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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The astral body is not the Spirit"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Man's will weaves his fate"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The human soul in "Isis Unveiled"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Secret Doctrine" about the Human Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does the human soul mean?

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

Blavatsky explains what Plato teaches:

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

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

"Spencer's philosophy is written for savage tribes"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soul and Spirit of Apollonius of Tyana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am recounting this event as it happened"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helena Blavatsky Explains...

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

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

What is the human soul like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where does the soul reside?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Origin of the soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The origin of the souls of ordinary people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens to the soul after death?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soul Immortality

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

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

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

Soul after death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ego, there is the breath of life"

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

Francesca. The soul of a baby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literature

1. V.P. Zinchenko, V.A. Road. The concept of the human soul. Journal "Knowledge, Understanding, Skill". M. 2005, No. 1.
2. Blavatsky E.P. Spirit and Soul. //Blavatskaya E.P. In search of the occult. M. Sphere, 2004.
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4. Blavatsky E.P. Spirit and Soul. There.
5. Blavatsky E.P. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, ch. 11. M. Eksmo, 2011.
6. Blavatsky E.P. Isis Unveiled, v.1. Before the Veil. M. Eksmo, 2011.
7. Blavatsky E.P. Spirit and Soul. There.
8. Unveiled Isis. Ch. 9.
9. Unveiled Isis. Ch. 6.
10. Blavatsky E.P. Secret Doctrine. Vol. 2, part 2, section 8.
11. Secret Doctrine. T. 2, article 4.
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15. Blavatsky E.P. Another side of life. M. Sphere, 2005.
16. Blavatsky E.P. Another side of life. M. Sphere, 2005.
17. Blavatsky E.P. Karma of fate. M. MCF, 1995.
18. Priest Andrei Lorgus. Orthodox Anthropology. M. 2003.
19. Nemesius of Emesses, Bishop. About the nature of man. pp. 66-67. M. 1996.
20. Cyprian (Kern), Archimandrite Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. S.100.M.1996.
21. Gregory the Theologian, saint. Creations in 2 volumes. T.2, p. 43.M. 1994.
22. John of Damascus, Rev. Exact presentation of the Orthodox faith. M.-RD, 1992.
23. Popov A. Fundamentals of ancient church anthropology. T.1. P. 31. Madrid, 1965.
24. Gregory Palamas, saint. Conversations (Omilia). M. Palomnik, 2003.
25. Irenaeus of Lyons. Five books against heretics. M. Palomnik, 1998.
26. Saint Ignatius (Bryanchaninov). A word about death. P.74-75.M. 1993.
27. Theophan the Recluse, Bishop. Soul and Angel. The path to salvation. S. 99. M, MP, 1999.
28. Origen. About beginnings. against Celsus. St. Petersburg, 2008.
29. I. V. Gerasimov. The concept of the human soul. Samizdat. 2010.
30. Isaac the Syrian, reverend. Moveable words. M. Rule of Faith, 1993.
31. Origen. against Celsus. M. UIECP 1996.
32. Maxim the Confessor, reverend. Creations in 2 books. M. Martis, 1993.

Helena Blavatsky:

life before and after death

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

G. Olcott

Blavatsky Helena - absent from the TSB.

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

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

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

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

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

The universe is based on three fundamental principles:

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

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

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

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

The aims of the Theosophical Society were:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note.

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

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The time is not far off when the Russians will understand all the greatness of the Teaching that E.P. Blavatsky, and give due respect to this martyr for the idea. (From a letter from E.I. Roerich, 02.06.34)

TRUTH BEARER
(instead of preface)

Helena Blavatsky is almost a legendary figure. The Russian patriot, who devoted all her energy to the study of ancient sciences and religions, became the founder of theosophical teachings. Having lived for many years in India, visiting Tibet, she recreated the most ancient teachings of the world. Exceptional authority and popularity in all countries did not free her from forced oblivion in our country.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky - this name, after many years of oblivion, attacks and reproach, again sounded in full force on the pages of our press. Conferences, symposiums and seminars are held in her honor, the centennial date of her death was widely celebrated.

In the 19th century, when E.P. Blavatsky, science was gaining strength, materialism was also gaining strength. But she was not afraid to speak out against him - with the preaching of spirituality and idealism. She believed that materialism and atheism are the moral ulcers of mankind. Irreligion breeds lack of spirituality, Blavatsky believed. An extraordinary, titanic person, endowed with extraordinary properties, could do such a thing. E.P. Blavatsky was such a person. Her sister, V.P. Zhelikhovskaya, wrote that Blavatsky made many educated people of her time believe that the world is inhabited by thinking beings, superior to us in mind. She had performed a miracle, her sister thought.

E.P. Blavatsky possessed extraordinary abilities of suggestion, penetration into the unknown areas of human possibilities - foreboding and foresight. But she was not the only one with such abilities. From time to time, extraordinary people appear who again and again try to prove to humanity that the world is not so simple and unambiguous and that behind its visible part there is also an invisible one that we cannot know with the help of five senses. In this sense, Blavatsky is among such personalities as Nostradamus, Saint-Germain, H.I. Roerich and others.

Her properties went so far beyond the usual level that they were too alien to the vast majority. Even her closest employee and assistant, Colonel Olcott, admits in his diary that, despite many years of living together, he could not fully answer the question often asked to himself: who was Elena Petrovna? But in some definitions everyone who knew her agrees.

Everyone claims that she possessed extraordinary spiritual strength, subjugating everything around her, that she was capable of incredible work and superhuman patience when it came to serving the idea, about fulfilling the will of the Teacher; and everyone also unanimously agrees that she possessed an amazing sincerity that knew no bounds. This sincerity is reflected in every manifestation of her fiery soul, which never stopped before what they would think of her, how they would react to her words and deeds, it is reflected in the thoughtless expressions of her letters, it shows through in every detail of her stormy, long-suffering life.

Her characteristic feature, which for close people represented an unusual attraction, but at the same time could greatly harm her, was her well-aimed, brilliant humor, mostly good-natured, but sometimes hurting petty vanities. She loved to joke, to tease, to cause a stir. Her niece, Nadezhda Vladimirovna Zhelikhovskaya, reports: “My aunt had an amazing trait: for the sake of a joke and a red word, she could make up anything for herself. We sometimes laughed hysterically when she talked with reporters and interviewers in London. Mom stopped her: “Why Are you composing all this?" "Well, they, after all, they are all erratic, let them earn money for milk!" And sometimes, in merry moments, she told her Theosophists she knew, just for laughter, various unheard-of stories. Then we laughed, but with human stupidity who does not understand jokes, a lot of confusion and “troubles” have arisen from this.Not only “troubles”, but it is quite possible that of those who do not understand jokes, there were those who were offended by her jokes, and they went over to the camp of her enemies.

She had many followers and even more enemies, both among the Christian orthodox and among the atheists. The first took up arms against her because she reproached them for misinterpreting the Bible and other sacred books. The latter could not forgive her mysticism, calling her a charlatan and a blackmailer. E.I. Roerich wrote: "H.P. Blavatsky was a great martyr in the full sense of the word. Envy, slander and persecution of ignorance killed her..." Russia, her name will be placed on the proper height of reverence. H. P. Blavatsky is truly our national pride... Eternal glory to her."

The phenomenon of E.P. Blavatsky manifested itself in the 19th century, in the era of the development of science and technology, the so-called external forms of life. Blavatsky, on the other hand, was focused on studying the ancient esoteric knowledge of different peoples, their religious concepts, ancient rituals, symbols, and magic. She became the organizer and founder of the Theosophical Society, which united people of different faiths, origins and social status. Members of the society cared about moral self-improvement and spiritual help to their neighbors. Mahatma Gandhi admired her activities, he said: "I would be more than satisfied if I could touch the edge of Madame Blavatsky's clothes."

E.P. Blavatsky left behind a huge literary legacy. The unfinished collection of her works includes 14 solid volumes published in America. This heritage consists of works of art and literature, travel notes, and fantastic stories. But the main works that won her world fame were the works of a philosophical and religious nature. The first work in this direction was "Isis Unveiled", a solid two-volume book, which provides a deep analysis and comparison of various religious teachings with the data of modern science and the methods of magic in different parts of the world. But her main work, as if summing up her career, is the two-volume "Secret Doctrine". Already one subtitle of this book speaks for itself - "Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy".

E.P. Blavatsky freely enters into polemics with famous religious scholars and philosophers, citing excerpts from various ancient writings to prove her arguments. In her works such a synthesis of the ancient teachings of different peoples, ancient symbolism is given, such a scope of knowledge is presented that rarely anyone possessed even among scientists. This work of Blavatsky has no analogues in the world science of this direction. And what is amazing - two huge volumes of "The Secret Doctrine" were written within two years. Only in order to rewrite them, perhaps, this time would hardly be enough - after all, they contain 1853 pages. Such a work, perhaps, is within the power of a large team of researchers, and it was written by a woman who did not even have a special education.

What E.P. wrote about Blavatsky in the last century, which undermined many scientific foundations, has now become the property of science. Many of her predictions over the past hundred years have been confirmed by the research of astronomers, archaeologists and other specialists.

In his writings, E.P. Blavatsky uses ancient texts that she came across during her trips to India and Tibet. There she met with the abbots of ancient monasteries and temples, who owned the oldest manuscripts. These treasures were kept in underground bookstores and caves. Blavatsky writes that all the ancient temples and monasteries of the East have underground passages through which they communicate. Only initiates can get into these dungeons - those who understand the meaning of the texts, who are involved in ancient knowledge and wisdom.

N.K. also speaks about ancient monasteries and manuscripts. and Yu.N. The Roerichs in their diary entries during the Central Asian expedition. The famous Russian traveler N.M. Przhevalsky tells about the ruins of the ancient cities and monasteries of Central Asia, covered with sand. Unfortunately, writes E.P. Blavatsky, many works of antiquity are irretrievably lost: the manuscripts of the burnt library of Alexandria, the works of Lao Tzu, numerous volumes of Kanjur and Tanjur. But not everything is lost, and the materials that Blavatsky cites in her books, especially in The Secret Doctrine, indicate that ancient knowledge was available to her. Here is one example: speaking of the Great Pyramid at Giza with reference to ancient texts, H.P. Blavatsky points out that there is an iron chamber under the Sphinx. Our science did not know this. And only in 1986 there was a message that archaeologists discovered a metal pillow under the Sphinx, the purpose of which is still unknown.

In the "Secret Doctrine" H.P. Blavatsky refers to the texts (stanzas) of the ancient manuscript "Dzyan", written in the ancient language "senzar", which was considered the "language of the gods" and disappeared long ago. The texts of this ancient manuscript, according to Blavatsky, have something in common with the ancient Indian texts of the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, as well as with the Babylonian Book of Numbers, the Bible, etc. She believes that in these ancient books many texts are encrypted and their deep meaning is understood by very few. It was available only to priests and initiates. In these texts, the secrets of nature are encrypted, the disclosure of which by unreasonable people could bring great harm. Therefore, the keys to the ancient texts were strictly guarded. Only the most zealous explorers of the East managed to penetrate the secret knowledge. E.P. Blavatsky was among them, here are the proofs of that.

In the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, entitled "Cosmogenesis", the appearance and disappearance of the universe is depicted in the ancient texts as the "Inhalation of the Great Breath", or "Divine Breath". This phrase in ancient texts sounds like this: "The Deity exhales the Thought, which becomes the Cosmos." In a figurative, symbolic form, ancient texts say that Universes can arise and disappear. It turns out that in ancient times people spoke freely about the Cosmos and that there were many Universes, that they arose and disappeared. This testifies to the breadth of their knowledge, which was later firmly forgotten. Modern science comes close to this issue.

One can only be surprised at the knowledge possessed by the ancient sages. But the question arises where this knowledge came from, because, according to our ideas, they did not have telescopes.

In the first stanzas of "Cosmogenesis" it is indicated that before the appearance of the Universe and life there was nothing in it: neither time, nor space, nor matter - only a single darkness. This state was called by the ancients Pralaya, or the Night of Brahma. And here is what A. Einstein writes about this: “If matter disappeared, space and time would disappear along with it. be time." How converge these two concepts - ancient and modern!

The ancients attached great importance to the Dragon-Snake; according to their ideas. The Serpent Dragon emerged from the depths of the great dark waters. Why did the ancients attach such great importance to the Serpent-Dragon?

E.P. Blavatsky gives the following explanation.

Before our Earth became egg-shaped like the Universe, a long tail of cosmic dust, a fiery mist, moved and wriggled like a Serpent in space. The Spirit of God, hovering over Chaos, was depicted by the ancients in the form of the Fire Serpent, exhaling fire and light on the eternal waters. The fact that cosmic matter has the annular shape of a snake biting its tail symbolizes not only eternity and infinity, but also the spherical shape of all bodies formed within the Universe from this fiery fog. The universe, like the earth and man, periodically sheds its old skin, like a snake, in order to put on a new one, after a certain period of rest. That is why the Serpent was a symbol of wisdom among many peoples of the world.

Naturally, the question arises: how did the ancients learn the secrets of the cosmos, which cannot be seen? The conclusion suggests itself as follows: this knowledge is not of earthly origin.

And here is how, according to Blavatsky, the formation of the Universe is described in ancient texts: one tissue spreads when the breath of Fire (the Father) is above it. It contracts when the Mother's breath (mother's root) touches it. Then the Sons (elements) separate and disperse to return to the Mother's womb at the end of the great day, to reunite with her.

E.P. Blavatsky comments on this thesis as follows: the spread and contraction of the "tissue", that is, the world's substance, or atoms, here expresses the pulse of movement. At present, it seems to us that this thesis can be explained by the theory of the expanding and contracting Universe. It turns out, oddly enough, that both points of view - ancient and modern - coincide. The modern theory of the formation of the Universe also speaks of an expanding and contracting Universe. Even at the beginning of our century, V.I. Vernadsky said that Indian philosophy turned out to be unexpectedly close to new scientific concepts.

So how did the ancients know all this? Their sacramental texts say that knowledge was brought to Earth by "divine beings" or "creators" and passed on to dedicated, wise people, priests. It must be said that the Bible repeatedly mentions the deeds of the "sons of God" who taught people. They were also called "angels", which means "messengers", or "messengers of God".

"Shining beings", which the ancient prophet Zoroaster saw, gave him a "good intention", and he expounded in his gathas the most ancient religious teaching. There are many such examples. In almost every ancient writing, especially of a religious nature, there are divine messengers.

No less surprising are the thoughts expressed in ancient texts about the origin of the planets of the solar system and their movement. The data is presented in symbolic form. From the cosmic womb of Mother-Space - Aditi - all the celestial bodies of our solar system were born. Eight sons were born from the body of Aditi. She approached the seven gods, but rejected the eighth - Martanda, our Sun. Seven sons - cosmically and astronomically there are seven planets. This suggests that in ancient times they knew about the seventh planet, without calling it Uranus. This is how it is described in the ancient texts.

"Eight houses were built for eight divine sons: four large and four smaller ones. Eight brilliant Suns, according to their age and dignity. Baln-lu (Martanda) was dissatisfied, although his house was the largest. He began to work, like huge elephants do "He breathed (drawn) into his womb the vital breaths of his brothers. He tried to absorb them. The four large ones were far away - at the extreme limit of their kingdom. They were not robbed (affected) and laughed: - "Do with us what you can . Lord, you cannot reach us." But the lesser ones cried. They complained to their mother. She exiled Baln-lu to the center of her kingdom, from where he could not move, Since then he has only guarded and threatened. He pursues them, slowly turning around himself , they quickly turn away from him, and from afar he follows the direction in which his brothers are moving along the path that surrounds their dwellings.

This is how the movement of the planets of the solar system is described in a simple and accessible form for people.

And the structure of the Universe and substance, matter is also figuratively stated in ancient texts. Atoms are depicted as "wheels", around which cosmic energy grows, becoming spheroidal. "Wheels" are the prototype of atoms, each of which shows an increasing tendency to rotate. The "God" becomes a "whirlwind", the "whirlwind" gives rise to a spiral movement. From time immemorial, the Universe has been symbolically expressed as a spiral, that is, a vortex motion.

The law of the spiral motion of primary matter is the most ancient idea not only of the Indians, but also of Greek philosophy. The Greek sages, according to E.P. Blavatsky, almost all were initiated. They also received this knowledge from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who were students of the Brahmins of the esoteric school.

E.P. Blavatsky illuminates the question of karma, the doctrine of which is accepted by all followers of the ancient religions of the East. Their main philosophy is that every being, every creature on earth, no matter how small and insignificant it may be, is an immortal particle of immortal matter. Matter for them has a completely different meaning than for a Christian or a materialist, each being is subject to karma. Replace the word "God" with karma, writes Blavatsky, and it becomes an Eastern axiom.

"Our fate is written in the stars - an ancient saying. But man is a free agent during his stay on Earth. He cannot escape fate, but he has a choice of two paths that lead him in this direction, and he can reach the limit of happiness or the limit misfortune, if it is intended for him, either in the clean clothes of the righteous, or in clothes stained on the path of evil, for there are internal and external conditions that affect our decisions and actions.So whoever believes in karma must believe in fate, which from birth to death, each person weaves thread after thread around him, like a spider his yarn. Fate is directed either by the heavenly voice of an invisible prototype outside of us, or by our, closer, astral, or inner person.

According to E.P. Blavatsky, the single command of karma is absolute harmony, as it exists in the world of the spirit. Therefore, it is not karma that rewards or punishes, but we ourselves reward or punish ourselves, according to whether we work with nature or through nature. Whether we obey the laws on which this harmony depends, or whether we break them.

Here it will be appropriate to consider the question of the spatial force mentioned in ancient sources under the name "vril". Blavatsky insists that the force itself was known to the Atlanteans and was called by them "mash-mak". She points out that perhaps the name of this force was different, but the very fact of its existence in the distant past is undeniable. This force, if directed against an army from an agni-ratha mounted on a flying ship, according to the instructions found in Astra Vidya, would reduce to ashes one hundred thousand people and elephants, like one rat. This power is presented in the form of an allegory in the Ramayana and the Vishnu Purana, as well as in other ancient Indian writings.

In addition, E.P. Blavatsky cites another legend about such a terrible weapon of the ancients, based on the action of the spatial force "vril". We are talking about the sage "Kapila," whose gaze turned the sixty thousand sons of Sagar into a mountain of ashes ". H. P. Blavatsky says that this power is explained in esoteric writings and is called" kapilaksha "or" Eye of Kapida ". Blavatsky wrote about this a hundred years ago, when nothing was known about atomic energy and the terrible destructive effect of the atomic bomb, now we know what this power is hidden in the smallest particle - the atom.

More E.P. Blavatsky cites ancient texts about a weapon unknown to us - Agniastra. It was "made of seven elements". Some Orientalists have thought about the rocket, Blavatsky skeptically remarks that this is only what lies within the limits of their knowledge, or rather, the knowledge of the late nineteenth century. But the weapon, in addition to "bringing down fire from the sky", could cause rain, storm, and also paralyze the enemy or plunge his feelings into a deep sleep. Apparently, humanity is now only on the outskirts of this type of weapon.

E.P. Blavatsky had the good fortune to touch the great knowledge of the ancients. She anticipated the possibilities of the future based on the facts described in ancient texts, which she believed to be real. And then she predicted that "uncomfortable truths" would not be accepted by her century and she was ready for the denial of these teachings by her contemporaries. Blavatsky wrote that they would be ridiculed and rejected in her century, but only in it. For in the twentieth century, scholars will begin to recognize that the "Secret Doctrine" was not made up. And he adds that this is not a claim to prophecy, but simply an assertion based on knowledge of the facts.

Indeed, in our time we discover ancient knowledge similar to modern knowledge in half-forgotten or completely forgotten and newly "discovered" works of the ancients. Proceedings of E.P. Blavatsky is helped to discover this knowledge and harmonize it with modernity. And what we used to consider the purest legends and myths, not based on facts, now becomes the deepest truth for us.

Her whole life can be divided into three clearly demarcated periods. Childhood and youth from the day of birth in 1831 to marriage in 1848 constitute the first period; the second - the mysterious years, about which there is almost no definite data, which lasted, with a four-year break when she came to her relatives in Russia, for more than 20 years, from 1848 to 1872, and the third period from 1872 until her death held in America, India, and for the last six years in Europe, among numerous witnesses who knew Elena Petrovna closely. Regarding this last period, there are many biographical sketches and articles written by people who knew her closely.

CHILDHOOD

Regarding the external conditions of Elena Petrovna's childhood, we can get a fairly clear idea from two books by her sister V.P. Zhelikhovskaya - "How I Was Little" and "My Adolescence", in which she describes her family, but from them almost no idea about the character and experiences of Elena Petrovna herself in childhood can be taken out. This is partly explained by the fact that Vera Petrovna was four years younger and could not consciously observe her sister, who, judging by her own stories, as the eldest, lived a completely separate life; moreover, in the thirties of the last century, when the childhood of both sisters proceeded, the supernormal psychic powers of the child had to be looked upon as something very undesirable, and they had to be carefully concealed from outsiders and from other children of the same family. Another source, Sinnett's book Incidents from the Life of Madame Blavatsky, gives some very interesting details, but the author wrote his book based on the random stories of Helena Petrovna, and how correctly he remembered and accurately conveyed her words is difficult to verify.

As for the youth of E.P. until her early marriage in 1848, little is known of this period of her life.

Of Elena Petrovna's peers, her own aunt, Nadezhda Andreevna Fadeeva, who is only three years older than Elena Petrovna and lived with her in the most intimate proximity when both were still children; confirms the extraordinary phenomena that surrounded Elena Petrovna in her childhood: “The phenomena produced by the mediumistic forces of my niece Elena are extremely remarkable, true miracles, but they are not the only ones. I have heard and read many times in books related to spiritualism, both sacred and secular, amazing reports of phenomena similar to those described by you, but these were isolated cases.But so many forces concentrated in one person, the combination of the most extraordinary manifestations coming from the same source as hers, this, of course, is an unprecedented case, it is possible and I have long known that she possesses the greatest mediumistic powers, but when she was with us, these powers did not reach the degree they have now. My niece Elena is a very special being and cannot be compared with anyone. As a child, as a young girl, as a woman, she was always so superior to her environment that she could never be appreciated. ana like a girl from a good family, but there was not even a word about learning. But the extraordinary wealth of her mental abilities, the subtlety and speed of her thought, the amazing ease with which she understood, grasped and assimilated the most difficult subjects, an unusually developed mind, combined with a chivalrous character, direct, energetic and open - that is what lifted her so high. above the level of ordinary human society and could not but attract general attention to it, and hence the envy and enmity of all those who, in their insignificance, could not stand the brilliance and gifts of this truly amazing nature.

The pedigree of Elena Petrovna is interesting in the sense that among her immediate ancestors were representatives of the historical families of France, Germany and Russia. On her father's side, she descended from the sovereign Mecklenburg princes Gan von Rottenstein-Gan. On the mother’s side, Elena Petrovna’s great-grandmother was nee Bandre-du-Plessis, the granddaughter of a Huguenot emigrant who was forced to leave France due to religious persecution. She married in 1787 Prince Pavel Vasilyevich Dolgoruky, and their daughter, Princess Elena Pavlovna Dolgorukaya, married to Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev, was Elena Petrovna's own grandmother and raised her granddaughters who were orphaned early. She left behind the memory of a wonderful and deeply educated woman, of extraordinary kindness and scholarship, completely exceptional for that time; she corresponded with many scientists, among other things with the president of the London Geographical Society, Murchison, with famous botanists and mineralogists, one of whom (Homer de Gel) named the fossil shell he found Venus-Fadeeff after her. She spoke five foreign languages, drew beautifully and was an outstanding woman in every respect. She brought up her daughter Elena Andreevna, the mother of Elena Petrovna, who died early, and gave her her talented nature; Elena Andreevna wrote stories and novels under the pseudonym Zinaida R. and was very popular in the early forties; her early death aroused universal regret, and Belinsky devoted several laudatory pages to her, calling her the "Russian Georges-Sand."

According to M.G. Yermolova, young Elena Petrovna was a brilliant girl, but extremely headstrong, obeying no one and nothing, and her grandfather's family enjoyed an excellent reputation, and Elena Petrovna's grandmother was placed so highly for her outstanding qualities that "despite the fact that she herself whom she had not been, the whole city came to bow to her. The Fadeevs, in addition to their daughter Elena, mother of Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, who married the artillery officer Gan, and another daughter, married to Witte, also had a daughter Nadezhda Andreevna and a son Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev, whom Elena Petrovna loved so dearly that, in her opinion biographer Olcott, they and her sister Vera Petrovna Zhelikhovskaya with their children were her only affection on earth.

In the family of her grandfather Fadeev, Elena Petrovna, who was orphaned early, spent most of her childhood, first in Saratov, where he was governor, and later in Tiflis. Judging by what has come down to us, her childhood was extremely bright and joyful. For the summer, the whole family moved to the governor's dacha - a large old house surrounded by a garden, with mysterious corners, ponds and a deep ravine, beyond which the forest descending to the Volga darkened. All nature lived a special mysterious life for the ardent girl; often she spoke to the birds, animals, and invisible companions of her games; she spoke very animatedly with them and sometimes began to laugh loudly, amused by them, by no one but her invisible funny tricks, and when winter came, the unusual office of her learned grandmother presented such an interesting world that it was able to ignite even a not so lively imagination. There were many strange things in this office: there were stuffed animals of various animals, the grinning heads of bears and tigers could be seen, on one wall adorable little hummingbirds were full of bright flowers, on the other - as if alive, owls, falcons and hawks sat, and above them, right under the ceiling, a huge eagle spread its wings. But the most terrible of all was the white flamingo, stretching out its long neck just like a living one. When the children came to their grandmother's office, they sat on a stuffed black walrus or a white seal, and at dusk it seemed to them that all these animals began to move, and little Elena Petrovna told many terrible and fascinating stories about them, especially about the white flamingo, wings who appeared to be splattered with blood. Of all the memories of V.P. Zhelikhovskaya about Elena Petrovna's childhood, for us, living in an era when knowledge of the hidden mental nature of man has expanded significantly, it becomes clear that in childhood Elena Petrovna had clairvoyance; the astral world, invisible to ordinary people, was open to her, and she lived in reality a double life: physical, common to all, and visible only to her. In addition, she had to have a strong psychometric abilities, which at that time in the West had no idea. When she, sitting on the back of a white seal and stroking its fur, told the children of her family about his adventures, no one could suspect that this touch of hers was enough to unfold before the astral vision of the girl a whole scroll of pictures of nature, with which life was once associated. this seal.

Everyone thought that she draws these fascinating stories from her imagination, but in reality, pages from the invisible chronicle of nature were opening before her. Confirmation that she possessed this rare gift is given to us by V.P. Zhelikhovskaya. According to her, all nature lived for her a special life, invisible to others. For her, not only the empty space that seemed to us was filled, but all things had their own special voice, and everything that seems dead to us lived for her and told her in her own way about her life. In confirmation, Zhelikhovskaya gives us in her memoirs a wonderful scene that took place during a children's picnic, when a whole group of invited children gathered on a bright summer day on a sandy strip of land that was undoubtedly once part of the sea or lake bottom. It was all strewn with the remains of shells and fish bones, and there were also stones with prints on them of fish and marine plants that no longer exist.

V.P. Zhelikhovskaya remembers little Elena, stretched out on the sand; her elbows are immersed in the sand, her head is supported by the palms of her hands joined under her chin, and she is all ablaze with inspiration, telling what a magical life the seabed lives, what azure waves with a rainbow reflection rolled over the golden sand, what bright corals and stalactite caves there, what extraordinary grasses and delicately colored anemones swayed at the bottom, and various sea monsters chased frisky fish between them. The children, not taking their eyes off her, listened to her enchanted, and it seemed to them that the soft azure waves were caressing their bodies, that they too were surrounded by all the wonders of the seabed. She spoke with such confidence that these fish and these monsters were flying past her, drawing their outlines with her finger on the sand, and the children thought that they saw them too. One day, at the end of such a story, there was a terrible commotion. At the moment when her listeners imagined themselves in the magical world of the sea kingdom, she suddenly spoke in a changed voice that the earth had opened up under them and blue waves were flooding them. She jumped to her feet and her childish face showed first strong surprise, and then delight, and at the same time insane horror, she fell on her face on the sand, screaming at the top of her lungs: here they are, blue waves! The sea... The sea floods us! We are drowning... All the children, terribly frightened, also threw themselves upside down on the sand, screaming with all their might, confident that the sea had swallowed them up.

She often told about various visits, describing persons unknown to us. Most often, the majestic image of the Hindu in a white turban appeared before her, always the same, and she knew him as well as her loved ones, and called her Patron; she claimed that it was he who saved her in moments of danger. One of these cases occurred when she was about 13 years old: the horse on which she rode was frightened and suffered; the girl could not resist and, entangling her foot in the stirrup, hung on it; but instead of breaking, she clearly felt someone's arms around her, which supported her until the horse was stopped. Another incident occurred much earlier, when she was still quite a baby. She longed to look at the picture hanging high on the wall and hung with white cloth. She asked to open the picture, but her request was not respected. Once, left alone in this room, she moved a table against the wall, dragged a small table onto it, and put a chair on the table, and she managed to climb all this; resting one hand on the dusty wall, with the other she grabbed a corner of the curtain and pulled it back, but at that moment she lost her balance, and she no longer remembered anything. When she woke up, she lay completely unharmed on the floor, both tables and a chair were in place, the curtain in front of the picture was drawn, and the only evidence that all this had happened in reality was the mark left by her small hand on the dusty wall, below the picture.

Thus, Elena Petrovna's childhood and youth passed under very happy conditions in an enlightened and, by all indications, very friendly family with humane traditions and an extremely gentle attitude towards people.

Great happiness for her and for all to whom she brought so much light that her extraordinary nature, endowed with such supernormal properties, was protected with such loving and wise care during her childhood. If she got into a harsh and unenlightened environment, her refined, highly sensitive nervous system would not withstand rough treatment, and she would inevitably die.

Wandering

If you take a geographical map and mark on it the movements of Elena Petrovna for the period from 1848 to 1872, you get the following picture:

In December 1858, Elena Petrovna unexpectedly appeared in Russia with her relatives and remained first in Odessa, and then in Tiflis until 1863. In 1864, she finally penetrates into Tibet, from there she leaves for a short time (in 1866) to Italy, then again to India and, through the Kumlun Mountains and Lake Palti, again to Tibet. In 1872, she travels through Egypt and Greece to her relatives in Odessa, and from there in the next 1873 she leaves for America, and this ends the second period of her life.

Peering into this 20-year wandering (if you subtract 4 years spent with relatives) around the globe, completely aimless in appearance, since we are not dealing with a learned prospector, but with a woman who did not have any specific occupation - the only pointer to the real purpose of all these wanderings is the repeated attempts to penetrate into Tibet. Apart from this indication, there is no definite information about this period of her life. Even her dearly beloved relatives - her sister and aunt - with whom she had the most tender friendship, and they did not know anything definite about this era of her life. At one time they were sure that she was no longer alive.

In the memoirs of Maria Grigoryevna Yermolova, who personally knew all the circumstances of Elena Petrovna's girlish life, there is one detail not mentioned anywhere, which could play a big role in her fate. Simultaneously with the Fadeevs, a relative of the then governor of the Caucasus, Prince Golitsyn, lived in Tiflis, who often visited the Fadeevs and was very interested in the original young girl. He was known, according to Yermolova, "either for a freemason, or as a magician or soothsayer."

In his story about the unexpected marriage of E.P. Yermolova connects this event with the departure of Prince Golitsyn from Tiflis. Immediately after his departure, rumors spread around the city that the granddaughter of General Fadeev had disappeared and no one knows where she went. In the higher spheres of Tiflis society, to which the young girl belonged, her disappearance was explained by the fact that she followed Prince Golitsyn and that only this could explain the consent of her family to such an unequal marriage with the elderly Blavatsky, who, from a secular point of view, was in the highest degree unequal.

M.G. Yermolova knew Blavatsky well because he had served as an officer-at-large in the office of her husband, the governor. A modest, no different middle-aged man, was in every way not a match for a young, eighteen-year-old girl from an influential, high-ranking family.

Yermolova, who knew well the conditions in which E.P.'s life proceeded, was convinced that Elena Petrovna's grandfather and grandmother agreed to this marriage of their granddaughter in order to "save the situation" and stop rumors unfavorable for her reputation. Thanks to the connections of General Fadeev, it was not difficult to create a "decent position" for the modest official, and before the wedding he was appointed vice-governor of Erivan. Regarding the escape of E.P. from her parents' home, Mrs. Yermolova thought that this was nothing more than a rash act on her part, the purpose of which was, with the help of Prince Golitsyn, to enter into relations with the mysterious sage of the East, where Prince Golitsyn was heading. If we compare these circumstances and the subsequent flight from her husband's house three months after the marriage, which, according to all data, was fictitious, it can be assumed with a high probability that in conversations with Prince Golitsyn, who was knowledgeable in the field of mediumship and clairvoyance, or at least interested in such phenomena, Elena Petrovna could receive many indications, which influenced her decision to break out of the shy conditions of secular girlish life at all costs. It is highly probable that she told the interested interlocutor about her visions and about her "Patron" and received a number of instructions from him, perhaps the address of that Egyptian Copt, who is mentioned as her first teacher in occultism. This is also confirmed by the fact that, having left Erivan and having reached Kerch with her servants, Elena Petrovna sends them away from the ship under a fictitious pretext and, instead of going to her father, as her relatives and servants assumed, she goes to the East, to Egypt, and travels not alone, but with her friend, Countess Kiseleva. It is possible that their meeting was accidental, but it is possible that there was also a preliminary agreement.

R.A. Fadeev - an artillery general, was a prominent figure in the Slavic lands and a famous military writer of the seventies and eighties. He left behind the memory of a deeply educated, witty and attractive person.

The dates are taken from A. Besant's "H.P. Blavatsky and the Masters of Wisdom", 1907.

Countess Wachtmeister gave an interesting detail of this journey: since foreigners could not penetrate into the country, the Indians who came to Darjeeling after her put her in a wagon, covered her with hay and took her under such a cover.

"surrounded by love and hatred, in the annals of world history, her personality is immortal"
Schiller

There are people who come into the world with a clearly defined mission. This mission of serving the common Good makes their life a martyrdom and a feat, but thanks to them, the evolution of mankind is accelerated. Such was the mission of H. P. Blavatsky. More than a hundred years have passed since then, when one of the May days in 1891. the heart of our great compatriot stopped beating. And only now we begin to comprehend the feat of her life.

None of her relatives who worked with her, people devoted to her and her enemies knew her all, with all her qualities. The diversity of their opinions is amazing, as if we have before us not one, but many personalities with the same name "Helena Petrovna Blavatsky." For some, she is a great being who opened new paths for the world, for others, a harmful destroyer of religion; for some, a brilliant and fascinating companion, for others, a vague interpreter of incomprehensible metaphysics; then she is a great heart, full of boundless pity for everything that suffers and love for everything that exists, then it is a soul that knows no mercy, then it is clairvoyant, penetrating to the bottom of the soul, tonaively trusting the first person it meets. Some speak of boundless patience, others of her unbridled temper. And there are no those bright signs of the human soul that would not be connected with the name of this great woman.

But everyone, without exception, argues that she possessed an extraordinary spiritual strength that subjugated everything around her. Her credulity and sincerity reached proportions unusual for a soul that had gathered such an unprecedented variety of life experience: from a student of the eastern sages to an equally unusual position as a Teacher and herald of Ancient Wisdom, who sought to unite in common esotericism all ancient Aryan beliefs and prove the origin of all religions from a single divine source.

"Living next to Elena Petrovna meant being in constant proximity to the miraculous," wrote one of her biographers. She possessed the extraordinary abilities of a real Magician, surprised everyone with her erudition, deep holistic knowledge, and the wisdom of her soul.

As one of her biographers tells: "... She charmed and conquered everyone who came into contact with her more or less closely. She worked the most incomprehensible miracles with the power of her all-penetrating and bottomless gaze: flower buds opened before your eyes, and the most distant objects at a single call, they strove for her hands.

"The whole history of literature," writes Olcott, "does not know a more remarkable character than this Russian woman."

Elena Petrovna was capable of incredible work and superhuman patience when it came to serving the idea, to fulfilling the will of the Teachers. Her devotion to the Teachers was heroic, fiery, never weakened, overcoming all obstacles, faithful to the last breath.

As she herself said: "Nothing matters to me, except my debt to the Teachers and the Cause of Theosophy. All my blood belongs to them to the last drop. The last beating of my heart will be given to them ...".

This Russian woman fought with great indomitable force against the materialism that fettered human thought, she inspired so many noble minds and managed to create a spiritual movement that continues to grow, develop and influence the consciousness of mankind. She was the first to promulgate the secret teachings on which all religions are based, she was the first to make an attempt to give a religious and philosophical synthesis of all ages and peoples; it caused the awakening of the religious consciousness of the ancient East and created a worldwide fraternal Union, which is based on respect for human thought, in whatever language it is expressed, broad tolerance for all members of a single human family and the desire to embody not dreamy, but concrete idealism, penetrating into all areas of life.

Every century, the Teachers of Shambhala make an attempt to find a messenger through whom it is possible to convey to the world a part of the true ancient Teaching for the enlightenment of people.

In the nineteenth century, the choice fell on H. P. Blavatsky. "For 100 years on Earth, we have found one such," the Mahatmas wrote.

H. P. Blavatsky was born on August 11, 1831. in Yekaterinoslavl, in an aristocratic family. The childhood and youth of Elena Petrovna passed in very happy conditions, in an enlightened friendly family with humane traditions. The second stage of life /1848-1872/ can be characterized by the words - Wanderings and Apprenticeship. 24 years of wandering, again and again renewed attempts to penetrate into Tibet. This whole period of her life was first a preparation for an apprenticeship, and then an apprenticeship itself.

The main obstacle was her temperament. Even with the Teachers, before whom she bowed, she was often militant, and for free communication she needed many years of self-education. "I doubt that anyone else has entered the Path with such difficulty or with great self-sacrifice," wrote Olcott. The teachers said: “Blavatsky aroused special confidence in us - she was ready to risk everything and endure any difficulties. More than anyone else, she possessed psychic powers, driven by extraordinary enthusiasm, irresistibly striving for her goal, physically very hardy, she was for us the most suitable, although not always obedient and balanced, intermediary. Another, perhaps, would have fewer errors in literary works, but he would not have endured, like her, seventeen years of hard work. And then much would remain unknown to the world " .

The 3rd period of Blavatsky's life is a period of creativity bearing a clear stamp of a certain spiritual mission /1873-1891/. In 1875 Together with Henry Olcott, Elena Petrovna founded the Theosophical Society - one of the links in that chain of higher schools of secret knowledge, which were founded from century to century by the employees of the Hierarchy, as needed, in one country or another, in one form or another. All these schools of higher knowledge were the offspring of that Single Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The task of the Theosophical Society is to unite all those striving for the unity of mankind, regardless of race and religious beliefs, striving for knowledge of the true nature of man and the Cosmos.

The seeds of higher knowledge sown by the Theosophical Society penetrated the consciousness of the people of the Western world and spread throughout the world. Such societies exist in all cultural countries, and the Theosophical Society operates in Moscow as well.

In the 70s of the last century, a wave of enthusiasm for spiritualism swept through America, Europe and Russia. Elena Petrovna writes: "I received an order to tell the public the truth about spiritualistic phenomena and their mediums. And from now on my martyrdom begins. All spiritualists will rise up against me, in addition to Christians and all skeptics. Thy will, Teacher, be done!"

She temporarily joined spiritualism in order to show all the dangers of mediumistic seances and the difference between spiritualism and true spirituality.

At the same time, Blavatsky was working on her first major work, Isis Unveiled. And then - the main work of Blavatsky's life - "The Secret Doctrine" - 3 volumes, about a thousand pages each /1884-1891/. The first volume reveals some of the mysteries about the creation of the Cosmos, the second - about the evolution of man, the third - about the history of religions.

The essence of the information given to mankind through Blavatsky in "Isis Unveiled" and in the "Secret Doctrine" that continues it, are revelations about the Great Creative Beginning of the Cosmos, the creation of the Cosmos and man / microcosm /, about the eternity and periodicity of Being, about the basic cosmic laws by which he lives Universe. The teaching transmitted by Blavatsky is as old as humanity itself. Thus, the "Secret Doctrine" is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its Cosmogony alone is the most amazing and developed of all systems.

The life of H. P. Blavatsky can be characterized in two words: martyrdom and sacrifice. Worse than all physical torments - there were many of them in her life - the suffering of the soul that she endured as a result of collective hatred, misunderstanding, cruelty caused by her struggle against the ignorance and inertia of the human soul. For 17 years Blavatsky struggled with ignorance and dogmatism both in science and in religion. And all this time she was the center of attacks and slander.

She possessed colossal, comprehensive, incredible versatility of knowledge.

Here is a brief summary of the Teaching she gave in her many writings:

GOD. For Blavatsky there is no personal God. She is a pantheist. She does not believe that anyone can represent God on Earth. But every human being, as his consciousness develops, feels the presence of the Divine principle in himself. God is a Mystery. A person can only comprehend what his mind can accommodate and therefore ascribes to God those qualities that in every era in different regions were considered the best.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was opposed to any discrimination based on beliefs, because. knew all their relativity in time and space. No one owns the fullness of the Truth, but only its partial distorted vision. She was opposed to any racism, especially spiritual racism.

COSMOGENESIS. In the teachings transmitted by her, the concept of COSMOS arises. In Neoplatonism there is a definition of the Cosmos as a huge living form, constantly renewing like the body of any mineral, plant, animal or person. Actually, a person in this Cosmos is one of the many manifestations of life on the physical plane. The cosmos has no dimensions comprehended by the mind. Our knowledge of the Cosmos grows in proportion to our progress. As history progresses, our understanding of the universe changes. Beyond this age-appropriate knowledge that culture reflects, there are ancient teachings that have been passed down to humans by higher cosmic civilizations.

H. P. Blavatsky uses mainly the Tibetan book of Dhyan. It speaks of the Cosmos as an extremely complex organism with an unlimited number of forms of matter and energy. And moreover, it is said that besides "our cosmos" (ie, the physical one) there are others, more or less similar to ours, which are not accessible to understanding due to the limitations of the human mind. Parts of the Cosmos and even the whole of it are born, live, reproduce and die, like any living being. It expands and contracts in the process of cosmic breathing, based on the harmony of opposites.

Ancient traditions teach that souls evolve through millions of reincarnations, moving from planet to planet to enter a more perfect body. Some of the planets she mentions no longer exist today, some will only exist in the future. As the ancient texts say, neither the cause nor the reason for which the Cosmos exists, "does not know even the greatest clairvoyant, who is closest to heaven." This is the Mystery of the Mysteries. Beginning and End elude human perception.

ANTHROPOGENESIS. Blavatsky does not accept Darwin's ideas. She upholds the ancient Doctrines regarding humanity "landing" on Earth from the Moon. Gradually, these creatures began to acquire a corporeal shell as the Earth compacted. On Earth, in a physical body, a person has been developing for more than 18 million years, at first as a giant with a limited intellect. 9 million years ago, a person already became similar to the modern one. A million years ago, the so-called "Atlantean Civilization" was in full bloom, living on a continent located between Eurasia and America. At Atlantes, technical progress has reached a very high level. This continent, due to geological catastrophes caused by the immoderate use of energy, similar to modern atomic energy, has split. The last remaining island 11.5 million years ago sank into the waters of the ocean, called the Atlantic. This catastrophe is reminiscent of the biblical story of Noah.

NATURE LAWS. Blavatsky mentions two basic laws - Dharma and Karma.

Dharma is the universal law that directs everything to a destination. Any attempt to deviate from the Dharma is accompanied by suffering and is rejected. That which is consistent with purpose is not subject to suffering and rejection. A person has the opportunity to deviate, tk. he has relative free will. The wheel of reincarnation gives him the opportunity to act right or wrong. Any of his actions in both directions gives rise to Karma, i.e. a cause that leads inevitably to an effect.

Blavatsky does not believe in the forgiveness of sins, but that they can be compensated for by acts of mercy.

All souls are different in their external manifestation, but in essence they are the same, since they do not have gender, nation, race. A human being always reincarnates only in a human being of the race and sex that he needs to gain experience.

Everything disappears over time to reappear, but nothing really disappears or dies, but only sinks and reappears cyclically. In our world everything happens cyclically, while in the transcendental everything is circular.

LIFE AFTER DEATH. For Blavatsky, human beings are about the same whether they are in incarnation or not. They carry out the inevitable cycle of birth, life and death.

PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. She treated them with disdain, believing that only those who are unable to comprehend the deepest truths can be carried away by them. She did not admit that some of these phenomena could supposedly stem from Good, while others from Evil, considered them not something exceptional, but potentially characteristic of all people, regardless of their level of spirituality. In May 1891 Elena Petrovna died in her working chair, like a true warrior of the Spirit, as she had been all her life. The day of her rest is celebrated as the Day of the White Lotus.

"Let's not forget to express gratitude to those who imprinted Knowledge with their lives." Looking back at the past of mankind, one can see a pattern of rejection of both discoveries and revelations that is ahead of its time. Until now, few people realize that not only the teachings she brought from the East, but she herself, her personality, her extraordinary mental properties are a phenomenon of the greatest importance for our era. She is not a theory, she is a fact.

"The day will come when her name will be written down by grateful offspring... on the highest peak, among the elect, among those who knew how to sacrifice themselves out of the purest love for humanity!" /Olcott/.

"... HP Blavatsky, truly, our national pride, the Great Martyr for Light and Truth. Eternal glory to her!" (E. Roerich)

Introduction
Hierarchy
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Annie Besant
Ramakrishna
Alice Bailey
Vivekananda

students of the Eastern sages to the no less unusual position of the Teacher and herald of Ancient Wisdom, who sought to unite all ancient Aryan beliefs in a common esotericism and prove the origin of all religions from a single divine source.

“To live next to Elena Petrovna meant to be in constant proximity to the miraculous,” wrote one of her biographers. She possessed the extraordinary abilities of a real Magician, surprised everyone with her erudition, deep holistic knowledge, and the wisdom of her soul.

As the biographer says, “... she charmed and conquered everyone who came into contact with her more or less closely. She, by the power of her all-penetrating and bottomless gaze, worked the most incomprehensible miracles: flower buds opened before your eyes, and the most distant objects, at a mere call, rushed to her hands. The whole history of literature, writes Olcott, “does not know a more remarkable character than this Russian woman.”

Elena Petrovna was capable of incredible work and superhuman patience when it came to serving the idea, about fulfilling the will of the Teachers. Her devotion to the Teachers was heroic, fiery, never weakened, overcoming all obstacles, selfless until her last breath.

She herself said: “Nothing matters to me now, except my duty to the Masters and the Cause of Theosophy. They own all my blood to the last drop. They will be given the last beating of my heart ... "

This Russian woman struggled with the enormous oppressive force of materialism that fettered human thought, she inspired many noble minds and managed to create a spiritual movement that continues to grow, develop and influence the consciousness of mankind. She was the first to promulgate information about the secret teachings on which all religions are based, she was the first to make an attempt to synthesize the religious and philosophical teachings of all ages and peoples; it caused the awakening of the religious consciousness of the East and created the World Brotherhood Union, which is based on respect for human thought, in whatever language it is expressed, broad tolerance for all members of a single human family and the desire to embody not dreamy, but concrete idealism, penetrating into all areas of life. Every century, the Teachers of Shambhala make an attempt to find a messenger through whom it is possible to convey to the world a part of the true ancient Teaching for the enlightenment of people. In the 19th century, the choice fell on H. P. Blavatsky. “For 100 years on Earth, we have found one such,” the Mahatmas wrote.

The main obstacle in life for Blavatsky was her own temperament. Even with the Teachers, before whom she bowed, she often quarreled, and for free communication with them she had to curb herself. “I doubt that anyone else has entered the Path with such difficulty or with great self-sacrifice,” Olcott wrote. The teachers said: “Blavatsky aroused special confidence in us - she was ready to risk everything and endure any difficulties. More than anyone else, wielding psychic powers, driven by extreme enthusiasm, irresistibly striving for her goal, physically very enduring, she was for us the most suitable, although not always obedient and balanced, intermediary. Another, perhaps, would have had fewer errors in literary works, but he would not have endured, like her, seventeen years of hard work. And then much would remain unknown to the world.

The third stage of Blavatsky's life (1873-1891) is a period of creativity bearing the clear imprint of a certain spiritual mission. In 1875, together with Henry Olcott, Elena Petrovna founded the Theosophical Society - one of the links in that chain of higher schools of secret knowledge, which were founded from century to century by the employees of the Hierarchy as needed, in one country or another, in one form or another. All these schools of higher knowledge were the offspring of the One Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The task of the Theosophical Society is to unite all, regardless of race and religious beliefs, striving for the unity of mankind, the knowledge of the true nature of man and the Cosmos. The seeds of higher knowledge sown by the Theosophical Society penetrated the consciousness of the people of the West and spread throughout the world. Such societies exist in all highly developed countries, and the Theosophical Society operates in Moscow as well. In the 70s of the 19th century, a wave of enthusiasm for spiritualism swept through America, Europe and Russia. Elena Petrovna writes: “I received an order to tell the public the truth about spiritualistic phenomena and their mediums. And now my martyrdom begins. All spiritualists will rise up against me, in addition to Christians and all skeptics. Your will, Master, be done!”

She temporarily joined spiritualism in order to show all the dangers of mediumistic seances and the difference between spiritualism and true spirituality.

At the same time, Blavatsky was working on her first major work, Isis Unveiled. And then the main work of Blavatsky's life - "The Secret Doctrine": 3 volumes, about a thousand pages each (1884-1891). The first volume reveals some of the mysteries about the creation of the cosmos, the second - about the evolution of man, the third - about the history of religions.

The essence of the information presented to mankind through Blavatsky in "Isis Unveiled" and in the "Secret Doctrine" continuing it, are revelations about the Great Creative Beginning of the Cosmos, the creation of the cosmos and man (microcosm), about the eternity and periodicity of being, about the basic cosmic laws by which he lives Universe. The teaching transmitted by Blavatsky is as old as humanity itself. So, the "Secret Doctrine" is the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most amazing and developed of all such systems.

The life of H. P. Blavatsky can be characterized in two words: martyrdom and sacrifice. Worse than all the physical torments - there were many of them in her life - the suffering of the soul that Blavatsky endured as a result of the collective hatred, misunderstanding, cruelty generated by her struggle against the ignorance and inertia of the human soul. For 17 years Blavatsky struggled with ignorance and dogmatism both in science and in religion. And all this time she was the focus of attacks and slander.

H. P. Blavatsky possessed colossal, all-encompassing, incredible in versatility knowledge.

Here is a brief summary of the teaching she has conveyed in her many writings:

GOD. For Blavatsky there is no personal God. She is a pantheist. She believes that there is no one who can represent God on Earth, but at the same time, every human being, as consciousness develops, feels the presence of the Divine principle in himself. God is a Mystery. A person can only comprehend what his mind can accommodate, and therefore ascribes to God those qualities that in each era in different regions were considered the best. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was opposed to any discrimination based on beliefs, as she knew all their relativity in time and space. No one owns the Truth in its entirety, but only its partial distorted vision. H. P. Blavatsky was opposed to any racism, especially spiritual racism.

COSMOGENESIS. In the foundations of the doctrine formed by her, the concept of "Cosmos" arises. In Neoplatonism, there is a definition of the Cosmos as a huge living form, constantly renewing, like the body of any mineral, plant, animal or person. Actually, man in this Cosmos is one of the numerous manifestations of life in the physical plane. The cosmos has no dimensions comprehended by the mind. Our knowledge of the Cosmos deepens in accordance with our development. As history progresses, our understanding of the universe changes. Beyond this age-appropriate knowledge that culture reflects, there are ancient teachings that humans have inherited from higher cosmic civilizations.

H. P. Blavatsky relies primarily on the Tibetan "Book of Dzyan". It speaks of the Cosmos as an extremely complex organism with a certain number of forms of matter and energy. And, moreover, it is said that, besides “our Cosmos” (that is, physical), there are other Cosmoses, more or less similar to ours, but not accessible to understanding due to the limitations of the human mind. Parts of the Cosmos and even the whole of it are born, live, reproduce and die, like any living being. It expands and contracts in the process of cosmic breathing, based on the harmony of opposites.

Ancient traditions teach that souls evolve, undergoing millions of reincarnations, moving from planet to planet to incarnate in a more perfect body. Some of the planets she mentions no longer exist today, some will only exist in the future. As the ancient texts say, the reason for the existence of the Cosmos "does not know even the greatest clairvoyant, who is closest to the sky." This is the Mystery of the Mysteries. Beginning and End elude human perception.

ANTHROPOGENESIS. Blavatsky does not accept Darwin's ideas. It supports the ancient doctrines regarding the origin of mankind from the persons who "landed" on Earth from the Moon. Gradually, these creatures began to acquire a corporeal shell.

On Earth, in a physical body, a person has been developing for more than 18 million years, at first as a giant with a limited intellect. 9 million years ago, a person already became similar to the modern one. A million years ago, the so-called "Atlantic civilization" was in full bloom, spreading on the continent located between Eurasia and America. The Atlanteans have reached a very high level of technical progress. This continent, due to geological catastrophes caused by the immoderate use of energy, similar to modern atomic energy, split. The last of the remaining islands 11.5 million years ago sank into the waters of the ocean, called the Atlantic. This catastrophe is reminiscent of the biblical story of Noah.

NATURE LAWS. Blavatsky mentions two basic laws - Dharma and Karma.

Dharma (translated as “teaching”, “rule”, “order”, “world order”) is a universal law that determines everything that exists. Any attempt to deviate from the Dharma is accompanied by suffering and is rejected. That which is consistent with purpose is not subject to suffering and rejection. A person has the ability to deviate, since he has relative free will. The wheel of reincarnation gives him the opportunity to act right or wrong. Any of his actions in both directions gives rise to Karma, that is, a cause that inevitably entails a consequence.

PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. H. P. Blavatsky treated them with disdain, believing that only those who are unable to comprehend the profound truths can be carried away by them. She considered them not something exceptional, ? but potentially characteristic of all people, regardless of their level of spirituality. In May 1891, Elena Petrovna died in her work chair, like a true warrior of the Spirit, as she had been all her life. The day of her rest is celebrated as. Day of the White Lotus.

“Let's not forget to express gratitude to those who captured Knowledge with their lives”: Looking back at the past of mankind, one can see the pattern of rejection of discoveries and revelations that are ahead of their time. Until now, few people realize that not only the teachings brought by Blavatsky from the East, but she herself, her personality, her extraordinary mental properties, are a phenomenon of the greatest importance for our era. Blavatsky is not a theory, she is a fact.

“The day will come when her name will be written down by grateful offspring... on the highest peak, among the elect, among those who knew how to sacrifice themselves out of the purest love for humanity!” (Olcott).

“...E. P. Blavatsky, truly, our national pride, the Great Martyr for Light and Truth. Eternal glory to her!” (E. Roerich).