatsoever to do with Nikhord. The restored temple is a showpiece, no more. No
new Israeli Witzraor has appeared, but a similar role is being played by one of
the beings to be discussed in the chapter on egregors. It is under the powerful
influence of the main camp of demonic forces.
Nikhord's emblem depicts a tentlike structure surrounded by trees with large red
fruit. The tent is the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of the first enduring
revelation in history of the One God; the fruit-laden trees are the Promised
Land, which awaits the suprapeople not on Earth but in the zatomis.
Paradise is the provisional name of the zatomis of the Byzantine metaculture.
Like the other zatomis of Christian metacultures, it is one of the staircases
rising from different directions to an extremely high world called Heavenly
Jerusalem, which is nothing other than the Higher Aspect of the Christian
Transmyth. This will be discussed more a little later.
Paradise is an ancient, powerful plane, a section of which exists in part over
Russia as well. Its founder is the great human spirit who in Enrof was
John the Baptist.
The victory of Jesus Christ, though only partial, gave rise to a great
mobilization of forces in the demonic worlds. In particular, their efforts were
aimed at preventing the planes of torment of the Byzantine metaculture
from being turned into temporary purgatories. Their efforts were crowned with
success, but the end result was the collapse of the Byzantine culture in Enrof.
The lack of purgatories and the unavoidable descent by sinners after death to
the endless tortures of the magma and core gave rise among the more spiritually
gifted of the Byzantine people to a constant feeling of horror toward the most
venial sin. To a significant extent that was what led to their extreme
asceticism.
Metahistorically, the southern Slavs are located in a transitional area
bordering the Byzantine, Russian, Roman Catholic, and Muslim metacultures. Their
Synclites are in Paradise.
The emblem of Paradise is of a stream running through a garden in blossom, in
which people are clad in golden garments. Their clothing symbolizes the
transfigured body, and the color gold represents the body's permeation by the
power of the Creator of the Universe.
Eden is the provisional name of the zatomis of the Roman Catholic metaculture,
and it is one of the staircases to Heavenly
Jerusalem. Several peoples of various ethnic roots belong to the metaculture
Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Irish, Croats.
The founder of Eden is the great human spirit who in Enrof was the Apostle
Peter.
The emblem is the same as for Paradise, but the dominant color is light blue.
Light blue represents the dense permeation of Catholicism by the spirit of
Universal Femininity.
Monsalvat is the zatomis of the metaculture of North-Western Europe, North
America, Australia, and some parts of Africa. Geographically, it is the largest
and most dispersed of all the zatomis. The founder of Monsalvat is the great
human spirit Titurel, who had close ties with Christ long before our Savior's
incarnation in Palestine. Like Lohengrin and Parsifal, he is not a fictional
hero but a person who did at one time live in Enrof (though not in Palestine).
The Holy Grail contains the ether blood that Christ shed on Golgotha.
The division of the planes of Eden and Monsalvat is based for the most part on
national and cultural distinctions between the Romanic and Germanic peoples. But
the greater or lesser part played by the ecclesiastic or lay segments of the
populace led to a host of changes taking place in the afterlife fates of the
people of Western Europe, especially since Monsalvat appeared several centuries
after Eden. France is in an interim stage; its tragedy lies in the fact that it
has no Synclite of its own. Some of the ascending monads from France rise to
Eden after death, and others to Monsalvat.
The center of Monsalvat, which had earlier been connected with the Alps, was
relocated far to the East at the end of the Middle Ages and is now located near
Pamir. (The reasons for this are very complex.) But a host of other, lesser
metacities shine above Europe and America. Some of them overlook centers in
Enrof that are small in size but spiritually powerful, such as Heidelberg,
Cambridge, and Weimar.
Monsalvat's emblem is a Gothic cathedral, white in color, on a mountain peak. In
the foreground is a cup glowing red.
Zhunfleya is the zatomis of the Ethiopian metaculture, which for two thousand
years has struggled to survive under exceptionally unfavorable historical and
geographical conditions: a small island of Christianity between two hostile
oceans, Islam and the paganism of African tribes. The metaculture has not been
able to realize even one-tenth of its potential. At present, a distressing
metahistorical process is taking place: Zhunfleya is being relocated to another
sakwala, the sakwala of developmentally arrested metacultures in Enrof. An
exceptionally fortunate combination of historical circumstances could still
reverse the process.
Its emblem is a white circular building draped in fluttering cloths. The
building represents the zatomis, and the cloths represent subtle materiality.
The zatomis of the Islamic metaculture isJannet. Islam differs from the other
global religions in that it lacks a higher aspect of its transmyth—that is,
there is no world dedicated specifically to Islam in the very high sakwala of
the worlds of the higher transmyths of the global religions. That accounts for
the poverty of Muslim mythology, for the lack of originality of most
transphysical images and themes formulated in it, which were borrowed primarily
from Judaism and Christianity. Islam, which is in many respects a regression in
relation to Christianity, nevertheless offers a soul the possibility of ascent,
enables spiritual energy to flow through it into our world, and in the course of
its history has created a very bright, if not powerful, zatomis and a dazzling
Synclite.
Its emblem is a white mosque between two symmetrically bending palms with people
clad in green and white. The mosque represents the zatomis; the palms represent
the two chief branches of Islam.
Sukhavati—which is in Buddhist mythology the western paradise of Amitabha
Buddha—is the zatomis of the metaculture associated with northern Buddhism,
known as the Mahayana. It overlooks Tibet and Mongolia and coexists over China
and Japan with Shan-Ti and Nikisaka, theJapanese national zatomis.
Sukhavati separated from its parent Indian metaculture in the ninth century
A.D., when the centers of Buddhism moved once and for all out of India into
Tibet and China. It particularly grew in strength three to four centuries later,
when the Himalayan metaculture, which had had a brilliant beginning, started to
show signs of a premature decline, and the leading role of the Tibetan and
Chinese centers of Buddhism was reaffirmed.
The zatomis of Sukhavati is one of the most populous and strongest. It is one of
two staircases to the high world of the Higher Aspect of the Buddhist Transmyth
which is called Nirvana and of which we will speak later.
The emblem of Sukhavati is the sun dawning over lotus flowers.
Aireng-Dalyang is the zatomis of the prodigious Indo-Malaysian metaculture,
which is as yet relatively unknown here in Russia. Having separated from the
Indian metaculture around the fifth century A.D., it encompassed the
Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Java, Indochina, and Ceylon, at one point taking
historical form as the Shailendra Empire. The metaculture was later seriously
weakened both by the succession of Java, which fell under Islamic control, and
by predatory demons—the European Witzraors—at the end of the nineteenth
century. The metaculture is still smoldering within the Indochinese kingdoms,
but a favorable historical climate could give rise to a renewed blossoming.
Its emblem depicts laughing children in the garden of a temple-palace.
Heavenly Russia will be described in more detail than the others a few
paragraphs below.
Unfortunately I know virtually nothing about the zatomis of the Black
metaculture, not even its name. I know that it is young and still very weak.
After the collapse of the Sudanese culture, together with its religion, which
had enabled spirituality to flow down not only among the elite but even among
the masses of the Black peoples of equatorial Africa, Blacks were for a long
time deprived of the possibility of ascent after death. The possibility arose
for them again only a few centuries ago in connection with the fact that some
tribes had reached the stage where their hazily formulated polytheistic systems
became capable of assimilating the first manifestations of spirituality. The
door to an ascending afterlife was opened to the Black peoples to an even
greater extent by the spread among them—unfortunately weak—of
Islam and Christianity. The founding of Liberia was also of metahistorical
significance, establishing as it did a small but stable center of Christian
spirituality in equatorial Africa. The Black population of North America is also
connected with the Black zatomis. White people rise to the zatomis only in rare
instances. Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, after having reached Monsalvat,
left it for the Black zatomis, where her work has for a long time been of great
significance, and her position has partly resembled that of a queen and partly
that of a high priestess.
Its emblem is a stairway leading from a lake to an orange circular building. The
lake represents the materiality of the suprapeople and the building represents
the zatomis. The color orange is a blend of the gold of the sun with the scarlet
of elementals linked not with the natural realms but with humanity.
The last of the great zatomis is in the midst of construction. It is Arimoya,
the future zatomis of the global metaculture, which is connected with the
appearance and dominion of the Rose of the World, the future interreligion. As
in the other zatomis, the materiality of Arimoya is being created by the
Principalities, one of the angelic hierarchies. The great human spirit who was
Zoroaster in his last reincarnation on Earth is overseeing the creation of what
I will provisionally designate with the term great design.
The emblem of Arimoya is a white, multitowered cathedral, with one main central
tower, colonnades, and stairways. It is surrounded by a number of large string
instruments resembling golden lyres. The towers represent the zatomis of
humanity; the central tower is Arimoya; the colonnades are the worlds of
daemons, angels, elementals, and enlightened animals; the lyres represent all
the peoples of the Earth.
Heavenly Russia. Its emblem is a pink-white city of many churches on a high bank
overlooking the dark blue bend of a river.
Like the other zatomis, Heavenly Russia, or Holy Russia, is linked with the
three-dimensional territory that roughly follows the contours of our country.
Its great centers correspond to certain of our cities; between them are
beautiful regions of enlightened nature. The principal center is the Heavenly
Kremlin, which overlooks Moscow. Its cathedrals shine with unearthly gold and
white. And high above meta-Petersburg, in the clouds of that world, soars the
lofty white sculpture of a galloping horseman. It is not intended to be a
representation of anyone in particular; it is, rather, a symbol of the direction
of our metahistorical journey. Lesser centers are scattered throughout the
entire zatomis, including the metacultural summits of other nations that
together with Russia form a single suprapeople. There abide the Synclites of the
Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. Recently the Synclite of the Bulgarian people,
along with its own heavenly cities, has begun to merge with the zatomis. I do
not know the total population of Heavenly Russia, but I do know that about half
a million enlightened souls now abide in the Heavenly Kremlin.
Yarosvet, the Demiurge, takes the form of a transparent ocean of energy in the
air of that world, passing from horizon to horizon and flooding all hearts with
Light. His power is concentrated in the temples of the demiurge. There he
assumes individual features, his voice becomes audible, and interaction takes
place between him and the enlightened, interaction that imparts to them strength
and higher wisdom.
Another hierarchy similar to the demiurge manifest themselves in the same way.
They are the great guiding spirits of the individual nations that are also part
of our metaculture. Ones older than Yarosvet can be found among them, as can the
young guiding spirit of the Ukraine.
But neither Navna—the Collective Ideal Soul of the Russian people—nor her
sisters—the Collective Souls of the other peoples—are there. They are
prisoners behind thick walls of state power in the citadel of the Witzraor, the
state demon, in the underworld of Russian antihumankind. Only their distant
voices and weak light reach Heavenly Russia.
There, seas of glowing ether—the souls of elementals, which shine with colors
beyond our imagination—lap against structures that bear a remote resemblance
to the azure and white hulks of mountains. The Russian church sings of that
world when it sends the deceased on their final journey, so that the Lord may
give them rest in "a place of light, a place of plenty, a place of calm, so
they may know neither sorrow, nor grief, but life everlasting."
Newcomers to Heavenly Russia materialize in special sanctuaries as children, not
infants. Their inner world is similar to that of children. As for aging, it is
replaced by growth in enlightenment and spiritual strength. There is neither
conception nor birth. Guardians, not parents, make provision for the conditions
necessary for the enlightenment of souls rising up from Gotimna.
One can discern in the external appearance of some Synclite members features
that their lives in Enrof have made famous: now those features are radiant and
dazzling. Rarefied and softened, they shine with spiritual glory. Their
clothing, produced by their transfigured body, glows of itself. They move freely
in all four directions of space in a manner that is vaguely reminiscent of the
soaring of birds, but which surpasses it in ease, freedom, and speed. They have
no wings. A great many planes are within the sight and hearing of the
enlightened. Among the planes of descent are purgatories, the magma, and
terrible Gashsharva. The worlds of Enlightenment, the circles of angels,
daemons, and elementals, the worlds of emanations from other bramfaturas, and
the worlds of the Higher Aspects of Global Transmyths are among the planes of
ascent. Synclite members can enter the dark shrastrs, the worlds of
antihumankind, where the inhabitants can see them but are powerless to destroy
them. They can enter our Enrof as well, but humans can perceive them only with
spiritual sight.
The love between man and woman in Enrof, which is worthy of the title of
greatness, continues there as well, growing and deepening, liberated from all
things that may burden it here. There is bodily intimacy between some as well,
but it has been freed of any procreative function and has nothing whatsoever in
common with physical intimacy in Enrof. Many bodily organs have by that time
undergone radical alterations in their structure, function, and purpose,
including organs concerned with the consumption and digestion of food, since the
replenishment of bodily energy there resembles breathing. Growth in spirituality
eventually brings the enlightened to the next great transfiguration of the body,
which leads to higher worlds, to Heavenly Jerusalem, and still higher—all the
way to the World Synclite and the Elite of Shadanakar.
There is nothing in the zatomis resembling our technology; its place is taken by
something extremely difficult to grasp. I can nevertheless state with surety
that, instead of creating mechanical devices from external matter, it operates
on the principle of developing the manifold abilities of one's own essence.
There, only that which is to a certain extent comparable to our works of
architecture is created from external matter.
The souls of churches that were built on Earth, or were supposed to have been
built, gleam everywhere there. Many temples, however, serve a function difficult
for us to comprehend. There are sanctuaries for interaction with angels, the
World Synclite, daemons, and the upper hierarchies. A few large temples are
reserved for meetings with Jesus Christ, Who descends there from time to time,
assuming a visible, humanlike form. Other temples are for meetings with the
Virgin Mary. A magnificent temple is now being erected, destined to be the
sanctum of the Great Feminine Spirit, Who will take on an astral and ether body
from the marriage of the Russian demiurge with the Collective Ideal Soul of
Russia. I have been accustomed since childhood to calling it the Temple of the
Universal Sun, but the name is wrong. It properly refers to a different and even
more majestic building, the one destined to be built in Arimoya. As for the
temple being erected in the Heavenly Kremlin, it is called the Sanctum of
Zventa-Sventana, and I will later explain the meaning of that name. That great
Feminine Essence has by now already entered one of the highest worlds of
Shadanakar. She will never incarnate physically in Enrof but will be born in
Heavenly Russia and assume human form. She will not be our queen or goddess; she
will be Light, divine grace, and celestial beauty.
Staircases of wondrous worlds, each visible through the other, rise from the
altars in the Temple of Femininity, the Temples of Christ, and the Temples of
Yarosvet, the demiurge. The staircases rise up through Heavenly Jerusalem to the
threshold of the World Salvaterra.
From time to time, great human spirits are born in Heavenly Russia: those who
have completed their journey in Shadanakar, having reached its highest worlds,
and who now co-create with the Planetary Logos. They leave the Elite of
Shadanakar to help those below and, in order to carry out missions beyond the
co~,nprehension of the greatest mystical minds of humanity, they materialize in
the zatomis. There they assume the same enlightened bodies as the Synclite
members but far surpass them in the speed with which they reach full spiritual
maturity and in their inner stature. Their paths in the zatomis resemble the
lives of geniuses among the masses of humanity. The Synclites are notified ahead
of time of their arrival and await them with gladness and rejoicing.
Those who were geniuses and messengers on Earth continue their work in the
zatomis after atonement, enlightenment, and transformations.
The bliss of the Gamayuns and Sirins themselves increases when they see the
masterpieces being wrought by great spirits that last walked the Earth in the
persons of Derzhavin and Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky,
Rublev and Surikov, Glinka and Mussorgsky, Kazakov and Bazhenov. Shining waves
of inconceivable sounds swell in places as if from out of the heart of the
celestial mountains. They usher souls into a state of such spiritual joy that a
heart on Earth would burst from it, and, rising and twisting like clouds of
glory, they plunge down into love and quiet bliss.
The great architect who at one time undertook construction of the Church of the
Body, Soul, and Spirit on the Vorobyov Hills in Moscow, and who lived through
the death of his dream, exile, oblivion, and impoverishment, is now at work on
the most sacred of all things in the Heavenly Kremlin: the inner chapel of the
Sanctum of Zventa-Sventana.
Only a handful of enlightened souls in Heavenly Russia would be recognized by
those of us familiar with the history of our Motherland. The names of the rest
will mean nothing to us.
In the monasteries of Kievan and Muscovite Russia, as well as in those of later
times, quiet souls, not gifted enough to blaze forth like saints, lived their
lives unnoticed, silently and humbly contributing in their small way to
religious work and to the collective labor of the spirit.
Down the roads of Russia throughout the centuries roamed pilgrims and searchers,
raconteurs and minstrels, the anonymous authors of fairy tales and uplifting
poetry, of songs and legends, of unrecorded stories, now lost, about the heroes
and ideals of those times. The brilliant masters of spinning, engraving, and
icon-painting; the carpenters and builders of splendid terems, humble wooden
churches, and brightly decorated houses; masons, cabinetmakers, potters,
weavers, jewelers, and copiers; people who loved their work and pursued it in
studios, shops, monastery cells, and in the open air; whose works, stamped with
the joy of the creative process and a passionate love for life, have pleased and
delighted entire generations— where else can those creators be and what could
they be creating now if not the everlasting treasures of Holy Russia?
Throughout every period in Russian history thousands of
peasants—land-clearers, farmers, hired hands, serfs and free alike, have lived
simple and pure lives, have carried out the sowing and reaping as a duty laid on
them by God, with veneration for and gratitude to Mother Earth, and have died
simply and peacefully, believing in God and forgiving everyone.
Throughout those centuries thousands of mothers have borne their cross, raising
children worthy of the name "human" and seeing their life's purpose in
that calling. Is that not one of the highest forms of creative work?
When schools began to be built, hundreds of people abandoned their customary
surroundings and way of life and left for (one could say descended into) the
lower levels of society, shutting themselves off for for their whole life in
remote areas, amidst chronic ignorance, where there was no one with whom to
exchange an intelligent word: all for the sake of educating the uneducated.
And what of medical practitioners who worked one to an entire district? And
doctors who displayed their heroism during
epidemics? And those revolutionaries who were motivated not by fanaticism, hate,
and a thirst for power but by a genuine love for the people and by anguish at
seeing their anguish? And those priests who, to the extent the gifts given them
by God allowed, were models of a pure and simple life, cultivating in many the
best that was in their simple hearts? It is impossible to list all the paths by
which travelers on Earth arrive sooner or later at the Synclite. It is only a
question of time, of stages still to be passed through on the way to that goal.
It is a goal that people are not fully conscious of but that is known to their
immortal monads and thus draws them onward.
Oh, it is pointless to imagine Heavenly Russia as a never-ending, monotonous
series of solemn liturgies and prayer sessions. We have no idea of the spiritual
delights they enjoy there or of the jokes, laughter, and even games, especially
among the children.
I could list the names of some Russian cultural and historical figures who have
entered Heavenly Russia in the last forty years. Let those-who-will laugh over
the information. After all, I have long been accustomed to having a reputation
of a lunatic. So here are the names of some of those who did not descend in
their afterlife, and instead entered the Synclite through the worlds of
Enlightenment immediately upon their death in Enrof: Leskov, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Kluchevsky, Gumilov, Voloshin, Rachmaninov, Anna Pavlova, Sergei Bulgakov, John
of Kronshtadt, Patriarch Tikhon, Prince Alexci Nikolayevich, several masters of
the arts, and thousands of heroes who died at the hands of Stalin. Here are the
names of only a very few of those who joined the Synclite after a brief time in
the upper purgatories: Fet, L. Andreyev, Alexander Blok, Shalyapin, Alexander
II, Konstantin Romanov, Professor Pavlov.
I know, as well, the names of some among the enlightened who have risen to
special heights in Heavenly Russia: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, A.
K. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, the Aksakovs, Vitberg, Kutuzov, and Chemezov, a
little-known engraver of the eighteenth century who died young.
The following are at present closer than the rest to the great transformation
that will raise them to Heavenly Jerusalem and
the World Synclite: Lermontov, Vladimir Solovyov, the Emperor Ivan VI, as well
as two spirits whose names surprised me but which were twice repeated:
Shevchenko and PavelFlorensky.
During the whole existence of the Russian zatomis, a few dozen people have risen
through it to the World Synclite. Of these the following names are known to me:
Saint Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, Antony and Feodosy of Pechery, Nestor the
Chronicler, Sergi the soldier, who was the author of The Lay of the Host of
Igor, Alexander Nevsky, Sergi of Radonezh, Andrei Rublev, Nil of Sory, Lomonosov,
Alexander I, Ambrosius of Optina, and Serafim of Sarov.
Our sight, once it bursts the fetters of our space, can discern the heavenly
lands of other metacultures in the distance, beyond the borders of the Russian
metaculture, lands just as radiant and full of unique variety. Preparations
through love and mutual understanding for the creation of holy Arimoya, the
heavenly land of all humanity—that is the bond that now joins the Synclites
and cities of different metacultures. The greatest of the children of humanity,
after completing their work in their holy cities, leave their metaculture.
Rising up to the World Synclite from different directions, as it were, they come
together at last, but still long before they have reached that world. The world
where they meet is called Gridruttva, the white chamber where they devise the
overall plan for the ascent of humanity. Their further ascent takes them to
planes where their wisdom and power surpass those of demiurges. The Higher
Providential Plan, which we can sometimes distinguish in history as the pattern
behind the individual plans of the demiurges, is the product of their creative
work. They are the World Synclite. While maintaining full clarity of spiritual
consciousness, they co-create with the Planetary Logos Himself.
Work on Arimoya in four-dimensional worlds has only just begun; its historical
reflection on Earth will constitute the meaning and goal of the coming century.
It is for that very purpose that the energy of the Eternal Virgin Mother, energy
that is concentrated within one divine monad, flowed down from transcosmic
spheres into the highest planes of Shadanakar. It is also for that purpose that
a fabulous temple is being erected in Heavenly Russia—in order to receive Her,
Whose birth in the four-dimensional worlds is the goal and purpose of the future
marriage of the Russian demiurgeand Collective Soul. In historical terms, it is
through the manifestation of the Great Feminine Spirit in the Rose of the World
that the transformation of the governments of all peoples into a global
community will begin. In all that, the Russian Synclite is being helped and will
be helped by the Synclites of all the metacultures. In turn, the World Synclite
will inherit and continue their work, so as to crown it with the appearance of a
global theohumankind.
There is, however, another sakwala of zatomis in Shadanakar besides the nineteen
great ones. These are the zatomis of metacultures whose development was
tragically arrested in Enrof. If it becomes clear that the Providential forces
of a given metaculture cannot withstand the onslaught of the demonic, its
zatomis is transferred to a plane in that other sakwala. Its cultural and
sometimes its state institutions in Enrof dissolve little by little into the
cultures surrounding it, its Witzraors die, the underworld shrastrs hunger in
miserable inactivity and eventually die off. But the zatomis continues to
develop; its Synclite continues and intensifies its creative work. Souls that
have not yet attained a level at which the zatomis of such a metaculture opens
its doors to them may complete the necessary stages of growth outside of Enrof
or undergo incarnations in other metacultures and countries. But in the end they
always ascend to their own zatomis. There are also instances when the
cultural-historical base in Enrof continues to exist while experiencing gradual
decay, and the zatomis maintains an active link with it. In such cases, it is
still possible, under favorable circumstances, for the zatomis to be restored to
its former sakwala, and its suprapeople to historical life. Something like that
is now taking place with Zhunfleya, as I have already mentioned.
It remains for me to list briefly the fifteen
zatomis of that second sakwala.
Nanzbata is the zatomis of the Ancient Sudanese metaculture, which developed
very slowly, barely smoldering under very unfavorable conditions in the Niger
Valley, in the vicinity of Lake Chad, and in Cordophan between the ninth and
fifth millennia B.C. It collapsed under the centrifugal forces that exhausted it
during continuous internecine wars. That first attempt in the history of
humanity to unite antagonistic and ethnographically diverse peoples through a
common interethnic religion (polytheistic, of course) failed because of the
intense demonic influence emanating from the religion's extremely ambivalent
pantheon. Archaeological ruins of the culture may still be unearthed.
Its emblem is a circle of naked black dancers on an emeraldgreen background.
Tsen-Tin is the zatomis of the pro/o-Mongolian metaculture (pro/o-Mongolian in
the geographical, not ethnographic, sense). Its people were Asiatic, but both
anthropologically and spiritually they were more closely related to the peoples
of Gondwana than to those of later Mongolia. Its people settled northern China
and the Amur region in the fourth or third millennium B.C. and were in the
process of converting from a nomadic to a settled way of life. Small cities had
already begun to spring up. The culture had a remarkable beginning. It was not a
demiurge of the suprapeople at the head of their hierarchy but a powerful
demonic being that was to convert and had already begun to convert to Light. The
being was thrown down by Gagrungr and the suprapeople were crushed by hordes
sweeping over from Central Asia.
Its emblem is a winged dragon with its head thrown up to the sun, all awash with
the sun's rays.
Pred is the zatomis of the Dravidian metaculture, which is a provisional
designation, as it comprised peoples of various ethnic roots, including some
closely related to the Sumerians. The cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa belong
to the later stages of the metaculture. Its collapse (at the beginning of the
second millennium B.C.) resulted from factors both internal (I have no idea of
their nature) and external (the invasion of the Aryans).
I did not see clearly the emblem of Pred. But I did see a pink pagoda.
Asgard, which is sometimes incorrectly referred to by the more popular name
Valhalla, is the zatomis of the ancient Germanic metaculture, which was crippled
by the spread of historical Christianity. Disaster overtook it in the twelfth
century A.D.
Its emblem is a golden hall in the clouds.
Tokka is the zatomis of the ancient Peruvian (pre-Inca) metaculture, which
developed historically in the centuries immediately prior to and after the birth
of Christ. There is, perhaps, no reason to bewail the collapse of the culture in
Enrof, for the influence of the demonic was very strong in it (That culture was
supposed to have greatly advanced the task of enlightening the animal world, but
historically it came to deify it and degenerate into widespread cannibalism).
Its emblem depicts the stone statue of a seated puma.
Bon is the zatomis of the ancient Tibetan metaculture, which was destroyed by
Buddhism, but elements of it were assimilated by the Mahayana culture.
The Bon emblem depicts red and blue bolts of lightning crisscrossing above the
orange tent of a king. The blue lightning represents Buddhism and its
spirituality; the red represents the pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, which was
tainted to a very great extent by demonism. The tent represents royalty, which
fell as a result of the meeting of those two powers.
Gauripur is the zatomis of the small Himalayan metaculture, which separated from
India too soon, yet had immense poten
tial. It was there that the brightest centers of Buddhism were at one time
kindled. There, in the context of the teaching, those metahistorical processes
took place that fashioned it into a religion in the full sense of the
word—that is, a teaching that was not only moral but transphysical and
spiritual as well. The moral aspect of Buddhism was raised in the Himalayas to a
height known only in the purest forms of Christianity.
The Himalayan metaculture collapsed under the two-pronged onslaught of state
demons: the Turkic Witzraors from the north and west, and the Witzraors of the
Great Mogul Empire from the south. At present the metaculture is dying out in
Nepal.
Its emblem is a crowned mountain peak beneath the constellation Orion.
Yunkif is the zatomis of the Mongolian metaculture, which immediately fell prey
to an unusually powerful Witzraor. Disaster overtook it in the thirteenth
century.
Yunkif s emblem is a rolling line of hills, with two flocks, white and red,
battling above them.
Yiru is the zatomis of the ancient Australian metaculture, which for two
thousand years existed in central Australia in total isolation from the rest of
humanity. Their society reached the level of a slave state. The metaculture
collapsed as the result of the extremely active role played by demonic
elementals—the spirits of deserts and impenetrable thickets. For many
centuries two religions—"right hand" and "left hand,"
polytheistic and demonic— were locked in struggle within the culture. The
latter offered human sacrifices to those same malevolent elementals that were
engaged in destroying the metaculture. Toward the end, it was that religion that
prevailed, and resistance to the encroachment of the desert and thickets was
proclaimed taboo. The culture in Enrof died out from internal dessication. The
most refined of their arts was painting. It was to a certain extent reminiscent
of Cretan painting but was more distinctive and imaginative. The ruins to be
unearthed will not be extensive enough to permit a picture of the civilization
to be reconstructed.
Its emblem is a cloud above a volcano, representing the suprapeople and its
Synclite.
Taltnom is the zatomis of the Tolteko-Aztec metaculture. Its emblem is the face
of a hero crowned by the sun.
Kertu is the zatomis of the Yucatan (Mayan) metaculture. Its emblem depicts a
blue serpent twined around a golden tree. Not every people has regarded the
serpent as a dark symbol. The golden tree represents the spiritual (transphysical)
world. The blue serpent symbolizes the suprapeople, who through spirallike
growth rise into the spirit.
Intil is the zatomis of the Incan metaculture, whose collapse in Enrof, strange
as it may seem, saved the world from great peril. (This will be discussed in
another part of the book.) Its emblem is a red-clad figure, wearing a miter,
with arms uplifted to the sun. Red here symbolizes majesty, and the miter, the
high priesthood.
Daffam is the zatomis of the metaculture of the Great Lakes Indians. (That
culture was specially charged with combating Voglea, the female lunar demon.
That accounts for the suprapeople's exceptional chasteness and their rejection
of urban-based civilization.)
Its emblem is a group of warriors pointing their spears at the crescent of a
waning moon.
Lea is the zatomis of the Polynesian metaculture, which was doomed by its
extreme geographical dispersion. Embers of that metaculture are still
smouldering on Hawaii, Tahiti, and other archipelagoes. Its emblem is a golden
mountain on an island in a blue sea.
Nikisaka is the zatomis of the Japanese metaculture, which was seriously wounded
twice—by Buddhism and by Europeanism— and thus has not been able to realize
its full potential. Shinto is in essence the veneration of Nikisaka as the
Japanese Synclite. The goddess Amaterasu, properly understood, is none other
than the Navna of Japan. The transfer of Nikisaka to the sakwala of
developmentally arrested metacultures in Enrof is now taking place. The Rose of
the World will be able to provide real assistance in revitalizing the zatomis:
it is still entirely possible for the process to be reversed.
Its emblem is a blossoming cherry tree beside a pond.
3.3 The
MiddLe Planes of Shadanakar
BEFORE ATTEMP T ING TO DRAW a general picture of
the demonic sakwalas, which play such a colossal role in the transphysics and
metahistory of Shadanakar, as well as the sakwalas of elementals, some of which
are closely bound with the demonic, I consider it advisable to give the reader
some notion of certain sakwalas of ascent that succeed, as it were, the zatomis
sakwalas. These sakwalas are extremely diverse, but together they comprise the
middle planes of Shadanakar.
It is only natural that the higher the planes, the more difficult it becomes to
apprehend them, and the fewer analogies with Enrof can be found in their
landscapes, in the form and appearance of the beings abiding there, and in the
manner of life they lead. Nine-tenths of what is seen or otherwise perceived
remains beyond our comprehension. In the majority of cases, one has no choice
but to confine oneself to a straightforward presentation of the essential facts,
without attempting to reveal their consistency or deeper meaning. Therefore,
this chapter promises to be virtually nothing more than the dry enumeration of
the names of a few sakwalas and the planes they comprise.
I seem to recall, for example, that withinJewish mysticism can be found the
concept of the egregor; however, it is difficult for me to judge how closely the
term corresponds to the meaning given to it here, if only because of my less
than superficial knowledge of Jewish theosophy. In any case, what is meant here
by egregors are variomaterial formations that take shape over large collectives
from certain emanations of the human psyche. Egregors do not have monads, but
they possess a volitional charge of limited duration and the equivalent of
consciousness. Every state, even
Luxembourg, has its own egregor. They are essentially static, passive beings.
The majority of egregors do not take part in the struggle between the demonic
and Providential forces in Shadanakar. There are some, however, that side with
the demonic camp.
When egregors disintegrate, their equivalent of consciousness disappears as
well, dispersing into space. They do not experience any pain at such times.
To the extent that it is possible to speak of the landscape of those planes, the
sakwalas of egregors are characterized by yellowish swirls of space in which the
egregors themselves stand out as somewhat denser than their surroundings.
The seven planes that compose that sakwala can be listed in the following order:
Zativ is the region of the egregors of primal tribes, which die out as the
tribes are assimilated by larger nations or are destroyed physically. The
egregors of humanity's oldest cultural-political formations used to abide there,
egregors that have by now already dissolved into space.
Zhag is the region of state egregors. In addition, egregors of certain large
contemporary social-political organizations, like the Indian National Congress
Party, can also be found there.
Foraun is the plane of the egregors of churches. They form from the dark-ether
radiations that issue from the mass of humans belonging to some church,
radiations released by every person who has not reached the level of sanctity.
The radiations arise when a soul's religious feelings become tainted with
mundane preoccupations, material concerns, acquisitiveness, negative
emotions—in general, with what the Fathers of the Church termed worldly cares.
It often happens that egregors act as serious brakes or weights on the ascending
path of churches. In time there will also be in Foraun an egregor of the Rose of
the World. It is unavoidable, since the interreligious church of the future will
be composed not only of saints but of hundreds of millions of people at
different stages of their spiritual growth.
Udgrogr is the plane of egregors of the anti-churches and the power-hungry mass
parties of modern times.
One plane, whose name I do not know, is inhabited by egregors generated by the
psychic activity of the shrastrs' demonic
populace. I also do not know the name of the plane of egregors that form from
the psychic activities of the world of daemons— that second, brighter
humankind to be briefly discussed below.
The last of the egregor planes is called Tsebrumr. It is as yet empty. In time
there wit; appear there the egregor of the future Anti-Church, the church in
which will be carried out the quasireligious, demonic worship of Gagtungr. This
will be, at the end of the first eon, the nucleus and foundation of the future
satanohumankind.
A different, higher humankind of Shadanakar abides in a sakwala of three- and
four-dimensional planes with an immense number of time streams. Unfortunately,
my knowledge of them is meager to say the least. A host of unanswered questions
that arise in connection with them has left a large gap in the picture I have
been drawing of Shadanakar. These beings are called daemons. They are proceeding
along a path of development similar to ours, but they began it much earlier and
have achieved greater success in their spiritual growth. It appears that the key
to this is the fact that Jesus Christ's mission, which in Enrof was curtailed
almost at the start through the efforts of Gagtungr and which ended in only a
partial victory, was brought to a successful conclusion in the daemon world.
That occurred at a much earlier time than when Christ was incarnated in the
person of Jesus. His victory in the daemon world removed the burdensome
obstacles Gagtungr had placed on their path of ascent, and at present these
beings have left us far behind. The length of time and number of trials
necessary for them to reach spiritual maturity have been reduced many times
over. There have been no signs of social disharmony among them for a long time,
and their energy is channeled into spiritual and moral growth and into helping
other planes, particularly the humanity of Enrof.
Daemons are winged people who, though they partly resemble angels in their
external appearance, are different from them. In addition to many distinguishing
characteristics, daemons are divided into two sexes. The chief plane of their
existence, which corresponds to our Enrof, is called Zheram. Its natural
environment, which is similar to ours, has been elevated to artistic and moral
excellence, while their technology is spiritualized by an inner wisdom
concerning the various energies and planes of Shadanakar and by the cultivation
of higher abilities within their own being. The daemons are aware of everything
essential about humanity in Enrof.
Ever since the completion of Christ's mission in Zheram, the daemons have been
freed from the necessity of descent into the demonic worlds of retribution after
death. The multiplaned sakwala of purgatories, which the majority of us know
from experience but have forgotten, has been replaced for them by a single
plane, called Urm, where some of them undergo expiatory cleansing after death.
Kartiala, the world of enlightened daemons, their heavenly land, parallels the
zatomis of our humanity. From there a staircase opens to the sakwala of Higher
Purpose, and, lastly, to the World Synclite.
The daemons' active involvement in the struggle against Witzraors and
antihumankind in the shrastrs constitutes one of the many tasks undertaken by
the daemons of Kartiala in relation to other worlds in Shadanakar. Their
inspirational and guiding influence upon the creators of our artistic culture
constitutes another. The apostrophe some poets use to address their daemon, and
others their Muse, is by no means a poetic device. It is testimony to genuine
transphysical facts. I do not know if the nine sisters of Apollo ever existed in
the Olympus zatomis—it is entirely possible that they did—but there can be
no doubt that the female daemons (muses) or the male daemons (Socratic daemons
in the narrow sense of the word) have aided our artists and thinkers in plumbing
their inner creative depths. Only the blindness of materialism could cause us to
pass over the countless testimonies to this fact given by our poets, writers,
musicians, and philosophers, beginning even before Socrates and ending with
Gogol and Alexander Blok.
Once they have completed their task, the majority of daemons/ inspirers leave
those they inspired. Sometimes a kind of union occurs, an extremely rare
phenomenon very difficult to explain.
It is common for human shelts to weave an incarnation in the daemon world into
their garlands. They are ordained such an incarnation so as to consolidate the
gains their souls have made on their paths of Light.
But there is also another race that abides in the daemon sakwala, one that is
less in number and has lagged behind in development. They are the wards, as it
were, of the daemons. I do not have a clear notion of how they came to be in
those worlds. It seems that they, too, are daemons, ones who at some time in the
distant past went astray, lost their wings, and are now undoing the harm they
caused themselves on a special road of atonement. These wingless beings barely
differ in appearance from humans.
Here I come to a fact that will inevitably evoke scoffs and even exasperation in
most readers of this book. But if it is true that a song suffers from the loss
of a single word, then this book will suffer from the loss of a single thought.
Those beings whom I referred to as a lower race of daemons can in part be
characterized as the metaprototypes of certain heroes and heroines of global
literature and art in Enrof. It sometimes happens that the intuition of artists
in Enrof—albeit, an intuition of geniuses alone—penetrates to Zheram, sees
one of those beings, and records its image in human art. The image becomes a
kind of magic crystal that acts as a locus for radiations people emit at times
of active perception. These radiations rise up to Zheram and supply the
metaprototype with energy to grow. If such an image is not created, the
metaprototype's growth slows and in some cases it may even have to leave the
daemon sakwala and embark on a lengthy journey through Enrof.
The majority of human representations in our painting and sculpture have no
metaprototypes: they are portraits of people, no more. But works of art like the
Mona Lisa, for example, are, in addition to their human prototype, connected
with prototypes in Zheram that have been apprehended by the intuition of the
genius. This is the origin of the extraordinary eloquence and power of these
masterpieces. It is regrettable that the Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da
Vinci in such a way that the prototype ended up debased, with the portrait
absorbing certain elements from Duggur—one of the worlds of demonic
elementals—as a result of which the prototype fell from Zheram to Urm, for
that plane serves as a purgatory for metaprototypes as well as for daemons. The
proto-Mona Lisa, raised back up to Zheram and higher through the afterlife
efforts of Leonardo da Vinci, now abides in one of the planes of Higher Purpose.
Venus de Milo is already in the World Synclite, since it was to the daemon
Kartiala that the soul of the Greek woman who posed for the sculptor rose up
through Olympus after the historical demise of Greco-Roman culture. Merging in
Kartiala with her metaprototype, she began to climb the staircase of ascent
through the upper planes. In time, the same will happen with all the souls of
such metaprototypes.
The situation is even more complex and various with paintings of the
mythological, psychological, historical, and folk genres. Morozova, the
noblewoman in Surikov's painting, had a metaprototype in Zheram, as did some of
the secondary figures on the canvas, and the metaprototype has been raised up to
Kartiala thanks to the artist's work. In addition, Surikov is at present working
in the Heavenly Kremlin on a dazzling variation on the picture.
Repin's depiction of Ivan the Terrible's murder of his son tied a knot that
Repin has been unable to unravel to the present day. This he must do in Drokkarg—the
shrastr of Russian antihumankind counterposed to the Heavenly Kremlin, where
Ivan the Terrible now abides as captive and slave.
The situation is worse still for the Fallen Demon of Vrubel—a stunning,
unprecedented case of a demonic infraportrait. To unravel the knot, Vrubel was
forced to descend to Gashsharva, to the angels of darkness. It is a terrible
thing to have to say, but it might be better, despite the brilliance of the
work, if it were destroyed in Enrof.
Landscape painting, in spite of its immense cultural and psychological
importance, very rarely possesses any transphysical meaning. Such meaning is
present either in those cases when the artist is able to communicate to the
viewer his or her feeling for the worlds of elementals visible in Enrof through
nature, or to hint at the landscapes of some other plane through the use of
unique combinations of lines and colors. In my personal opinion, the Russian
artist who succeeded best in that was Roerich, and at times the dubious,
scorned, even untalented artist Churlonis.
As for literature, in the overwhelming majority of works, there are no
metaprototypes behind the characters. For example,
almost all Soviet literature, with a few exceptions, has none. As well,
characters of a historical nature—for example, Pushkin's Boris Godunov or
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar—cannot have a metaprototype. But Macbeth has one,
because the work is not historical. Generally speaking, the presence of a
metaprototype in a work entails a sharp departure from historical accuracy in
attributing particular depth to the personage and a greatness of character that
does not have any basis in the historical prototype. That is not to be found
either in Pushkin's play orJulius Caesar, which is proof of the lack of
metahistorical depth in those works.
After the death of artistic geniuses in Enrof, the metaprototypes of their works
in Zheram meet and spend time with them, as the karma of artistic creation draws
them together. Many great artistic geniuses have in their afterlife had to
assist the prototypes of their heroes or heroines in their ascent. Dostoyevsky
spent an enormous amount of time and energy to raise up his metaprototypes, for
the suicides of Stavrogin and Svidrigailov, dictated by creative and mystical
logic, threw proto-Stravogin and proto-Svidrigailov down into Urm. At present,
all Dostoyevsky's heroes have been raised up by him: for example, Svidrigailov
has been raised to Kartiala, and Ivan Karamazov and Smerdyakov to Magirna, one
of the worlds of Higher Purpose. Also there are Sobakevich, Chichikov, and other
heroes of Gogol, and Tolstoy's Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky, Princess
Maria, and Natasha Rostova, whom Tolstoy raised from Urm at the cost of
tremendous exertions. Goethe's Margaret already abides on one of the upper
planes of Shadanakar, while Don Quixote long ago joined the World Synclite,
which Faust, too, will soon enter.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the transphysical
meaning of the dramatic arts. Christianity's traditionally negative attitude
toward such forms (regardless of how it has been explained by cultural
historians and even religious teachers) arose because the early and medieval
Christians, in a manner of speaking, sensed unconsciously with their religious
intuition the close relationship between the dramatic arts and the ancient
organism that is partly linked with Lilith, and partly with an even darker
demonic world, called Duggur. (In a later chapter I will describe that world in
more detail.) Duggur is bound up with human sexuality, and although it was not
discerned clearly in the Middle Ages, its diabolical radiations evoked fear,
disgust, and shame in the people of that time. Properly speaking, theater can
possess, on a transphysical level, widely varying, even contradictory, meanings.
Shaliapin was fully justified in fasting and praying after performing the role
of Mephistopheles. The play The Life of a Man was harmful for the playwright,
the cast, and the audience because it lacked what the ancients called catharsis.
All drama that takes actors and the audience through catharsis—that is,
spiritual elevation and enlightenment, however brief is deeply vindicated. As
for metaprototypes, the effect of performances in Enrof are like that
experienced by Dostoyevsky's Smerdyakov. While he was in Urm, thrown down there
by the mystical-creative impulses of Dostoyevsky, the performance of his role on
stage pained, burdened, and slowed him. Now it is of no consequence. The
performance of morally uplifting roles or roles leading to catharsis are good
for everyone, including metaprototypes.
With the daemon sakwala, my account will for a time leave the four-dimensional
worlds. Fongaranda, a lone five-dimensional plane that is not a part of any
sakwala, is now before us.
A warning is in order here: we are about to deal with concepts that are far from
customary. For Fongaranda is the abode of shells of masterpieces of
architecture. There they possess the ability to move and grow; they evolve in
the sense of spiritual maturation. Their external appearance closely resembles
that of enlightened elementals, but they are not fluid in form as those spirits
are, nor are their bodies interpenetrable. The reader should bear in mind that
the construction of their images in Enrof by architects of genius, whose
intuition caught their gleam in Fongaranda, gives them an ether body, which
forms inside the physical body of the buildings after many years of receiving
radiations from thousands and millions of people. If enough time has passed for
such an ether body to form, the destruction of the physical body in Enrof is no
longer of any transphysical consequence. The shelf in Fongaranda dons the ether
body and moves to one of the zatomis. After the turn of the eon (the global
period when the zatomis will cease to exist as such) the shells of those monads,
together with their coatings, which by then will have been completely
transformed, will merge with their monads on one of the planes of Higher Purpose
and subsequently enter the Elite of Shadanakar.
It is primarily the shelts of churches and palaces that abide in Fongaranda.
There are, for example, spectacular prototypes of an Orthodox monastery, an
Egyptian pyramid, a ziggurat, a gopuram of South India, a Catholic abbey, and a
Rhenish castle. But there are also shelts of some individual buildings, for
instance, St. Peter's Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, the
Temple of Heaven in China, even the palaces at Versailles and Pushkin. There are
also shelts such as those of the Parliament buildings in London and the
Admiralty in St. Petersburg.
After a strange world like Fongaranda, the concept of a sakwala of angels will
probably seem familiar and like nothing out of the ordinary. There are two such
sakwalas. The first and lower of the two comprises three planes. It is called
Angels of the Lower Circle. In essence they are, chronologically speaking, the
first humankind of Shadanakar, who at one time lived on planes of denser
materiality, though not in Enrof. Their era preceded the era of the Titans. It
is beyond our capacity to fully comprehend the manner of their lives now, in
their enlightened worlds. We can only apprehend that aspect of their work that
has a direct bearing on us. The first of these planes is inhabited by cherubim,
the guardians of people performing missions of Light. They are just
that—guardians; it is the daemons who are the inspirers! We have heard of
guardian angels since childhood, and it is not our fault if we thought that such
an angel hovered over the right shoulder of every one of us. They have the same
external appearance described in tradition, and their world is a landscape of
gorgeous colors that we cannot perceive but that are vaguely reminiscent of pink
and violet.
Another plane—a land of white-gold pierced everywhere by beams of
light—belongs to seraphim, the guardians of certain human communities:
churches, religious groups, some charitable organizations, and those very few
cities whose spiritual integrity and moral purity are of particular importance
in the eyes of the Providential powers. There are times when a guard of seraphim
encircles a city because taking place within it is one or another metahistorical
event or transphysical process that requires special assistance or protection.
When the process or event is completed, and a new era begins, the guard of
seraphim is withdrawn. There were guards over Kiev during the reign of St.
Vladimir, over Moscow during the reigns of Prince Daniil and Ivan Kalita, and
several times over Jerusalem, Rome, and many other cities. Benares,a city of
tremendous metahistorical significance, is one of those rare instances when the
guard of seraphim does not leave a city for several centuries. Of course, from a
narrowly Christian point of view, statements like the preceding can only give
rise to perplexity. In appearance seraphim resemble six-winged angels.
The sakwala concludes with the world of the so-called Thrones, whose appearance
nearly matches our image of archangels, and whose abode is greenish blue,
pierced by playful beams of light. The Thrones are the guardians of nations.
There are many of them—the spiritual maturation of every nation is overseen by
a host of those resplendent beings.
Moving on to the second sakwala—the Angels of the Upper Circle—I find I
cannot even resort to such meager visual images as I used for the first sakwala
to help the reader form an idea of this one. All I can say is that they are the
abodes of hierarchies of Light of tremendous power, those same ones who create
the materiality of the three-, four-, and five-dimensional planes in Shadanakar.
First come the Astrals, known in Christian mysticism as the Principalities. They
are the creators of materiality for Enrof. Next come the Powers, creators of
materiality for the daemon sakwalas, and the Dominions, creators of materiality
for the worlds of Enlightenment (except Olirna). The sakwala of Angels of the
Upper Circle concludes with the world of the Virtues, who create materiality for
the zatomis, and the Archangels, those same beings who were Sirins, Alkonosts,
and Gamayuns before their transformation in Paradise, Eden, Monsalvat, Zhunfleya,
and Holy Russia—all the zatomis of Christian metacultures. They create
materiality for the worlds of Higher Purpose. The materiality of the angelic
worlds themselves, as well as that of the upper planes of Shadanakar, is created
by the hierarchies of the metabramfatura.
I realize that, despite the similarity in nomenclature, the above is not
concordant with traditional Christian angelology. I am sorry that it is so. But
I am not writing on the basis of my own knowledge and cannot make any
alterations until that single Voice I trust with all my heart tells me
otherwise.
Our survey has arrived at the sakwala of Higher Purpose. These worlds are common
to people, angels, daemons, elementals, and even to enlightened animals. They
soar far above those distinct segments of Shadanakar called metacultures.
Naturally, my knowledge of them is scant, if not to say beggarly.
I am not even sure of the name of the first of these worlds. It sounds something
like Usnorm, but I can't make it out more clearly. The spinning of the planet on
its axis is evident there as it is here. It must have been nightfall at the time
I was there, because I vaguely remember seeing a glowing mist of stunning
majesty, as though the creative heart of our Universe had revealed itself to me
in visible form for the first time. It was Astrafire, the great center of our
Galaxy, which is hidden from our sight in Enrof by dark clouds of cosmic matter.
I also saw a scattering of countless stars, but not as we see them here. Indeed,
they were not stars, but bramfaturas. They were not bright pinpricks in the sky
but systems of concentric spheres visible through each other. When my gaze
rested on one of them, it grew huge and distinct, just like a cinematic
close-up. It seems to me now that they were all spinning slowly, harmoniously
sounding and calling to each other with multi-toned voices. But that may only
seem so now, and may be the result of preconceptions about the harmony of the
celestial spheres, an idea that came to me not from experience but from human
legends. In any case, those harmonies could barely be heard above the surges of
an incredible choir that was sounding right there around me, rising from depths
to heights that I could neither comprehend nor measure with my eyes. All this is
my recollection of the plane/temple reserved for the eternal liturgy of
humankind.
Oh, not only humankind! There were, I guess, millions of beings there, and—I
don't know how many exactly—probably more than half of them had never been nor
were destined to be human. There were enlightened souls of elementals and
animals, wondrous daemons,and angels of various circles. When we read the
prophecy in the Apocalypse about animals gifted with intelligence performing the
liturgy around the altar in another world, it may be a symbol, but it is also a
hint at reality, a reality that did not yet exist at the time the author of the
Apocalypse was living. For Usnorm, the temple common to all, is the brainchild
of that same great human spirit who was John the Evangelist in his last
incarnation on Earth.
While there were millions worshipping, those performing the service at the
church altar numbered in the thousands. Everyone who reaches the sakwala of
Higher Purpose eventually performs the liturgy in Usnorm, and is then followed
by the next in order.
The most uplifting and joyous services in the churches and temples of the higher
religions are but dim reflections and echoes of the eternal liturgy of Usnorm.
There is indeed an oral element in the liturgy, but the words are in the
language of the World Synclite, which we cannot reproduce, and in which words
are not simply individual sounds but chords of meaning, as it were, and some
appear at the same time as flashes and waves of light. There is an element of
movement in the liturgy, the heavenly prototype of sacred dance. But as Usnorm
is five-dimensional, movement occurs not along a horizontal surface, as it does
here, but in all five dimensions. There are elements of light and color in the
liturgy, but it is impossible to convey a description of these colors outside
the seven visible to us. What can I say that would do justice to the symphonies
of light, beside which even the fireworks of Faer seem monotone and feeble? What
can I say about the spiritual fragrances? About the incense of Usnorm, which
rises from gigantic floating and swinging thuribles up to Astrafire itself
Usnorm is the first world where those who are ascending no longer absorb
material radiations but rather purely spiritual ones. These issue from the very
highest transcosmic spheres, which one could call the Empyrean, if that ancient
word is not taken to mean a fantastic "world of motionless stars" but
rather the all-embracing abode of pure Spirit—that is, the Holy Trinity.
The worlds of Higher Purpose are way stations between the zatomis, Kartiala of
the daemons, and Hangvilla of enlightened animals on the one hand, and the
worlds of the Higher Transmyths of the Global Religions on the other. Above
Usnorm is Gridruttva, the white chamber where the great creative plan for
humanity is devised. After it comes Alikanda, which resembles the heart of a
flower; Tovia, which resembles foam, hoarfrost, a white garden, or falling snow;
and Ro, which resembles huge singing crystals. The most beautiful works of music
in Enrof, in Olirna, among the daemons, even in the zatomis are but echoes of
these crystals. These three planes are the abode of human monads that have
merged with their mature souls.
Magirn, a plane that resembles illumined ocean depths, is the abode of monads
and metaprototypes that have merged with their shells and transfigured astral
bodies. The monads of animals merge with their mature souls in Kaermis, which
could be described as a land of living sphinxes. The same happens in Deitrast to
the monads of daemons and in Sibran to the monads of angels, about which I can
only say that it is an unbelievable choir of rejoicing. The monads of elementals
abide in Flauros, of which the words "solar flares" can give an
intimation. The sakwala of the world of Higher Purpose also includes Niatos:
violet heights where the monads of our former enemies—demons who have
converted to Light—merge with their shells. I have already mentioned the
powerful demonic spirit, the great "dragon" of the pro/o-Mongolian
culture. Cast down by Gagtungr into a plane of torment known as the Rain of
Endless Misery, it was long ago rescued from there by the Providential powers
and now shines in the world of violet heights as one of its most beautiful
lights.
As far as I can recall, Iroln, splendid and immense, is also a part of the
sakwala. It is the abode of human monads before they merge with their mature
souls. Iroln is the initial destination of the individual spirit of each person
when it leaves the heart of the Creator and enters Shadanakar. It resembles a
multitude of suns gliding and spinning. And now I am not sure: it seems to me
that Iroln is not five but six-dimensional, and my inclusion of it into the
sakwala of Higher Purpose is a mistake, an aberration on my part.
Higher on the staircase of hierarchies in Shadanakar are situated, one after
another, the sakwalas of cosmic emanations. What are they? Other bramfaturas
have been acting on Shadanakar in a tangible manner throughout its
multimillion-year history. These bramfaturas are either more powerful than ours,
or more advanced, or commensurate with us in size and level of ascent, but
because they are located not too far from us in space they therefore interact
with our bramfatura. The materiality of the worlds of emanations is created by
the forces of Light of other bramfaturas. The bramfaturas are inhabited by
higher beings who can travel great cosmic distances without difficulty. These
visitors from other bramfaturas are the great allies and friends of the forces
of Light of Shadanakar.
Other than to list a few names, I have literally nothing to say about some
sakwalas of emanations. For example, there is a sakwala of emanations from
Orion. Orion is a system of bramfaturas of immense power that has freed itself
completely from the demonic, and it plays a prominent role in the life of the
Galaxy. Of course, listing the names of the ten planes that make up the sakwala
cannot evoke in the reader anything but disappointment in its meagerness. But
how do I know? Perhaps even these names will be of some use in the future:
Yumaroya, Odgiana, Ramn, Vualra, Ligeya, Fianna, Eramo, Veatnor, Zaolita, and
Natolis.
Despite the huge disparity between our conditions and those that reign on the
physical plane of Jupiter or Neptune, we must accustom ourselves to the idea
that many of the planets and their moons possess bramfaturas. Jupiter is even
inhabited on our plane, in Enrof, by intelligent life forms, but they are so
different from us and live under conditions so unthinkable that no contact will
ever occur between us and them in Enrof. But contact does take place on the
five-dimensional planes of both bramfaturas. The Elite of Jupiter and its moons
have created two planes of emanations within Shadanakar, one plane has been
created by Saturn and its moons, and one each by Uranus and Neptune. All of them
together make up the sakwala of planetary emanations.
A special place is occupied by the three planes of Iora, Achnos, and Gebn. They
form the sakwala of emanations from the transfigured planet Daiya, which no
longer exists in Enrof: The planet used to be situated between Mars and Jupiter.
Long ago, the efforts of its demiurgesled to the expulsion of the demonic powers
to the bramfatura of Daiya's moon. Daiya entered its third eon—that is, it
underwent a physical transformation and disappeared from cosmic Enrof. As for
the moon, it suffered a catastrophic break-up (the asteroids are fragments of
it) and the demonic hordes were scattered into outer space. When our scientific
instruments become powerful enough to observe planets in other solar systems, we
will sometimes witness the sudden disappearance, in the space of a few hours, of
some of these planets. No doubt scientists will advance a number of clever
hypotheses to explain away the phenomenon before they admit that the same thing
that is happening in these cases at one time happened to the planet Daiya.
The sakwala of solar emanations numbers nine planes. Again, I can give only
names: Raos, Flermos, Tramnos, Gimnos, Areya, Nigveya, Trimoya, Derayn, and
Iordis.
I can also list the names of the four planes of emanations from Astrafire, the
center of the Galaxy: Grezoar, Malein, Viruana, and Luvarn.
One particular system is in part connected with the sakwalas of emanations. It
would be more correct to call this system a bramfatura, though at present it is
part of Shadanakar, being encompassed within its five- and six-dimensional
planes. It is the Lunar Bramfatura.
I do not know when exactly the development of lunar humankind—Selenites—came
to an end in Enrof. In any case, it was in the very distant past, almost a
million years ago. But evolution there proceeded at a much slower pace, though
the time required between the appearance of organic life on the surface of the
Moon and the emergence of intelligent life forms was far less than for the
corresponding process on Earth. Generally speaking, the idea that physically
smaller worlds should in every case evolve more quickly is not always true of
individual periods of development of organic life, let alone of the tempo of the
evolution of intelligent life. But H. G. Wells's intuition of the external
appearance of these beings, which he describes in his fascinating book, is
amazing, especially if one considers the rationalist complexion and
scientific-like superficiality of his thinking. He correctly envisioned their
overall insect-like appearance: the soft, elastic consistency of their physical
tissue, their bodies' ability to metamorphose in accordance with the task at
hand, the advanced state of their technology, and even the fact that toward the
end of their civilization they had begun partly to exploit the interior of the
Moon.
The Selenites' tragic end resulted from the victory of Voglea, the female lunar
demon. One might well wonder how it was that the activities of a female demon
found an outlet in their rationalistic society. But there exists a particular
variety of rationality, one that can be denoted as female, and not everywhere is
its expression so weak as among our humanity. It took root among the Selenites
with special resiliency, and its effects could particularly be seen in the fact
that their technology was based far more than ours on the principles of magic.
The stages of the Selenites' spiritual and cultural decline went from
satanohumankind to degeneration to death under the weight of their technology.
Their deepening spiritual bankruptcy caused the Selenite society to descend into
anarchy, lose the ability to run their own machines, and finally die of cold and
hunger. But to this day, the world of Voglea remains a part of the Lunar
Bramfatura. For an extremely long time it maintained a singular kind of
neutrality, at times warring with both the powers of Light and Gagtungr. But in
the last while the planetary demons of Shadanakar and Voglea have been moving
toward a truce and, in fact, an alliance to join forces and drive the powers of
Light out of Shadanakar. One demonic plane in Shadanakar, Duggur, is closely
linked with the emanations of Voglea. At present, the bewitching, vampire-like,
bluegray female demon is rebuilding a special plane—the lunar hell. There,
with Gagtungr's consent, the victims of Duggur will descend. Until now, some of
those victims have met with an even worse fate: ejection from Shadanakar into
the emptiness of the Galaxy.
The three other planes of the Lunar sakwala counterpose Voglea's world. Soldbis
can be seen on the surface of the Moon from the zatomis; it is the abode of a
great many of those enlightened ones whose spiritual growth was too slow and who
therefore met with tragedy. Their last incarnation in Enrof occurred during the
period of the lunar satanahumankind and degeneration, and since then they have
spent a vast length of time on rehabilitation and gradual enlightenment in
Soldbis. Another world, Laal, is for the Lunar Elite. A great many Selenites
have already risen even higher, to the Elite of Shadanakar. Finally, there is
Tanit, the abode of the lunar goddess and the third and brightest of the lunar
worlds.
If through careful observation we unravel into separate strands what we feel at
nights when the moon is full, we will awaken to certain threads of feeling.
First is a sense of harmony, which is the effect Soldbis and Laal have on us.
Second is a subtle nostalgia for the heavens, which is Tanit calling to us.
Third is the lure of sexual transgression, which is Voglea haunting and tempting
us. She fears the Sun, always retreating from its light to the dark side of the
Moon. During a full moon, only diminished emanations from Voglea—those that
pass through the Moon's crust—reach us. But when the Moon is waning, Voglea
moves together with the darkness to the side facing the Earth. That is why the
waning of the Moon and a new moon have for many such a sickening, sinister, and
depressing effect on the subconscious.
Our survey of the structure of Shadanakar has at
last arrived at the grandiose sakwala that I am forced to refer to by the
painfully cumbersome title of the Worlds of the Highest Aspects of the Global
Religions. It is the world of their purest transmyths.
Many years ago, long before the Second World War, when I was still quite young,
a mysterious, beautiful, and persistent vision began appearing to me. Seen from
an endless distance away, it looked like a bluish crystal pyramid with the sun
shining through it. I sensed the magnitude of its significance, the waves of
grace, power, and beauty pouring forth from that shining center, but I had no
idea what the vision could mean. Later I even thought that it was a glimmer of
the World Salvaterra refracted by my limited human mind. How naive! Those whose
souls are illumined by a glimmer of the World Salvaterra become saints and
prophets. And, of course, its glimmer can in no way be likened to anything
earthly.
It was only many years later, quite recently in fact, that I learned that the
pyramid is not alone, that there are others in tandem, as it were, with it, five
in all, and there will never be a sixth in Shadanakar. But there is only one
blue pyramid. The rest are other colors, and it is impossible to say which is
the most beautiful. Of course, for us, transmyths are in themselves
transcendental. It may very well be that "in themselves" they bear no
resemblance to any geometric forms. But it was in the form of those gigantic
crystal pyramids that they imprinted themselves on my mind, and the adoption of
just those images must contain some deeper meaning.
Later I was struck by something else. One of the pyramids, smaller in size but
of a wondrous, unearthly white, is the higher transmyth of a religion that I
personally would never have thought to include among the global or higher
religions: the transmyth of Zoroastrianism. My puzzlement has yet to be
dispelled. To this day I have been unable to learn how that local religion,
which left the historical scene a long time ago and, it seems to me, is not,
mythologically speaking, all that rich, could prove to be a reflection of an
immense reality professed by it alone. My puzzlement notwithstanding, its world
is called Azur.
Another pyramid, which I better understand, is also comparatively small in size,
but it is gold in color. It is the highest aspect of Judaism, the aspect that
has left far below the anti-Christian intransigence of its lackluster and turbid
earthly twin. It is the golden world of heavenly glory, whose light penetrated
into the visions of the great mystics of the Kabbala and the prophets, and for
which the winding thread of the Talmud is as the dust of valleys is for a lord
of mountain heights. The name of the golden pyramid is Ae.
The highest aspect of the Hindu transmyth is a huge pyramid whose color is
reminiscent of our violet. That complex world is layered, the outermost of its
layers being the ultimate goals of Vedanta and yoga, and the highest layer being
the ultimate goal of the Synclite of India, an intimation of which we might find
in Indian philosophy under the name of Nirukta. Concerning another layer, Eroya,
and yet another, whose name I do not have the right to pronounce, I can only say
that, though they who were once humans also abide in those worlds, they are more
like guests there. Shatrittva, the last layer of the violet pyramid, is the
abode of many hierarchies of the Hindu pantheon. But one can speak of the exact
correspondence of the pantheon images to the hierarchies of the transmyth only
in part, in certain individual cases. For example, hierarchies of entirely
different heights, powers, and cosmic levels—from "the National
Aphrodite" of India to the Virgin Mother of the Universe—are worshiped in
Enrof under one and the same name, Kali-Durga.
No less huge is the green pyramid, the world of the higher aspect of Buddhism,
which comprises two layers. There is a popular misconception that Buddhism, or
at least its southern variety, is atheistic. In reality, there is of course no
atheism to be found at the highest levels of Hinayana or Jainism. But beginning
with Gautama and Mahavira, thinkers and disseminators have judged that it is in
the best interests of the masses to emphasize the immateriality of the question
of God in one's spiritual salvation, so that the efforts people themselves have
to make are not shunted onto God. And how could they not believe in God, they
whose Nirvana is the first of the two layers of the great green pyramid? The
second layer belongs to the Dhyani Bodhisattvas, the hierarchies that guide the
peoples of Buddhist metacultures. We should treat with caution the claim made by
the spiritual shepherds of Tibet that the majority of Dalai Lamas are
reincarnations of the Dhyani Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. To take that claim
literally would show that the clarity of our thinking has not yet risen above
the clarity that is attainable within definite religious limits. But we will not
be far from the truth if we regard the proposition that Avalokitesvara is
reincarnated in a successive series of Dalai Lamas as a sort of intimation that
most Dalai Lamas are inspired by that great hierarchy, an intimation designed to
accord with the level of mass understanding. The second to last of the Tibetan
spiritual leaders was not wholly inspired, while the one ruling at present
(1957) is nothing other than an impostor, which accounts for his behavior.
As for the blue pyramid that has been beckoning to me for the last twenty
years—it is Heavenly Jerusalem, the higher transmyth of Christianity. It is
what lies behind the Christian creeds shared by Catholics, Orthodox believers,
Protestants, Ethiopians, and the future followers of the Rose of the World. I
said "creeds," but that is not precise, because it is almost
impossible to express that single, common truth in words. Heavenly Jerusalem is
the highest plane of the Synclites of Christian metacultures, and yet it is
still not the Church. The Church is the highest plane of Shadanakar. And before
undertaking to describe it, we must do an about-face and go down, far down into
fire and darkness. For without a notion of the frightful and dread demonic
sakwalas, we will also be unable to gain a proper notion of the higher planes of
Shadanakar.
4. The
Structure of Shadanakar: The Infraphysical Planes
ONE FACT that our religious consciousness has
failed to take into account to this day is that the Trinity intrinsic to God
recurs or is duplicated in some of the monads He creates. The crude saying,
"The Devil is the ape of God" has a profound and multifaceted meaning.
The warped, inverted imitation of the Trinity, the inner mystery of the Divine
Spirit, by the great demonic monads constitutes one of its most important
senses. I cannot, of course, shed any light on the triune of Lucifer. It is on a
level so infinitely beyond all the powers of our comprehension that it is
scarcely possible to apprehend anything about it other than the very fact of its
existence, the fact of its fall in times immemorial, and its continuous struggle
against God.
Despite the tremendous gap between the dimensions of his being and ours, the
nature of Gagtungr, the great demon of Shadanakar, may, under favorable
circumstances, be apprehended to a somewhat greater extent. Most important, his
triunity becomes evident, though the cause, origin, and purpose of that triunity
(if it does indeed have a purpose) remain a mystery.
What comes to light first of all is that we are dealing with a kind of
blasphemous parody of the hypostases of the Holy Trinity. But the nature of the
Divine Triune—arguably the most complex issue in theology—will be discussed,
if only briefly, in another section of the book. Thus, for now it is impossible
to shed light on the nature of the parody I have just mentioned. I will only say
that Gagtungr endeavors to counterpose his first person, the Great Torturer, to
the First Hypostasis of the Divine Trinity; his second person, who could best be
described by the name the Great Harlot, to the Second Hypostasis; and the
antipode called Urparp to the Third Hypostasis of the Trinity. Urparp is the
implementer of the demonic plan and in a certain sense might be called the
principle of form. It is that aspect of the great demonic being that manifests
itself in the life of various planes in Shadanakar as a power that actively
works toward transforming their nature in accordance with the designs and
purposes of the Torturer. It is the formative power. Fokerma, the Great Harlot,
is that aspect of the demonic being that pulls and draws souls and fates within
Gagtungr's compass. The first aspect, Gisturg, the Great Torturer, is the
ultimate depth of the demonic self, the repository of its higher will, power,
and desire.
His external appearance, as seen by the spiritual vision of those few humans who
have gained entry to the dark heights of Digm, his abode, is dreadful beyond all
description. Reclining, as it were, over a raging purple ocean, with black wings
stretched from horizon to horizon, he raises his dark grey face up to where a
blaze of infrapurple light pulses and flares, while above it all blazes a
luminary of an inconceivable color vaguely reminiscent of violet. Woe to those
whom Gagtungr fixes with his gaze and who return that gaze with open eyes. If I
remember correctly, of all the human agents of dark missions later brought to
Digm, only one, Torquemada, found the strength at that moment to call to mind
the name of God. All the other monads became slaves to the devil for untold
centuries to come.
Besides Gagtungr, the elect of evil also abide in Digm. They are the monads of a
very few humans that have merged with their demonized shells and the few souls
of certain beings of a demonic nature, including the grand igvas, the dark
leaders of antihumankind who have already completed their journey on various
denser material planes. There they together devise the plan for the struggle
against God; there they prostrate themselves before Gisturg, are intimate with
the Great Harlot, and are initiated into depths of knowledge in contemplating
the face of Urparp.
There is yet an even higher demonic plane in Shadanakar: multidimensional Shog,
whose materiality was created by the
great demons of the macrobramfatura. Powerful currents of dark energy flow out
of the depths of the Universe into the plane, and no one other than Gagtungr can
enter it. All others are only able to see it from the outside, and even then
only at rare moments. At those moments, they no longer perceive as spherical
that same luminary of indescribable color that blazes over Digm. Rather, they
perceive it as a pulsating arc stretching from one end of the plane to the
other, with its light still akin to violet. It is the galactic anticosmos, the
seat of power within the Galaxy of Lucifer himself. At times, the arc sags
inward, as it were, and Lucifer's energy pours into Shog. Thereupon Gagtungr,
imbibing it, raises his wings up to the black sky. That, at least, is how those
who see Shog from the outside perceive it. The manifestations and forms of that
world themselves are in actuality transcendental for us.
There are, however, other planes in Shadanakar from where the galactic
anticosmos is visible, though in a different aspect. The anticosmos of all
bramfaturas, Shadanakar included, are twodimensional: they are endless
geometrical planes, as it were. They all intersect along the same line, which
could be called the demonic axis of the Galaxy. To help the reader visualize it,
I will employ a kind of structural model. Take a book, stand it up vertically on
its spine, open it and spread its pages out, and in your mind imagine the two
dimensional plane of each of its pages extending on to infinity. All the planes
will intersect at different angles, but all along the same vertical line
somewhere on the spine. The demonic axis of the Galaxy, its anticosmos, is the
cosmic prototype for the line of intersection of all these planes. Naturally, it
will be visible to any being abiding on any of these twodimensional worlds,
including the corresponding plane in Shadanakar.
The two-dimensional plane in Shadanakar is sometimes called hell, but the term
is not entirely appropriate. The plane is not where human souls suffer in the
afterlife; rather, it is the abode of most of the demonic beings of our planet.
It could be called the anticosmos of Shadanakar, but that is not quite correct
either, because the anticosmos is not that one plane alone but all the demonic
worlds that counterpose the Divine Cosmos. It is only, so to speak, the chief
demonic stronghold. Its real name is Gashsharva.
One could, if one likes, consider the beings there to be incarnated. On the
other hand, the concept of incarnation is extremely relative. Their monads
always remain high up in Digm and Shog, while their shells, for the most part,
languish between incarnations in the Pit of Shadanakar, a horrible
onedimensional world.
Gashsharva is the nucleus of the system of worlds created by the demonic powers
of Shadanakar to counter the Divine Cosmos and eventually subvert it. No human
being could help viewing that dismal yet awesome world as anything but horrific.
The combination of a large number of time streams with only two dimensions
produces a peculiar spiritually stifling atmosphere. Every monad experiences
great pain when its shelf enters that world, a pain reminiscent of the sensation
that would arise if a body were forced into a tight iron corset. The fewer the
dimensions, the denser the materiality of the world. The atmosphere of that
world, however, still resembles air, while the completely flat and uniform
ground is harder than any matter in Enrof. There is no equivalent of our
vegetation. The radiation of the beings themselves and certain mechanical
devices serve as light sources. Blue and green are not visible here, though two
kinds of infrared are. I will give one of them the provisional name of
infrapurple, stressing as I do so that it has no relation to infraviolet. The
impression it produces is like that of a very thick, dark, and intense purple.
The galactic anticosmos, which is visible from Digm as a luminary of an
absolutely inconceivable and indescribable color, and from Shog in the form of a
titanic blazing and pulsating infrapurple arc stretching across the sky, appears
to Gashsharva as a section of the horizon that emits infrapurple light of
uniform strength from infinitely distant regions.
All the inhabitants of Gashsharva are bound together by the tyranny of Gagtungr
and, at the same time, by a kind of union of shared interests. They hate
Gagtungr, yet not as much, of course, as they hate God. The keepers of the lower
purgatories, magma, and core—the three sakwalas of Retribution—abide there.
Vrubel's The Fallen Demon has a twofold meaning. It is both a memory of Digm, of
Gagtungr with wings stretched to the horizons, and a metaportrait, or rather, an
infraportrait, of a lesser demon: a keeper of one of the purgatories. They are
called angels of darkness, and the name captures their appearance perfectly.
There is something human-like about them, they have large wings of astonishing
beauty, and one senses something regal in the purplish and reddish color of
their wings. But in Vrubel's picture these extraordinary wings are broken. The
artist's brilliant intuition conveyed through this detail the chief disability
crippling Gashsharva's inhabitants. Their wings are in actuality undamaged, but
the possibility of using them is painfully limited, for they can only struggle
laboriously, but not fly, through the plane's dense yet transparent atmosphere.
The ashen pallor of their faces is loathsome and terrible; their predatory and
merciless nature is wholly revealed in their facial features. These keepers of
the lower purgatories replenish their energy by imbibing the gavvakh of humans
drawn down to the purgatories by their karma. In passing from Gashsharva to
those purgatories, they enter a less dense atmosphere in which crooked, uneven
flight, all zigzags and jerks, is nevertheless possible.
Other inhabitants of Gashsharva, ryphras, the keepers of the magma, bear
absolutely no resemblance to humans. Each of them individually resembles most
closely a moving ridge of hills. They have something like a face, but the
features are very indistinct.
The reader might criticize me next for my lack of imagination or for
faithfulness to Christian tradition just where it is the most suspect. But it is
that very same free play of the imagination that I am trying to banish from
these pages, and the fewer the fancies they contain the better. As for Christian
tradition, what is retained here does not depend on my personal preferences but
on corroboration by my spiritual experience. Unfortunately, the existence of
certain beings popularized in Christian demonology has also received such
corroboration. Strange as it may seem, beings resembling the devils of our
legends do in fact exist, complete with, believe it or not, horns and tail. They
abide in Gashsharva, where they have the dubious pleasure of being the keepers
of the Core—the sakwala comprising the most horrific planes of torment in
Shadanakar. Generally speaking, many of the legends we are accustomed to
treating with a smile or, at best, regarding as symbolic should be taken quite
literally. Now there is a challenge that is beyond the powers of the modern
rational mind!
Gashsharva is inhabited by a wide range of fantastic beings. Among them I also
know of powerful female demons, to whom I am accustomed to giving the
provisional name of velgas. They are giants. They sometimes manifest themselves
in human history as fomentors of violence and anarchy. In no way do they
resemble humans or even the monsters of our world here. They are more like huge,
coiling, blanketing cloaks of black and purple. Every people, as I recall, has
only one velga. In any case, in Russia, there is only one, a very ancient one.
Their incarnations in Gashsharva—if we can consider them incarnations—last
for centuries.
At one time all those beings lived on the Earth's surface—not in Enrof, but on
a plane of approximately the same density and even remotely resembling it.
Created by Gagtungr at the very beginning of Shadanakar's history, that plane
has long ceased to exist. The demonic beings were smaller in size in that world
and were, on the whole, somewhat different in appearance. But they were unable
to feel at ease there. They were pressed and cowed by the light. Their essence
would have been transformed under its influence and would eventually have ceased
to conform to their demonic natures. They do not have an easy life now in
Gashsharva, but there they nevertheless remain who they are.
Still other beings make that plane their home, but I know nothing about them,
though I do know that some of those who were humans in Enrof abide there. They
are the agents of special dark missions. Contrary to expectation, they
experience virtually no suffering there. They have a different purpose for being
there. In Gashsharva they are meticulously groomed by the powers of Gagtungr for
their next incarnation among humanity.
What could bring a human shelf to accept such a mission? Danton accepted his out
of fear. Having descended after death through all the planes to the Pit of
Shadanakar, he was, through the efforts of Urparp, taken up from there to
Gashsharva and some time later was born yet again in Enrof. I don't know if he
has died yet this time, but quite recently he was living in Russia, where in
performing a new dark mission he brought several greatly gifted people to ruin.
Sometimes a dark mission is accepted voluntarily, out of a thirst for power or
blood, out of an inborn predisposition for evil. Such was the case, for example,
with Tamerlane, who after death passed through the same circles as Danton, only
more slowly. Raised up finally to Gashsharva, he had no choice but to accept a
new mission. That mission was of far less importance than the first. Gagtungr
loves to make a mockery of everyone, including his puppets.
The forces of Light are frequently forced to descend to Gashsharva. To descend
thus is very painful but necessary: events in the struggle with Gagtungr's
legions require it. The inhabitants of Gashsharva see their enemies penetrating
into their world, but they are powerless to prevent it.
The Demonic Base comprises yet another world, a world of one time stream and one
dimension. It is the Pit of Shadanakar, the plane of torment for demonic shelts
and for those few people who have performed dark missions.
The Pit came into being at the very dawn of our bramfatura through the efforts
of Gagtungr and other, more powerful dark forces. It is composed of the densest
materiality possible. In Enrof, only the materiality of stellar cores or that of
the monstrous bodies of our Galaxy known as "white dwarfs" can to any
extent be likened to it. It is difficult to imagine how movement could take
place under such conditions. It does, though it is movement that is painful to
the highest degree. It is necessary for the maintenance of their level of
energy; otherwise they are sucked into a kind of cavity that leads to an even
more wretched place: the Pit of the Galaxy.
That all serves to clarify once and for all the relativity of the concept of
incarnation. Demons, having incarnated in Gashsharva or on certain other planes
of three and even four dimensions, sink to the Pit after death, where a new
body, the densest possible, awaits them. That is the law of karma, whose double
edge is turned back on the demons themselves. To replenish his energy, Gagtungr
himself imbibes the radiations of their sufferings in the Pit. Why not rebel
against the law of karma? It is that same karmic law which supplies them with
energy during their incarnations on all the other planes. To fight the law would
be tantamount to renouncing gavvakh as food, tantamount to entering into
conflict with the entire demonic camp and the whole anticosmos—that is, it
would be tantamount to ceasing to be a demon.
There is such a pit in every bramfatura in our Universe, except in those that
are free of the demonic. Thus, there are millions of such pits in the Galaxy.
Just as the two-dimensional cosmic planes of many anticosmoses or gashsharvas
intersect along a common line, all the cosmic lines of galactic pits converge at
a single point. The point is located in the Antares solar system. It is no
coincidence that the star, also called the Heart of the Scorpion, served as the
embodiment of sinister, even diabolical, powers in many mythologies of antiquity
and the Middle Ages. That immense solar system is the focal point of the
Galaxy's anti-God forces, their abode in the three-dimensional world. It is also
a gigantic metabramfatura of demons, the anticosmos of our Milky Way to the
degree that the anticosmos is manifested at all in Enrof. I have already said
that bramfaturas in which demons have been victorious are not long-lived, and
the large planet revolving around Antares that is presently energizing the Pit
of Shadanakar will soon break up, but another will take its place. The one that
energized the Pit at the time of Shadanakar's founding perished millions of
years ago.
Antares is visible in our latitudes low on the southern horizon in late spring
and summer, and many may remember well its brightly pulsating wine-red rays.
Neither the sun nor any other heavenly bodies are visible from the Pit of
Shadanakar—only motionless Antares, on which one end of the Pit rests. In the
Pit, it appears infrared. In the opposite direction, the one-dimensional world
fades as it approaches the surface of the Earth.
Nothing is visible in that direction. That is where the cavity to the timeless
Pit of the Galaxy lies concealed.
It is difficult to imagine how a body, denser than any other, could resemble the
simplest thing we are capable of imagining: a kind of black line. It is even
more difficult to conceive how it is that those beings retain the equivalent of
sight and even touch. The most incomprehensible thing, I would think, is how
they are able to see at all through that densest of atmospheres. It is from that
atmosphere that they replenish their energy. Interaction between them is
possible but extremely limited. Their suffering is beyond description.
Not only the Pit but all the worlds of the Demonic Base appeared, as I have
mentioned, while the physical body of Shadanakar was cooling. Before the
emergence of organic life in Enrof, Gagtungr centered his activities around
attempts to establish a demonic plane on the surface of the Earth and, when that
failed, to reinforce and expand Gashsharva and other planes connected with the
lower layers of the crust, the magma, and the core of the planet. When organic
life did emerge in Enrof, he focused his efforts on gaining sway over the animal
realm—efforts that were in part successful—and on making the demiurges' laws
more oppressive. The resultant of those two forces formed the basis for the laws
of Nature and karma under which we live.
The Semitic religions are disposed to attribute to God responsibility for the
severity of the laws. Surprising as it is, their severity itself, at least the
severity of the laws of retribution, did not arouse any protest, and were not
even recognized as overly harsh. Even the saints of Christian metacultures
reconciled themselves with inscrutable calm to the idea of eternal suffering for
sinners. Their minds were not troubled by the absurdity of eternal retribution
for temporal evil, while their conscience— how I don't know—was appeased by
the idea of everlasting immutability, that is, the inevitability of these laws.
But that mode of reasoning and conscience is long past. The idea that the Law,
in the form it has taken, was created according to God's will should seem
blasphemous to us now.
Yes, not a hair of your head will be lost nor will a single leaf on a tree
rustle except through the will of God. But we should understand that to mean not
that the universal Law in its entirety is the manifestation of God's will but
that the maturation of free wills that make up the Universe is sanctioned by
God. The existence of a great many free wills gave rise to the possibility that
some of them would deny God. Their denial led to their struggle with the forces
of Light and to their creation of an anticosmos counterposed to the Cosmos of
the Creator.
From the very moment life emerged in Enrof; Gagtungr and his horde left their
imprint on the laws governing that life. They were unable to change the laws of
the middle planes of Shadanakar, but many species and classes of animals and
some planes of elementals fell under their sway, either wholly or in part. That
is the origin of the duality of what we call Nature: beauty, spirituality,
harmony, and peacefulness on the one hand; living beings killing each other on
the other. Is it not obvious that both these aspects are equally real? Is there
even one person with a brain and conscience, no matter how deeply he or she
might love Nature, who would venture to say that its harmony eclipses and
alleviates the boundless sea of suffering that is evident to the unprejudiced
eye? And could even one person be found who, despite that sea of suffering—so
glaring, so indisputable, so incessantly bombarding our ears with the groans and
cries of living beings—has not even once in a while still experienced the
inexplicable harmony and incomparable beauty of Nature? How is it that to this
day people have failed to understand and resolve that crucial paradox? Is it not
because in the West religious thought for more than twenty centuries has been
held in thrall by the idea of God's absolute omnipotence and by consequent
preconceptions about the oneness of Nature? And in the East, is it not because a
deep-rooted philosophical monism has not permitted people to approach an
understanding of Nature's duality?
DURING, THE PREHISTORIC ERA, the demonic powers
were occupied with slowing human development and preparing the planes of
transphysical magma and the core to receive millions of human souls in the
future. Later, during historical times, the shrastrs and Witzraor sakwalas were
created. The majority of purgatories appeared at even later times.
Our survey of the worlds of retribution begins with the purgatories, because
they are closer to us than the other planes. They are more commensurate with our
customary notions, and in the case of a descent after death, it is in the
purgatories that the descent begins. In the majority of cases, it ends there as
well.
The word purgatory is borrowed from Catholicism, but many of the Catholic
beliefs invested in it do not coincide with the overall picture of what is to be
described. The term sheol could also have been used in reference to those
planes, but the Judaic images of those shadowy lands of the dead will also find
no parallel in my description.
The purgatories of the various metacultures differ somewhat from each other.
Taken separately, each of them also undergoes substantial changes over the
course of centuries. In addition, they took shape in different historical
periods. There were none at all in the metacultures of antiquity, the Byzantine
metaculture included. To be more precise, worlds of eternal suffering existed in
their place, and a distinct echo of the mystical knowledge about planes of
eternal suffering can be heard in the majority of ancient religions.
The oldest of the purgatories belongs to the Indian metaculture. It was the
Indian Synclite that first attained the power of
Light necessary to prevent Gagtungr's forces from turning into planes of torment
their sakwala of afterlife atonement—a sakwala that the Indian metaculture had
inherited from the daemons and Titans, the most ancient of humankind. Later some
planes in the metacultures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were converted
into purgatories. The key role in that was played by the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ, His descent into the demonic worlds, and the struggle that ensued over
several centuries between the Christian Synclites and the demons over mitigation
of the Law of Retribution. But the struggle did not end in victory in the
Byzantine metaculture. The enemy camp offered stubborn resistance. As a result,
the Byzantine metaculture broke away from Enrof.
I mentioned before, in passing, the implications of the Byzantine Orthodox
Church's refusal to embrace the idea of purgatories when it arose in the Western
Church. The horrifying prospect of the eternal torments awaiting the soul of a
sinner should be regarded as the impulse for the extreme asceticism with which
the Byzantine religious spirit burned to the very end of its history. Yes, the
eschatological depths, with all the extremes of its demonic cruelty, unfolded
before the eyes of Byzantine prophets. One can only be surprised not at the
desperate ascetic excesses of that culture but at the fact that such excesses
did not take place in all the metacultures that lacked purgatories.
The first sheol in the Russian metaculture was created in the twelfth century,
after having been converted from a plane of torment through the efforts of
Christ. Its appearance has changed somewhat over time, and the karmic weights
that draw the dead down into that world have changed as well. Be that as it may,
the mechanics of the Law of Retribution have, of course, remained always and
everywhere the same: it dictates that a violation of moral laws encumbers the
ether body of the perpetrator. While such a person is still alive, the
encumbered ether body remains afloat, as it were, on the surface of the
three-dimensional world, with the physical body playing the role of life
preserver. But as soon as that person's link is severed by death, the ether body
begins to sink deeper and deeper, from plane to plane, until it reaches
equilibrium with its surroundings.
These are the basic mechanics. But there are also beings who oversee its smooth
operation: the enforcers of karma. Among the various demons of Shadanakar, they
are a class unto themselves. They are newcomers. When the demonic hordes of the
planet Daiya were expelled to the bramfatura of its moon, and the moon soon
after broke up into a mass of dead fragments (asteroids), its demonic
inhabitants scattered into space in search of a new haven. A group of them
entered Shadanakar after concluding a sort of pact with Gagtungr's forces. They
are beings of superior intellect, but they are as cold as ice emotionally. They
know neither hate nor love, malice nor compassion. They assumed supervision of
the mechanics of karma, replenishing their energy with emanations from the
mental suffering of people who have been forced to descend to Skrivnus, Ladref,
and Morod—the upper planes of the purgatories—after their life in Enrof. The
enforcers of karma are immense in size, they are as translucent and grey as
frosted glass, their bodies are rectangular, and, strangely enough, their faces
somewhat resemble those of guard dogs: pointy ears and alert eyes. They enter
into battle with the forces of Light only when those forces undertake to
mitigate the laws of karma and to transform purgatories.
The first of the purgatories is called Skrivnus. It is the very picture of a
stark, Godless world and society: a colorless landscape, a leaden grey sea that
is always calm. Withered grass, stunted bushes, and moss call to mind our
tundra. But at least in the spring, the tundra is covered with flowers. Not a
single flower has sprouted from the soil of Skrivnus. Hollows surrounded by
short but unscalable slopes serve as the dwelling places of the millions who
were once people.
Skrivnus knows neither love nor hope nor joy nor religion nor art. Nor has it
ever seen children. Interminable labor is interrupted only by sleep, but the
sleep is without dreams and the labor is without creativity. Huge, frightful
beings keep watch on the other side of the slopes. From time to time they toss
out piles of objects that seem to float through the air. On its own, each object
finds the one who is to work on it: mending old clothes no one needs, washing
things that look like bottles caked in grease and dirt, stripping pieces of
broken metal. Both work and sleep take place primarily in long barracks,
sectioned off inside by waist partitions.
The inhabitants fully retain their human appearance, but their facial features
are smudged and flattened. They remind one of identical-looking pancakes. Be
that as it may, the memory of life in Enrof is not only preserved in the hearts
of the inhabitants; it gnaws at them like the dream of paradise lost. The most
relentless of the torments of Skrivnus is the weariness of interminable slavery,
the tedium of the labor, and the absence of any hope for the future.
It is not a hopeful prospect, but the nightmare of an everpresent threat that
offers the only seemingly realistic way out of that place. A black, box-like
ship appears on the sea and quickly and noiselessly glides into shore. Its
sighting sends the inhabitants into a horrified panic, since none of them can be
sure that they will not be swallowed up in the pitch black of the ship's hold.
Having rounded up a number of them—they whose karmic weight condemns them to
suffer on deeper planes—the ship casts off. Those confined in the hold do not
see the route being taken. They only sense their horizontal motion giving way to
a spiraling descent, as if the ship were being sucked into a whirling maelstrom.
Skrivnus is restricted to the expiatory suffering of those whose conscience has
not been sullied by the memory of grave sins or crimes but whose consciousness
in Enrof was insulated from the will and influence of its shelf by a thick wall
of worldly cares and exclusively material concerns.
The next plane resembles the previous one, but it is darker, as if it were
suspended in nebulous murk on the edge of everlasting night. There are neither
buildings nor crowds here. Everyone, however, is aware of the unseen proximity
of a great many others: tracks like footprints betray their presence. That
purgatory is called Ladref, and tens of millions spend a brief time there.
Descent to Ladref is the consequence of religious skepticism, which does not
give spirituality the power to penetrate into a person's essence and lighten his
or her ether body.
They who are doomed to a further descent have the impression of falling asleep
and then suddenly waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. In actual fact, demonic
beings—the enforcers of karma—transport them while they are in a stupor into
a different time stream, though the number of dimensions—three— remains
constant in all the sheols.
Those expiating their karma find themselves in a darkness where only the soil
and sparse equivalents of vegetation emit a dim phosphorescent light. Glowing
cliffs do lend a grim beauty to the landscape in places. That is the last plane
with vestiges of what we group under the name Nature. The planes that follow
will consist solely of urban settings.
In Morod, that next plane, absolute silence reigns. Everyone in that world is
convinced they are utterly alone, there being no signs of any other inhabitants.
An overpowering feeling of forsakenness encases them like a suit of armor. In
vain do they scramble about, pray, call for help, or seek out others—all are
left alone with their own soul. But their souls are corrupt, their memories are
sullied by the wrongs they did on Earth, and there is nothing more frightening
for such souls than solitude and quiet. There, everyone comes to a full
realization of the meaning and repercussions of the wrongs they committed on
Earth and drains the cup of horror their sins instill. Nothing distracts the
unfortunates from that endless internal monologue, not even the struggle for
survival. There is no struggle—there is food all around in abundance in the
form of certain kinds of soil. As for clothing, in the majority of planes, Morod
included, the ether body itself radiates a material coating—a coating for
which clothes are a substitute in our world. And if, in the worlds of
Enlightenment, this coating is beautiful and radiant, the creative handicap of
the inhabitants of Morod allows only for the creation of ether rags. In point of
fact, the astral-ether essence of those undergoing expiation was already clothed
in such tatters back in Ladref.
They whose conscience Morod does not cleanse can no longer expect a smooth
passage into the next plane. Instead, they
experience a sudden and terrifying plunge down into it. It is as if a quagmire
opens up underneath the unfortunates and sucks them down: first their legs, then
their bodies, and last their heads.
Our survey of the purgatories has arrived at Agr, a plane of black vapors, where
the dark mirror images of the great cities of Enrof dot the landscape like
islands. Agr, like all the purgatories, does not extend into outer space, so
neither sun nor stars nor moon can be seen there. The sky appears as a solid
firmament wrapped in constant night. Some objects glow of themselves; the ground
also emits a dull glow, as if it were saturated with blood. There is one
dominant color there, but we in Enrof are unable to see it. It gives an
impression close to dark crimson and might well be the color we know as
infrared.
I am only slightly acquainted with infra-Petersburg. As I recall, it also has a
large river, but it is as black as ink, and there are buildings that emit a
blood-red glow. It could, in a way, be likened to the light given off by the
fires on Vasilievsky Island on national holidays, but it is a ghastly likeness.
Those who have fallen into that world have retained their human features, but
their bodies are deformed and repulsive. They are short in height and their
movements have slowed. Their bodies no longer radiate any kind of material
substitute for clothes, and unrelieved nakedness reigns everywhere. One of the
torments of Agr is a feeling of impotent shame and a constant awareness of one's
own wretched state. The inhabitants are also tormented by the beginnings of a
stinging pity for others like them, as it dawns on them that they share the
blame for their tragic fate.
The unfortunates are afflicted by a third torment: fear. It is instilled by
volgras, demonic predators also present in Agr. When we had come near the
building that constitutes the dark-ether body of the Engineer's Castle, I saw a
huge creature the size of a dinosaur sitting motionless on its roof. It was a
female, one droopy and flabby with grey, porous skin. Forlornly pressing a cheek
to the tower and hugging it with its right paw, the poor thing was staring
blankly into the distance with what appeared to be empty eye sockets. It seemed
very unhappy. I had the impression it desperately wanted to cry out or howl, but
it had no mouth or orifice of any kind. To feel pity for it, however, was in
itself very dangerous. The crafty predator was on the lookout for prey, and any
of those who had been humans were potential victims. The poor beings, wild with
fear of the volgras and hardly daring to breathe, were hiding behind corners or
skulking at the base of the buildings the monsters had chosen to rest on. To be
eaten, or rather, to be sucked in by a volgra through its porous skin, is to die
in Agr, but only to reappear even lower, in Bustvich or in horrible Rafag.
I later learned that there were a great many volgras, that they are to some
degree intelligent, and that the primitive, dark civilization that characterizes
Agr is their creation. They had virtually no mechanical devices to facilitate
their labor. They erected the buildings that I saw all around by hand, using
material similar to the trunks of California's giant redwoods, and every piece
of that material, once it had been fixed to the other pieces, began to glow with
a dull crimson light that illuminated virtually nothing. What connection exists
between the buildings in the human cities of Enrof and the volgras' buildings in
Agr remains a mystery to me.
They have no oral language, of course, but they do use a kind of sign language.
They must have built the buildings for shelter from the brief showers that
poured down every few minutes. The rain was black.
Also strange is the fact that volgras have three sexes, not two. The male
impregnates the neuter, who carries the embryo for a period of time and then
passes it on to the future mother.
But here and there silent buildings that do not glow at all dot the civilization
like islands. The volgras did not go anywhere near them. There must have been
something I could not see that was hindering them. Such buildings were standing
on the site of St. Isaac's Cathedral and certain other churches in St.
Petersburg. They are the only refuge where the tormented of Agr can feel safe
from the volgras, if only for a short time. Who built them? When? Out of what? I
do not know. Hunger did not permit the unfortunates to hide long in those
shelters, but drove them out in search of the edible mold that grows on the base
of buildings in that bleak city.
If those who were human are not doomed by a heavy karma to fall prey to a volgra
and come to in the next world of descent, then they are destined sooner or later
to undergo a transformation that will lift them up. The bodies of those who are
nearing completion of their atonement gradually begin to change. They grow in
height, the facial features they used to have begin to form anew, and the
volgras do not dare go near them. The transformation itself takes place with the
assistance of brothers and sisters from Heavenly Russia. Descending to Agr, they
surround the ones who have completed their ordeal. Only those others who
themselves will soon be raised from there in the same way are allowed to be in
attendance. While they watch from the wings, it seems to them that the members
of the Synclite lift those freed onto their wings or into the folds of
glittering sheets. The volgras, gripped by mystic fear and trembling, watch from
a distance, unable to understand what is happening.
The staircase of ascent is not closed to a single demonic monad, not even to
volgras. But such a conversion requires a high level of consciousness, which is
hardly ever in evidence there.
Something completely different is sometimes in evidence there instead. The
landscape is broken in places by glowing puddles that resemble small pools of
waste. There is something nauseating about the green in them. It is Bustvich,
the next lowest plane, visible through Agr. Everything there is rotting, but
nothing decomposes completely. The sensation of rotting alive combined with a
spiritual lethargy constitutes the torment of Bustvich. They whose soul,
encumbered by indulgence of unenlightened physical desires, did not fashion any
kind of counterweight during life on Earth, unravel the knots of their karma in
Bustvich. There the prisoner is gnawed at by an overpowering feeling of self
disgust, because its ether body has taken the form of excrement. For, horrifying
and revolting as it may be, Bustvich is essentially nothing more than the
volgras' cesspool.
Physical torments begin to commingle with mental ones. The prisoners are
extremely restricted in their mobility, and in their means of self-defense. But
self-defense is of primary necessity for every one of them, for abiding with
them there, between incarnations in one of the worlds of demonic elementals, are
the souls of small, human-like demons coated in a dark ether body. They look
like human worms, and are about the size of cats. They eat alive those who at
one time were humans in Enrof, and they do it slowly, a little at a time.
At that time (that is, in 1949), the Emperor Paul I was in that plane's twin
copy of the Engineer's Castle. (There is one in Bustvich as well.) He had
already passed through a cycle of torments on deeper planes and was being slowly
raised up to Drokkarg, the shrastr of Russian antihumankind. I was astonished by
the harshness of his fate. But it was explained to me that if the agony of his
murder on the night of March 1 2th had not relieved him of a part of his karmic
weight and if instead he had continued to tyrannize the country right up until a
death by natural causes, the weight of his crimes would have drawn him down even
deeper, until he had reached Propulk, one of the most horrific of the planes of
torment.
Bustvich is followed by the purgatory of Rafag, where the karmic consequences of
betrayals and self-serving loyalty to tyrants are expunged. Rafag is the torment
of constant affliction by debilitating illness of a sort that might find on our
plane a distant parallel in cholera. Rafag is the last plane in which the
landscape is even faintly reminiscent of our cities, but there are no shelters
such as were scattered throughout Bustvich and Agr. The mantle of humanity's
prayers does not reach Rafag; only the powers of the Synclites and upper
hierarchies of Shadanakar can penetrate beyond it.
Angels of darkness rule over the lowest three purgatories.
Shim-big, the first of these planes, is a slow stream flowing through an
inexpressibly oppressive world enclosed under a high vault. It is hard to tell
what the source of its drab, colorless half-light is. A drizzle sprinkles on the
stream, raising tiny bubbles on its surface. It is no longer the covering of the
souls being tormented there but the souls themselves, in their decomposed ether
bodies, that resemble wispy brown rags. They stumble back and forth, grabbing
hold of whatever they can to keep from falling into the stream. It is not only
fear that torments them. They are afflicted even more by a feeling of shame of
unsurpassed intensity and by a desperate longing for their real body and for the
soft, warm world—memories of the joys of life on Earth.
The feeling of pity also intensifies there.
In the meantime, the mouth of the stream can be seen up ahead. The stream
itself, and the entire tunnel-shaped world, breaks off just as a subway tunnel
breaks off where a trestle begins. But the water does not fall anywhere: the
water and the banks and the vault—everything—dissolves into a grey,
featureless void. Nobody can exist there, and there is not even a hint of any
kind of ground or atmosphere. Only one thing does not disappear there: the spark
of self-consciousness. In that purgatory, Drornn, the soul experiences the
terrifying illusion of non-existence.
In Shim-big, atonement is done by those who were responsible for a few human
deaths (even the deaths of criminals), whether by passing death sentences or by
denouncing someone to the authorities. In Dromn can be found those whose
violation of the Law would seem, in our view, incomparably lesser. The
arithmetic of karma is strange indeed! What draws one down to Dromn is not
heinous crimes or bloodshed but only the karmic consequences of a zealous
atheism, an aggressive repudiation of spirituality, the active promotion of the
false idea of the soul's mortality. The secret behind that surprising and
seemingly disproportionate punishment is that those acts of will corked tight,
as it were, the breathing holes of the soul while it was still in Enrof,
resulting in an even greater encumbering of the ether essence than occurs even
as the result of individual crimes taken separately. To prisoners of Dromn, it
appears that nothing exists anywhere, that they themselves do not exist—just
as they imagined it during their lives. Only after tremendous efforts taking up
no brief span of time are they able to come to grips with the astonishing fact
that, contrary to all reason and common sense, their conscious self does not
disappear even there, in the void.
In so doing, they begin to understand, vaguely at first, that it could all have
been very different if they had not chosen that nonexistence, or
semi-nonexistence, themselves.
But the misery of self-inflicted aloneness that colors their stay in Dromn
begins to give way, little by little, to alarm. The self feels as if it is being
drawn somewhere down and to the side and as if it is turning from a dot into an
elongated body pointed downward. The absence of any points of reference prevents
it from knowing whether it is falling slowly or descending at a rapid speed. The
only orientation it has is an inner voice, which howls louder than any logical
thought, that it is moving neither up nor horizontally, but down.
Down below, an area of pink comes into view. For several seconds the color may
even appear inviting. But then a blood-chilling guess takes hold of the
unfortunate self: it realizes that it is falling helplessly into a calm sea of
molten iron. It gains in weight, and it hits the molten-red surface of Fukabirn,
the last plane in the sakwala of purgatories, and plunges deep down into it.
Besides the burning sensation, the torment consists of a feeling of horror at
descending into eternal torture, a descent that rings of finality.
Commencing after Fukabirn is the sakwala of transphysical magma. These
circumscribed worlds coexist in three-dimensional space, though in different
time streams, with belts of molten rock within the planet's crust. I would like
to repeat and stress that in all the metacultures, except the Indian, the
suffering in those worlds was without end until Jesus Christ carried out His
liberating descent into them, which in Church tradition is called the descent of
the Savior into the dead. From that moment on, it became possible, though only
at the cost of tremendous efforts, for the forces of Light to extricate
sufferers from those abysses after the period of time necessary for them to
unravel the knots of their personal karma.
The first of the magmas is Okrus, the muddy bottom of Fukabirn.
As far back as in Dromn, the shelf had been left without any of its old coatings
and a new bodily essence had begun to form. Its formation nears completion in
Okrus, but there is nothing even remotely human in its appearance. It is a
spherical object of animate inframetal.
Who are the torments of Fukabirn and Okrus for? There are actually few such
sufferers. Millions suffered in Skrivous and Ladref, but hundreds, perhaps only
dozens, suffer here. The condemnation of ideological enemies to horrible
tortures, the condemnation of the innocent, the torment of the defenseless, the
torture of children—that is what is expiated through suffering in Okrus and
Fukabirn.
There, the tormented remember well the religious teachings and the warnings they
were given on Earth. They are sensible of bodily pain as retribution but have
already begun to recognize the dual nature of the Law and the demonic, not
Divine, responsibility for its harshness. Their consciousness begins to waken.
That is the Providential side of the Law, the ancient basis for it that was
established by the demiurges back before Gagtungr's invasion of Shadanakar. The
wakening of consciousness, the wakening of conscience, and the growth of
spiritual thirst are those aspects of the Law of Retribution that the forces of
Light did not cede to the dark forces and thanks to which the Law, despite
everything, has not become an absolute evil.
In its infraphysical state, the magma is very similar to its physical
counterpart. Prisoners there at first retain their freedom of movement, but
there is as yet no need to make efforts to sustain their existence. They absorb
energy from their surroundings automatically. The same is true of Gvegr, the
second belt of magma, a motionless lava sea.
I would, however, like to remind the reader that suffering of any kind in Enrof
alleviates torments in the afterlife, primarily by reducing their time span, but
sometimes also through a change in their "quality." On the whole, the
length of a soul's expiatory punishments after death is determined by the number
of the victims that suffered from its actions in Enrof. Mass crimes result in
descent to a lower plane of retribution. For example, Urkarvire can take the
place of Okrus, or Propulk can take the place of Gvegr. For the bodily suffering
that began in Fukabirn and increased in Okrus and Gvegr reaches its zenith on
the next plane, the seething magma of Urkarvire. There, the corrupters of lofty
and enlightened ideas, who bear the blame for warping the transphysical paths of
thousands and millions, do atonement. Urkarvire likewise harbors those who are
guilty of those heinous deeds known, in our dry, lifeless language, as conscious
sadism—that is, not only did the criminals experience a feeling of pleasure
from causing others suffering but they were fully aware of the immorality of the
pleasure at the time. They were aware, but that did not prevent them from
enjoying it, nor from indulging in it time and again.
Fortunately, time flows much more quickly there. For example, a world famous
writer of modern times, who was not guilty of conscious sadism, of course, but
of corrupting ideals, of perverting ideas and poisoning a great many minds with
lies, had the impression that he had spent only a few days there, and not the
ten years it was in Enrof time.
Next comes the hard magma of Propulk, the world
of expiatory suffering for mass butchers, the instigators of bloody wars, and
the torturers of entire peoples. All freedom of movement is lost. Their bodies
feel as if they were lodged in a hard substance and pressed from all sides. But
even this horrible bodily suffering is surpassed by the suffering of the soul.
They feel a stinging remorse and longing for God that is impossible on any of
the planes above it. Fortunately, few descend to Propulk. Need I say that Yezhov
or Beria's cohorts are there? Amazingly, only a short while ago, Malyuta
Skuratov was still suffering there. In the Propulk of the Western metacultures,
not only Robespierre and Saint-Just but even some of the sixteenth-century
inquisitors were still unraveling their karma.
The magma sakwala concludes with the superheavy magma of Yrl. The bodily
suffering there is completely overshadowed by spiritual torment. Yrl was created
for the punishment of those who in our legal tongue are called "repeat
offenders": those who, having once already fallen to the magma and returned
to Enrof, again encumbered themselves with unspeakable crimes.
The magmas end there.
Below the magmas begins the sakwala of worlds corresponding to the physical core
of the planet, worlds common to all metacultures.
First come the infrared caves of Biask, the direst of the red infernos, as we
might designate the entire staircase of planes from Fukabirn down to Biask.
There, the body again metamorphoses, sprouting the semblance of a head and four
limbs. But the gift of speech is lost, for there is no one with whom to
converse. Each of the prisoners is held in solitary confinement and sees only
his or her tormentors, who, strangely enough, resemble the devils of our
legends. Sitting here in Enrof in relative security, we can afford to chuckle as
much as we like about people believing in those horned villains, but do not wish
even your sworn enemy a closer acquaintance with them. The victims that fall to
Biask number at most in the dozens, but because there is a great throng of
devils in need of their gavvakh, these devils wring gavvakh out of their victims
by every means they are capable of devising.
The victims of Biask are those who in Enrof were tempters of the spirit. Such
crimes are judged so harshly because they do great karmic damage to thousands of
human souls. Even butchers at whose hands hundreds of people have died
physically do not do as much harm as those about whom it is said in the Gospels:
"whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would
be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be
drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt.18:6). And even if Yaroslavsky or
Bedny had been good people in their private lives, it would not have saved them
from the fate that awaits tempters of the spirit in the afterlife.
Beneath Biask gape the vertical cracks of Amints. Those who fall there get
snagged, as it were, and hang there completely helpless. And since the cracks
lead down to Gashsharva, the unfortunates finds themselves hanging right over
the lair of the demonic powers in Shadanakar. In Amiuts are those who combined
conscious sadism with an immensity of heinous deeds.
But there are side tunnels leading from the vertical cracks of Amints. They are
Ytrech, the planetary night which will last until the end of our planet's
existence in Enrof—that is, until the end of the second (future) eon. There
have been very few there, Ivan the Terrible, for instance. Further, there is yet
another, very special plane. Only this plane could be equal to the crime of
Judas Iscariot. It is called Zhursh, and no one except Judas has ever entered
it.
It goes without saying that we do not have even the slightest inkling of the
suffering experienced on the planes of the Core.
Our survey has now arrived at the graveyard of Shadanakar, the last of the
planes. I could not clearly make out its name. Sometimes it sounded like Suiel,
sometimes I thought it was closer to Suietkh, and the question has remained
unresolved in my mind. Those who persist in doing evil descend there from the
lower planes of torment. Their shelts—what is left of them— are abandoned by
their monads. The monads leave Shadanakar for good, to start anew in places,
times, and forms beyond our conception. Yet that is still better than falling
through the Pit of Shadanakar into the Pit of the Galaxy. At least in the former
case the monad does not leave cosmic time.
But the shelf is alive. It is a conscious, albeit lesser, self. It is barely
stirring in Sufetkh, as little by little the last of its energy expires. It is
that same second death mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. A spark of
consciousness flickers to the end, and the magnitude of its suffering surpasses
even the imagination of the demons themselves. To this day, no one of Light, not
even the Planetary Logos, has been able to penetrate into Sufetkh. It is
sometimes visible to members of the Synclites, but from neighboring planes, not
from within. At those times they can make out a desert, over which glows the dim
purple sun of Gashsharva, Gagtungr's anticosmos.
Fortunately, in the entire history of humanity, the total number of monads that
has fallen to Sufetkh does not exceed a few hundred. Of them, only a few have
left any trace in history, for all the prominent chronically descending monads
are brought to Gashsharva. Those for whom even Gagtungr has no use go to Sufetkh.
I know of only one historical figure among them: Domitian, who in the
incarnation following his fall to Propulk became Marshal Gilles de Retz, the one
who at first was a comrade-inarms of Joan of Arc but was later a villain and
sadist, who bathed in tubs made from the innards of children he had murdered.
Cast down to Yrl, he soiled himself again in his next incarnation in Enrof with
atrocities committed during the Inquisition. After his third death, he sliced
through all the planes of the inferno for the third time, reached Sufetkh, and
was ejected from Shadanakar like slag.
I know full well that the humanitarian spirit of our age would prefer to be
presented with a very different picture from the one I have described in this
chapter. Some will find it objectionable that, departures notwithstanding, my
testimony seems to resemble too closely traditional images from historical
Christianity. Others will be shocked by the savagery of the laws and by the
bodily character of the horrible agonies endured on the planes of torment. But I
am prepared to ask of the former: Did you seriously think that the teachings of
the Fathers of the Church were based on nothing but figments of a spooked
imagination? Only a mind as empty of spirit as a tractor or a rolling mill could
suppose, for example, that we can reduce The Divine Comedy to a collection of
artistic techniques, political diatribe, and poetic fantasy. In the first part
of his book, Dante revealed the staircase of infraphysical planes extant in the
Roman Catholic metaculture in the Middle Ages. One must learn to separate the
impurities introduced into the picture to satisfy artistic demands or as the
result of aberrations inherent to the age from the expression of genuine,
unparalleled, and staggering transphysical revelation. And I do not consider it
out of place to mention that the one who was Dante now numbers among the few
great human spirits that have it within their power to penetrate unhindered down
to the very Pit of Shadanakar.
As for those who are upset at the severity of the laws, I have only one thing to
say: Work to enlighten them! Of course, it would be easier to sell the
intellectual mindset of the humanitarian age on an image of so-called spiritual,
rather than physical, torments: pangs of conscience, despair over the inability
to love, and the like. Unfortunately, these barbaric laws were clearly
established without consideration for the sentiments of the twentieth-century
intelligentsia. It is true that spiritual suffering also plays a large role in
the planes of descent. Essentially, only the great criminals of history are
primarily subjected to bodily suffering, suffering that is, in addition, worse
than any physical pain of ours, because ether pain surpasses the physical both
in intensity and length. But we could also ask: Given the amount of pain these
people caused their victims in Enrof, what pangs of conscience or, as
Dostoyevsky thought, despair at not being able to love could counterbalance that
mountain of suffering on the scales of the impartial Law of karma?
And each of us is free to join those who are working to mitigate that Law.
I AM ABOU T TO DESCRIBE worlds of special
significance for humanity, its history, and for all of Shadanakar. These are the
worlds designed by the demonic forces to be frontline weapons in the realization
of Gagtungr's global plan. They are, properly speaking, two sets of worlds, two
sakwalas of infraphysical planes closely linked to one another.
I have already mentioned that within every metaculture there is a sort of
antipode to its zatomis, a sort of demonic stronghold where the holy cities of
the Synclites are reflected upside-down, as it were, in black mirrors. I am
referring to shrastrs, the abodes of antihumankind.
Shrastrs are separate regions of a single four-dimensional world, but each
region possesses its own unique number of time streams. The ring of shrastrs is
metageologically connected with the lower layers of the Earth's crust, with its
countervailing prominences, and they are the dark twins/antipodes to Eanna,
Olympus, Paradise, Monsalvat, Heavenly Russia, and the other zatomis. The peaks
and ridges of the countervailing prominences, which offset mountain ranges on
the Earth's surface, point to the center of the planet. In Enrof, those regions
are devoid of life: there is basalt, lava, and nothing else. But that is not
true of the four-dimensional world. Below them, toward the center, is empty
space—a reddish and pale orange cavity that blazes with darting waves of light
and heat. The resultant of two gravities operates on the Earth's inner surface:
gravity toward the crust and toward the core. The inhabitants' conception of up
and down differs from ours. Infrapurple and infrared, almost black, luminaries
glow motionless in the subterranean orangereddish sky—this is how Gashsharva
and the planes of torment of the Core appear to the eye from the shrastrs. By
the rays of those moons, the populous societies and monstrous hierarchies that
manifest themselves before our eyes in the form of great states, tyrannical
regimes, and the faceless vampires of global history live and fortify their
strongholds.
What is Nature like there? What is the predominant landscape on the underside of
the world? There are no blues and greens; they would not be visible to the
inhabitants. Instead, they have two colors not visible to our eyes. There is
also something resembling vegetation, but it is fiery and dreadful: clumps of
huge, dark crimson bushes and large, waving flowers of flame that stand alone in
places. The land is very rugged. Lakes and seas of white and pink lava dot the
crust's surface. On the whole, the landscape has a distinctive geologic-urban
character: gigantic cities with populations in the millions. In infra-Russia,
for example, the chief city encompasses almost the entire countervailing
prominence of the anti-Urals, another corresponds to the Caucasus, and cities
are now under construction on the prominences countervailing the mountains of
Kazakhstan and the Tien Shan. There are also cities situated beneath our
lowlands, but they are less common, as those areas are for the most part flooded
by lava.
Antihumankind basically consists of two very different races or species. The
principal race is composed of small but highly intelligent beings that proceed
through a circle of reincarnations in the shrastrs, where they assume a
four-dimensional form somewhat reminiscent of ours. That form, the equivalent of
our physical body, is called karrokh. It is composed of the materiality of those
planes, which was created by the great demonic hierarchies. The shrastr
inhabitants have upper and lower pairs of limbs, though they have a different
number of fingers and toes than we do. In addition, they are equipped with
something like wing membranes. Their stalked red eyes, bulging cylindrical
heads, mouse-gray skin, and puckered, tube-like mouth might evoke disgust in
humans. But they are beings of keen intellect and the builders of a civilization
that in certain respects is more advanced than ours. They are called igvas.
Igvas first appeared in the shrastr of the Babylonian-Assyrian metaculture.
Another race, the ancestors of the contemporary raruggs, of whom I will speak a
little later, inhabited the older shrastrs. But I do not have a very clear
notion of the actual origin of the igvas: we are dealing here with concepts so
strange that they lie beyond the grasp of our reason. Thus, although no human
monads are demonic by nature, it sometimes happens—albeit very seldom—that a
person will at some point in his or her journey voluntarily become an igva. To
do so requires a strong desire, tremendous clarity of mind, and singular ability
in specific areas. Such was the founder of antihumankind, an individual who
lived in a very real sense in Erech and Babylon, where he was a priest of Nergal,
and behind whom stretched a long chain of incarnations in more ancient cultures
and in the Titan humankind.
The igvas originated from the union of that person with Lilith. She is sometimes
capable—though very rarely and only at the bidding of Gagtungr—of assuming a
female form in denser worlds. When she appeared in Babylon, for human eyes it
was as if she had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. Three people saw her:
the future father of the igvas, and two others, one of whom went insane, the
other of whom was put to death. The one for whom she had assumed that ghost-like
physical form joined his astral, and then ether, body with hers. She then
descended, all wrapped in flame, to an empty infraphysical plane where she
disgorged the first pair of igvas. The father of the race did not incarnate
again in the shrastrs or Enrof. He is now in Digm, and his contribution to the
design and realization of the demonic plan is great indeed.
The igvas have a unisyllabic oral language. The human language it most closely
resembles phonetically is probably Chinese, but because of the tube-like shape
of the igvas' mouths, vowel sounds like "o," "u," and
"u" predominate.
The igvas sometimes wear clothes, but they more often go about naked. Their
extreme intellectualism has completely sterilized their sex life. Their method
of procreation resembles the human method, but it is more unsightly. They
copulate almost on the run, without feeling any need for privacy, for they have
no feeling of shame. Their feelings of love, affection, and pity have remained
in the embryonic stage. Brief unions take the place of families, and children
are raised in minutely equipped and scrupulously systematized educational
institutions.
Theirs is a slave-based society. It is composed of two classes: the upper
intelligentsia—which includes scientists, engineers, clergy, and, if such a
word can be used, administrators—and the subservient majority, who act only on
the directions of the leadership. Yet even the leadership is strictly
subordinate to the will of the so-called grand igvas (a kind of succession of
high priests/ emperors) and the monsters of the neighboring plane—the
Witzraors.
The grand igvas are virtually the absolute rulers in every shrastr. A shrastr is
neither a monarchy nor, of course, a theocracy; it is a satanocracy. The
principle of dynastic succession is entirely alien to the igvas. Successors are
systematically selected and prepared over the course of decades with astonishing
forethought. The grand igvas' clarity of mind is immense, though they have an
inverted—that is, demonic—conception of the world. They can see as far down
as the anticosmos of the Universe. They are constantly being energized by
Gagtungr himself. After their death, the grand igvas rise straight up to Digm.
It would be incorrect to say that the equivalent of our science and technology
can be found in the shrastrs. Rather, it is our science and technology that are
the equivalent of the igvas'. The different conditions and natural laws on that
plane have dictated a scientific approach different from ours, but our
scientific research methods and technological principles are very similar.
Having far outstripped us in the field, they have knowledge of techniques and
methods that smack of magic and that would seem like sorcery to many of us. But
they also apply the principles of the screw, the wheel, and the rocket engine.
They have vessels for traveling on the lakes of infralava. Ridiculous as it may
seem, scheduled flights between shrastrs have long been in operation, and even
hiking is popular—for exploration, not aesthetic, purposes, of course.
Aviation is also advanced, though the igvas themselves can fly at great speeds,
often hovering upside-down and clinging like flies to the ceilings and walls of
buildings.
Science has allowed the igvas to penetrate to the Earth's surface as well. The
surface is as lifeless and desolate on their infraphysical plane as the Moon's
surface is on ours. Since the shrastr sakwala does not extend beyond the limits
of our solar system, there are no stars in the sky. But the igvas have seen the
planets and the Sun, though to them they look very different. The temperature in
the shrastrs is very high (it would be unbearable for us) and therefore the Sun,
which appears to the igvas as a pale infrared spot, emits far from sufficient
heat for them. In spite of all the protective measures taken against the cold,
the igva explorers suffered horribly on the Earth's surface, which is just as
inhospitable for them as Antarctica is for us. They do have the prospect,
however, of settling the surface of the planet, and not on their own plane, but
on ours.
Their scientific instruments have already registered echoes of Enrof. It is
possible, even almost inevitable, that in time they will make their presence
known to us, and exchanges and contact will arise. In that way, they will of
course try to manipulate humanity, for their most cherished hope, the dream that
binds them, is to expand their realm, with the help of the Witzraors and
Gagtungr, to include all the planes of Shadanakar. What is envisioned is the
great Antigod of the future, who is being readied in Gashsharva for birth as a
human in the not too distant future, and who will produce a pair of half-people,
half-igvas in Enrof. They will be the origin of the igva race on our plane.
Multiplying like flies, they are gradually to replace people, turning the
Earth's surface into the abode of satanohumankind.
Igvas proceed through a circle of incarnations in the shrastrs, but in the
intervals between them they all endure the same fate: their shelf and astral
body fall into the Pit (no incarnation is possible in the superheavy materiality
of the Pit without an astral body), speeding through the magma and Gashsharva
down a tangent, as it were, so that they barely come into contact with them.
During the descent, their ether body rapidly flakes apart. Cases of
enlightenment among igvas are so rare as to be almost nonexistent, but in those
cases they of course undergo a different fate in the afterlife. All of them,
except some of the grand igvas, have an inverted view of God as a universal
tyrant more terrible than Gagtungr. Christ, Who they hear of from the grand
igvas, takes the place in their minds of the Antichrist—a violent and very
dangerous despot. Generally speaking, everything is turned on its head. It is
therefore natural that their religion primarily consists of ecstatic demon
worship, radiations of which rise up to Gagtungr.
Do not think that the igvas' civilization is limited to science and technology.
It also possesses some art forms. A gargantuan sculpture soars in front of the
grandiose, cone-shaped temple in Drokkarg, the capital city of Russian
antihumankind, a city situated in a hollowed-out mountain. It is a sculpture of
a proto-igva riding a rarugg. If we apply our standards of measurement (and it
is quite legitimate to do so in many cases), we could say that the eyes of the
igva in that sculpture are vermilion-red stones the size of a two-storey house,
while the dark crimson eyes of the rarugg are many times larger than that.
But the rational cast of the igvas' mind and their sterile emotional life have
impeded the development of art. In conjunction with the overall grotesqueness of
their tastes, all this has led their art down paths on which our aesthetic
standards are not applicable. Architecture is the furthest advanced of art forms
in the shrastrs. Their cities are composed of structures of superhuman size but
bare geometric forms. Part of the cities are mountain sides, hollow inside and
finished on the outside. Cubes, rhombuses, and truncated pyramids shine with
finishes of red, gray, and brown. The constructivis