A letter to a certain clergyman who asked about the basis of his beliefs about the essence of created spirits and the human soul, and why he called the human soul ethereal

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your frank letter dated May 29. I answer it with the same frankness. Upon my entry into the ascetic life and then into the monastery, although various experiences characteristic of this path happened to me, I had an indefinite concept of the soul and spirits, recognizing and calling them, according to the general superficial understanding, disembodied and immaterial; there seemed no need to enter into further consideration. I entered the monastery in 1827, and began to study Scripture and the Fathers much earlier, one might say from childhood. Since 1843, independently of me, necessity has forced me to delve more deeply and accurately into the meaning of the soul and created spirits. Anthony the Great rightly said that this knowledge is extremely necessary for ascetics. Those ascetics who, in their ascetic deed, are led by the finger of God into battle with spirits, especially need it. And it has significant benefits for everyone: it is better to become acquainted with the world of spirits before death, rather than at the onset of death, as many became acquainted with, to their greatest surprise and horror, contrary to the concepts borrowed from Western dreamers. Experience proves the fidelity of the teachings of the Fathers with all decisiveness. The dark and mysterious is made very clear and simple. As for the word ether, chemistry uses this word to call matter completely different from the gases belonging to the earth, incomparably subtle, but indefinite, completely unknown to people. Its existence is recognized for the necessary reason that the space behind the earth’s atmosphere, like any space in general, cannot be alien to matter. In the proper sense, One is immaterial, unencompassed by space – God. Created spirits are incorporeal in relation to us. But their nature, like the nature of the soul, remains uncertain for us due to the impossibility of defining it. Science recognizes the impossibility of defining our body, as well as all bodies that have organic force - life. Descartes' dream of the independence of spirits from space and time is a decided absurdity. Everything limited, of necessity, depends on space. Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery