Глава 3 Рассказы о явлениях душ умерших людей, удостоверяющие в бытии загробной жизни

1. About the appearance of souls after their separation from the body, according to the Holy Scriptures. Since the continuation of the existence of the soul after its separation from the body and its immortality is an undoubted truth, since the Savior himself established it against the Sadducees who did not recognize it, then, therefore, the return of departed souls alone and their appearance to people living on earth, by the permission or command of God, is quite possible and does not represent anything incredible. Among the Jews contemporary with the Savior, faith in this return and this phenomenon was a universal faith. Jesus Christ assumed it as undoubted, and never said anything from which one could conclude that he did not approve or condemn this faith. He only taught that spirits, when they appear, have neither flesh nor bones, as he had them after his resurrection: “a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). If St. Thomas doubted the resurrection of his teacher and the reality of his appearance, he doubted this only because he knew that often the manifestations of spirits are only apparent, imaginary, that often people, too busy with some thoughts, imagine that they see and hear what actually does not happen; and if Jesus Christ had appeared to his disciples not in the body, no other form of appearance could have proved to them the truth of his resurrection; the spirit can appear even when its body is in the earth, or has already turned into earth. The apostles did not doubt the possibility of the appearance of spirits: when they saw the Savior walking towards them on the waters of Lake Gennesaret, they thought at first that they were seeing a spirit (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49). The gospel rich man, being in hellish torment, asks Abraham to send Lazarus to earth so that he would warn his brothers from the danger of being exposed to the terrible state in which he himself is tormented (Luke 21:14, 15). Consequently, he undoubtedly believed that the souls of the dead could return to the world, appear to people and speak to them. During the transfiguration of Jesus Christ on Tabor, “Moses and Elijah,” who died several centuries ago, appeared and had a conversation with Christ (Luke 9:30). After the resurrection of the Savior, many long-dead persons arose and appeared to many in Jerusalem (Matthew 12:13–14). In the Old Testament, King Saul turns to the sorceress of Endor and asks her to summon the spirit of Samuel (1 Samuel 28:12–13,14). Samuel appeared and spoke to Saul. We foresee the countless objections that will be raised against this story. But whether Samuel appeared or not, whether the sorceress really called him, or whether his appearance was only apparent, imaginary, in any case, from this event we can conclude that the Jews believed that the souls of the dead could appear to people and reveal to them the hidden and the future. St. Augustine wrote to Simplicius in response to his reasoning on this subject: “How Samuel could be summoned by means of magic is as difficult to understand as how the devil can speak, how he could tempt the holy man Job, or ask permission to carry out his intrigues against the apostles, or how he could transfer Christ himself to the roof of the temple of Jerusalem.” “It must be assumed that the spirit of Samuel was actually summoned and announced to Saul what had happened to him, not due to the power of a spell or the power of the devil, but solely by the will and permission of God.” Augustine adds to this: “One can further think that it was not Samuel, but only a ghost produced by deception and the power of a demon, who appeared to Saul. If Holy Scripture calls this ghost by the name of Samuel, then in this case it follows that property of ordinary human language, according to which the name of real objects is often used to call something that in fact is only their image or representation.” “If they ask how this ghost could reveal the future, announce to Saul his imminent death, then let us be allowed to answer this with the following question: how could the devil recognize the true God in Jesus Christ, or how could the girl about whom we are told in the Acts of the Apostles recognize the messengers of God in the apostles?” In conclusion, St. Augustine says that he does not properly understand the subject in question, and therefore refuses to pronounce a decisive judgment on whether the devil can, by the power of incantation, evoke the souls of the dead, so that they appear in bodily form and are able to speak and reveal the hidden and the future. The High Priest Onias, several years after his death, appeared to Judas Maccabees (2 Maccabees 15:12–15) in the form of a man with his hands raised up, praying for the people of God. Along with him, the long-dead prophet Jeremiah also appeared to Judah. At the same time, Onias said to Judas: “Here is a holy man, the patron saint of his brothers, constantly interceding for the people of God and for the holy city of Jerusalem.” At these words, Jeremiah turned to Judas and, handing him a golden sword, said: “Accept this sword as a gift from God; with it you will crush the enemies of my people Israel.” The second book of Maccabees (2 Maccabees 10:29) tells the following: during the battle of Judah Maccabee with Timothy, the commander of the Syrian army, five men suddenly appeared; They were on richly decorated horses and stood at the head of the Jewish army. Two of these men relentlessly accompanied Judas Maccabee in battle and defended him with their weapons, while they threw arrows and lightning at his enemies and thus blinded and terrified them. These five armed horsemen who fought for the Israelites were obviously: Mattathias, the father of Judah Maccabee (2Mac. 10:1-2.), and his four sons, all of whom had died at this time; for of the seven sons of Mattathias only three remained alive at that time: Judah, Jonathan and Simon. One could also mistake these men for angels sent to help Judas Maccabee. The dignity of the book and the testimony of an entire army vouch for the authenticity of this phenomenon. From all that has been said, it is obvious, firstly, that the Jews did not doubt the possibility of the souls of the dead returning to earth and believed that they actually appear and reveal to people many things that exceed ordinary human understanding; secondly, that the possibility and reality of these phenomena is confirmed by Holy Scripture. Moses forbids questioning the dead (Deut. 18:11): let it not be found in you (in Israel)... questioning the dead. The souls of the departed, of course, appear and can appear on earth not of their own will, but only by the command and permission of God. God commands and allows them to appear only for some special purpose worthy of Him. If they could appear of their own accord, then their appearances would, of course, be much more frequent than they actually are; in this case, of course, there would be few among them who would not come to earth for various personal reasons, out of motivation, for example, a feeling of kinship and a desire to meet with their loved ones, etc. This opinion is expressed by Blessed Augustine, telling his mother, St. Monica, who loved him so dearly. The evangelical rich man would certainly have visited his brothers and relatives to inform them of the unfortunate fate that befell him in the afterlife. But God, in His mercy and omnipotence, allows the souls of the departed to appear only very rarely. Therefore, everything that is said and written about the apparitions of the deceased should be treated with great caution and circumspection. 2. Phenomena of departed souls, represented by church history a) St. Augustine admits that often the dead actually appeared to living people, showed them the places where their bodies were buried without proper burial, and asked for such a burial. At the same time, he notes that noise is often heard in the churches in which the dead were buried, and that the dead were often seen entering the houses in which they lived on earth. b) On the night when Julian died, St. Vasily, having a vision that St. The martyr Mercury received a command from God to kill Julian. Soon after receiving this command, St. Mercury again appeared to Vasily and said that Julian was wounded to death. The next morning St. Vasily announced this to the people. c) St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, after his martyrdom in 107, appeared to his disciples, greeted them and remained with them for a long time. When they began fervent prayer, St. Ignatius appeared to them, crowned and bathed in light, like a warrior who emerged victorious from a dangerous battle. d) After the death of St. Ambrose, on the night when the catechumens were baptized, many of the newly baptized children saw St. bishop and pointed him out to their parents, but they could not see him, because, as St. Peacock (a disciple of this saint, who wrote his life) that their eyes were not pure enough for this. St. Paulinus adds that on the day of the death of St. Ambrose, he appeared to many St. men in the east, prayed with them and laid hands on them. When news of this was sent from the east to Mediolan, it turned out that the day the saint appeared in the east was, indeed, the day of his death. This letter survived to the time of St. Pavlina, who reports all this. We saw St. many times. bishop after his death at prayer in the so-called Ambrosian Church, which he promised to attend during his lifetime. During the siege of Mediolanus, St. Ambrose appeared to one citizen and promised him the next day to provide assistance to the besieged. One blind man, having learned through a vision about the arrival of the bodies of St. martyrs Sisinnius and Alexander and seeing a vision of Bishop Ambrose coming out to meet these saints. bodies, turned to him with a prayer for the return of his sight. Ambrose answered: “Go to Mediolan, there you will meet my brothers, they will arrive there very soon and will give you sight.” The blind man went to Mediolan, which he had never been to before, and, touching the tomb of St. martyrs, received his sight. This story is St. Peacock wrote down from the words of the healed man himself. The lives of the saints are filled with such phenomena, and many books could be filled with them. e) Evodius, Bishop of Uppsala, friend of St. Augustine, was also convinced of the reality of the apparitions of the dead and conveys some examples of these apparitions. Evodius says: “Does the soul, after being separated from the body, have some subtle body in which it appears and through which it can change places? Don't the angels themselves have some kind of bodily shell? If they are incorporeal, then how can their number be determined? How could Samuel appear to Saul if he had no body? I remember how Profuturus, Privatus and Servicius, whom I knew in the monastery, appeared to me after their death and spoke to me, and everything they said came true. Did their souls appear to me, or was it some other spirit that took their image?” Evodius believes that the souls of the departed are not completely incorporeal, since God alone is the purest spirit. But Augustine, to whom Evodius addressed these questions, does not allow that the soul, even after separation from the body, is united with any material substance. However, he admits that it is very difficult to find an explanation for much that happens in our soul, both in the waking and in the sleepy state, when we see, hear, feel and do what, obviously, can be caused in us only by the influence of real objects - it is difficult precisely because the spirit does not contain anything material. And how is it possible, he continues further, to explain such things as the phenomena of departed souls, when we are unable to explain much of our ordinary, everyday life? f) St. Sulpicius Severus, one day being far from the city of Tours, fell into a light sleep. St. appeared to him in a dream. Martin in white clothes, with a shining face and eyes and purple hair; Sulpicius recognized him. St. Martin held in his hand a book in which Sulpicius Severus described his life. Sulpicius fell at his feet and hugged his knees and asked for his blessing, which the saint gave him. When St. Martin rose into the air, Sulpicius woke up and saw next to him a boy, his servant, who announced to him that two monks had come from Tours and brought the news that St. Martin died. g) The Church sacredly honors the day of the discovery of the relics of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. It happened in 415 in this way: in Jerusalem, Gamaliel, the teacher of the Apostle Paul before his conversion, appeared in a dream to one priest named Lucius, who usually slept in the church vestibule, where the baptismal ceremony was performed, to protect the sacred vessels, and told him that his body and the body of St. Stephen, the first martyr, was buried in Kafargamala, on the outskirts of Dilagabis. The vision was repeated three times. And John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was at the council in Diospolis at that time, went to the indicated place, opened the holy relics and transferred them to Jerusalem, where many miracles occurred from them. h) The holy maiden Potalina, who suffered martyrdom in Alexandria, appeared to many after her death and converted many of them to Christ. In particular, she appeared to one warrior Vasily, who protected her from the violence of the mob while she was going to her death. One day, appearing, she laid a crown on the head of Vasily; according to her instructions, he received baptism and the crown of martyrdom. i) Appearance of the Mother of God, Ven. Sergius. One day, in the dead of night, the Monk Sergius performed his cell rule and sang an akathist before the icon of the Mother of God, which he did according to his custom every day. He often looked at the holy icon and fervently prayed to the Mother of God for his monastery. “Most Pure Mother of my Christ,” cried the holy elder, “intercessor, intercessor and strong helper of the human race! Be an unworthy intercessor for us too - ever pray to Thy Son and our God, that He may grant MERCY to this holy place, dedicated to the praise and honor of His holy name forever! We call on You, Mother of my sweetest Christ Jesus, for the help of Your servants, for You have great boldness in Your Son and God! May everyone have salutary peace and shelter!” This is how the monk prayed; his pure heart burned with a fertile flame, his humble mind was completely immersed in prayer, and he, like a child, in the simplicity of his soul, talked with the Most Pure Mother of all who loved her Divine Son with a pure heart. Having finished the prayer, he sat down to rest: but suddenly his holy soul felt the approach of a heavenly phenomenon, and he said to his cell student, the Monk Micah: “Watch, child: at this hour we will have a wonderful visitation.” As soon as he said this, a voice was heard: “Behold, the Most Pure One is coming!...” Then the elder stood up and hurriedly went out into the vestibule; here a light shone on him more than the sun, and he saw the Most Blessed Virgin, accompanied by the apostles: Peter the Supreme and John the Virgin - the Theologian... Unable to bear this wonderful radiance and the indescribable glory of the Mother of Light, the Monk Sergius fell on his face; but the good Mother touched him with her hand and encouraged him with words of grace: “Do not be afraid, my chosen one,” she said, “I have come to visit you; Your prayer for your disciples has been heard; Do not grieve any more about your monastery: from now on it will have abundance in everything, and not only during your life, but also after your departure to God. I will never depart from this place, and I will always cover it." She said so and became invisible... The old man trembled with fear and joy; for several minutes he seemed to be in an ecstatic state, and when he came to his senses, he saw that his disciple Micah was lying on the floor, as if dead: the great mentor could see the Queen of Heaven and hear Her voice; The disciple, struck by horror, was unable to see everything and saw only the heavenly light... “Get up, my child,” the elder said meekly. Micah came to his senses, stood up, but immediately fell at the feet of St. Sergius. “Tell me, father. For God’s sake,” he said, “what is this wonderful vision?” My soul was almost separated from my body... But Sergius himself could not yet speak from emotional excitement, only his face bloomed with heavenly joy. “Wait, child,” he said to the student, “and my soul trembles from this vision.” When, finally, the elder calmed down somewhat, he sent Micah to invite two reverent men from the brethren - Isaac the Silent and Simon the Ecclesiarch. They hurried to the call of their elder abbot, and he told them everything that was now in his cell. And all together they performed a prayer service to the Mother of God, and St. Sergius spent the whole night without sleep, listening with his mind to the Divine vision, which was the crown of his exploits here on earth. “Not by fortune telling, not in a dream vision, but in reality he saw the Mother of God, as the Monk Athanasius of Athos had once seen her,” the chronicler notes. According to an ancient legend, recorded in the Nikon Chronicle, this heavenly visit took place in the post of the Nativity of Christ, on the night from Friday to Saturday, and, as they think, in 1384. In grateful memory of this wonderful visit to the monastery of St. Sergius was established every Friday, in the evening, to perform an all-night vigil, with an akathist to the Mother of God, in the southwestern porch of the Trinity Cathedral, in the place where, according to legend, the cell of St. Sergius stood and where a majestic icon now flaunts, depicting this wonderful coming of the heavenly guest. And every Saturday, after the early liturgy, in the church of St. Nikon - in the same vestibule, a prayer service is performed to the glory of the Mother of God, and a canon deliberately composed, in the image of the Easter one, is sung in memory of this visit (alternately with two other canons) (from the book: “The Life and Deeds of St. Sergius”, Archimander Nikon). i) Bishop Basilisk, who died a hundred years ago, appeared to St. John Chrysostom, on his way to exile in the city of Komanakh, and John believed this vision, put on clean clothes and partook of the Holy Mysteries and, indeed, as he was told, died the death of a righteous man. j) The doctor Gennady, always merciful to the poor and suffering, was perplexed and doubted how a person would live after death? The Lord, seeing his love for his neighbors, taught him about the continuation of the afterlife in the following way. One day, an unfamiliar young man appeared to Gennady in a dream and ordered him to follow him. They entered a city. Here Gennady saw magnificent houses decorated with gold, heard solemn singing, which filled his soul with inexpressible joy. – What kind of city is this, and who sings it? – he asked the young man. “This is the city of God,” answered the young man, “and the inhabitants of this city, the saints of God, sing and have fun in it!” After this, Gennady woke up and soon forgot about his dream, not attaching much importance to it. But then, another time, also in a dream, the same young man appears to him and asks: “Do you recognize me?” I’ll find out, Gennady answers. “Where did you see me?” “I was with you in that unknown city, where they sang so well.” - “How did you see me and the city, and how did you hear the singing: in a dream or in reality?” - In a dream. And now I realize that I see you and talk to you also in a dream. - “Where is your body now?” - In my room. – “And you realize that at present your eyes are closed in your body and see nothing; that your hearing and tongue also do not work? With what eyes do you look at me? how do you hear my voice, how do you speak?... So, understand that even after death, and without bodily eyes, you will see and without a body you will live until the general resurrection. Believe this and do not doubt about the life of the soul after the death of the body.” The young man became invisible: it was an angel of God (“the story of St. Augustine in a letter to Euodius”, by Baronius, under 411). k) Once upon a time there lived a rich, noble and pious widow. Her name was Cleopatra. At the same time and in the same city, a certain Uar preached the faith of Christ and, after cruel torture, was put to death. The body of the martyr, by order of his tormentors, was thrown out of the city, to be preyed on by wild animals and birds. Pious Cleopatra secretly took the holy remains into her home and soon built a church with her own money in the name of the martyr Huar. During the first liturgy, on the day of the consecration of the new church, Cleopatra kneeled before the relics of St. Huara prayed fervently, asking St. Martyr of Christ to ask God for such mercy for her and her only son that would benefit both of them. After the consecration of the church, Cleopatra served refreshments to the clergy and people, summoned the poor and wanderers, and she herself, together with her son, who had just been assigned to the royal service, diligently served the guests. Having done a good deed, Cleopatra rejoiced and was comforted by it. But there is no lasting joy on earth. During the feast, her son fell ill and went to bed. He suffered from a severe fever, and that same night he died. Where to look for help and consolation for a mother in such an unexpected, such a sudden grief!... And so, she goes to the new church of God, to the church of St. Uara, and, falling to his knees before his relics, pours out his whole soul in tears and plaintively says: “Is this how you, saint of God, rewarded me for my labors and care for you? Is this the kind of mercy I expected from you? Took away my son, my only hope! Who will feed me now in my old age? Who will put my bones in the coffin? It would be better for me to die myself than to lose such a young and beautiful son! Pleasant of God! Either return my son to me, as you once did - Elijah to the widow of Zarephath, or let me die too! I can’t live without my beloved son.” The mother cried for a long time at the tomb of the martyr and, tired of her tears, finally fell asleep. In a dream St. appears to her. Martyr Uar, holding her son’s hand; both of them are dressed in white shiny clothes, with precious crowns on their heads. St. Varus said to Cleopatra: “zealous admirer of the martyrs! I have not forgotten your blessings shown to my body, and I begged God to number your son among the angels. You yourself prayed on the day of the consecration of the church, so that I would ask God for you and your son, what is useful for both of you and what is pleasing to God. Here I have fulfilled your wish. Look at the glory of your son: he is now one of those who stand before the throne of God. Why are you grieving so much, why are you crying so much? Or do you not want your son to enjoy heavenly blessings, which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and has not entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2:9)? If so, then take it! At these words, John pressed himself tightly to St. Uaru said to his mother: “If you love me, then rejoice in my bliss and do not mourn before the Lord!” Then Cleopatra exclaimed: “Oh, blessed souls! Take me with you too"… woke up and returned home with joy (“Thu – Min.” Oct. 19). m) One widow, having lost her sight and not finding help from doctors, decided to go to Jerusalem to venerate St. places and seek healing from the saints of God. Her only son went with her. We arrived in Jerusalem. But here, as everywhere else, grief lives with people. The widow was struck by a new misfortune: her son fell ill and died. Who does not understand the desperate situation of a sick widow and loving mother! Now she was left in a foreign land, without anyone she knew, without eyes and a guide. During her grief, St. appeared to her. Loggin in a vision and said: “Do not grieve, you will receive sight and see your son in heavenly glory, if only you will bother to go out of the city and find my head, cut off by order of Pilate and thrown outside the city.” A believing widow hired a guide out of town; stopped at the indicated place and, raking through a pile of garbage with her own hands, found the head of Saint Loggin and immediately received her sight. With great joy the widow returned to the city, glorifying God and his saint. The next night Saint Loggin appeared to her again, surrounded by heavenly light, leading with him her son, dressed in light clothes. “Look at your son,” said the martyr Loggin, “what honor and glory he is in! Look and be comforted! He is canonized as St. God's! (“Thu – Min.” Oct. 16). m) One day, the Mother of God appeared to the young Muse in a dream, surrounded by many young women. The Muse was very happy at this vision and thought: “How fun it would be to live with such friends under the auspices of the Mother of God!” And so the Mother of God asks her: “Do you want to live with the young women whom you see with Me?” The muse replied that she really wanted this and was ready to follow the Mother of the Lord even now. Then the Mother of God promised to come to her in 30 days to take her with her, and commanded her at that time to refrain from childish fun, not to laugh and not to do anything bad. After this vision, the Muse woke up. The parents noticed this change in their daughter and asked: “Why have you changed so suddenly?” The muse told them her dream and what commandment she received from the Mother of God. The parents accepted her explanation with faith and waited for the event. After 25 days, the Muse fell ill and on the 30th day, when the Mother of God promised to come for her, the sick woman joyfully turned to the visitor invisible to others and, saying quietly: “Behold I come, Lady, behold I come.” – died (“Thu – Min.” May 16). Believing in a future life, we should wait for death, as a special mercy of God, and at least not cry over the dead, as over those stricken by misfortune. Death, separating us from the body, only breaks the bonds that have always been a burden to the soul - the bonds that bound our good desires; separating us from the world, taking us out of the place of constant struggle with passions and, in return, gives us eternal blessings that the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard and has not entered the human heart. o) Saints often, by the will of God, appeared to the martyrs to strengthen them in their suffering. When St. Anastasia the Pattern Maker (died around 304) was thrown into a dark prison and there she was tormented by hunger for 30 days, during which time St. appeared to her every night. Martyr Theodotia filled her heart with joy and strengthened her. In a conversation about various subjects, Anastasia once asked Theodotia how she could come to her after death? Theodotia told her that the souls of the martyrs were given that special grace from God, that after being separated from earthly things, they come to whomever they wish, talk with them and console them. Then, after the second 30 days that Anastasia spent in prison, she was condemned to death, and it was decided to drown her in the sea along with others convicted of various crimes. Among these condemned there was a certain pious man named Eutychian, who for the sake of Christ was first deprived of all his property. Having put the convicts into the ship, the soldiers took them to sea. At a fairly large distance from the shore, the warriors boarded a boat prepared for them, and the ship with the convicts was pierced in many places so that it could sink, and they themselves swam to the shore. When the ship was about to be covered with waves, those on the ship suddenly saw St. Martyr Theodotia, who arranged the sails and guided the ship to the shore. Seeing this miracle and themselves saved from drowning, the condemned, coming ashore, fell at the feet of two Christians: Eutychian and Anastasia, wanting to be Christians. From the same Eutychian and Anastasia, having learned faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, they were baptized; all of them who were saved from drowning and believed were 120 people. The ruler of the region, having learned about this, seized them all and killed them in various ways, and St. He ordered the martyr Anastasia to be burned with fire, stretched out between four pillars and tied to them (“Thu. – Min.” Dec. 22). o) The saints appeared to correct errors made when writing their lives. Compiler of the life of St. Martyr Orestes, St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov, having compiled his life, has already prepared it for publication. One night St. The martyr appeared to him and said: “I suffered more for Christ than what you wrote.” Having said this, he opened his chest and, showing a wound in his left side right through to the insides, said: “They burned this through me with an iron”; further, showing the wound on his right and left arms, he said: “They cut this for me”; then, bending down, he opened both legs to the knees and, showing the wounds on them, said: “And this was cut with a scythe. You see,” he finally said, “I suffered more than how much you wrote” (“Thu – Min.” November 10). p) The saints appeared to reprove and punish the lawless and enemies of the Church of Christ. One merchant went to venerate the relics of St. Minas, carrying with him a bag of gold as a gift to the church. On the way, he was killed by the owner of the house where he stopped to spend the night. Having cut the body into pieces, the killer hid it for a while in the inner room of his house and wondered where to find a secret place to bury the murdered man. At this time St. appeared at his house. Mina asked the owner about the guest. He said that he had no one. Then St. Mina entered the inner room and, taking from there a basket with dissected body parts, showed it to the killer and asked: “What is this?” The murderer trembled and fell at the feet of the saint. Saint Mina, having assembled the dissected parts, through prayer to God, resurrected the murdered man and commanded him to continue his journey to him (“Chet. – Min.” from November 11). c) Saints sometimes appeared to warn Christians against unwitting participation in the service of idols. Upon ascending the throne, Julian, the apostate, planned the following, among other actions hostile against Christians. Knowing in what purity and abstinence Christians spend the holy Pentecost, the apostate calls on the city governor of Constantinople and orders him to secretly remove all ordinary food from the marketplace over the next few days, and offer only what had already been sacrificed to idols and was therefore considered defiled by Christians. No one knew the plan: therefore, many thousands of souls on the most holy days would be defiled by eating what was dissolved (as Julian commanded) with the blood sacrificed to idols. This would be a matter of regret for them for the rest of their lives, but for Julian, or, more precisely, Satan, who moved him, it would be a great joy and triumph. The same apostate, having fulfilled his plan, would not have failed to divulge to the whole world that the followers of Jesus the Nazarene (as he called the Lord) during the fast themselves ate food sacrificed to idols. But the one who, like the apple of his eye, guards simple and humble souls and always stumbles the wise in their deceit, did not allow the enemy’s plot to take place now. In the middle of the night, but not in a dream, a certain luminous warrior suddenly appears to the then bishop of Constantinople and tells him to immediately gather his spiritual flock and let him know about the threatening danger, with the command not to buy anything in the marketplace in the next days. “What will feed so many people these days,” asked the saint, “for many have nothing in their homes?” “Koliv or boiled wheat,” answered the one who appeared, “which you found among some, you must distribute to everyone.” “Who are you,” asked the patriarch, “who leads and cares for your brethren in this way?” “Christ’s martyr Theodore Tyrone,” answered the one who appeared. That is, this was that holy ascetic of Christ who, being a warrior many years earlier, during the reign of the evil Maximian, endured many terrible torments for the name of Christ, thereby earning himself the name of a great martyr in the Church of Christ. The saint, without delay, fulfilled what was commanded from above; and the Christians of Constantinople were preserved from desecration; and the evil Julian, seeing that his plan was destroyed, ordered to grant the former freedom to the market place (from the Works of Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson and Tauride, vol. III, 1873, pp. 51–53). r) Holy saints of God were sometimes sent by God to earth to eliminate church disputes and establish peace and unanimity. The holiday in the name of the three universal teachers was established for a special, very remarkable circumstance. Soon after their death, the question often arose among Orthodox admirers of their great deeds, merits and miracles: which of the three saints is greater and higher? The dispute about their virtues finally reached the point that after several centuries a split occurred in the society of Christians, and some began to be called Basilians, others Gregorians, and others Johannites. Then the saints themselves, all three, appeared to John, Bishop of the Euchaites, and said to him: “We all have equal dignity with God. Tell Christians to stop arguing about this. Just as during our lifetime we cared most about unanimity, so after our death we most of all wish for unanimity among believers. Establish one common holiday for us.” The holiday is set; the dispute has long been stopped, and we now call on the three saints, “like apostles of equal dignity” and of equal honor among themselves, for prayerful intercession, “may the Lord grant peace to the universe and great mercy to our souls” (from the book “Words” by Sergius, Bishop of Kursk, Moscow 1870, p. 377). 3. Several stories about the appearance of the souls of deceased ordinary people. Several stories about the appearance of the souls of deceased ordinary people. 1. “I had a friend from the seminary, with whom I was friendly and during the theological course I lived together,” says Archpriest Father Sokolov in his posthumous notes. – This is the son of the Bolkhov priest Nikolai Semenovich Veselov. After completing the seminary course, he remained as a teacher at the district school, and after graduating from the academy, I entered the priesthood in Kherson. But at one time I dreamed about him in such a way that I realized that he was no longer alive. I wrote to his father and received an answer that his son died on the very day and hour when he saw him in a dream. I dreamed that I was in a Kherson cemetery near one dilapidated pyramidal monument, in which a hole about five inches wide had been formed by fallen stones. Out of curiosity, I climbed through the hole inside the monument. Then I want to crawl back out, but I can’t find the hole in the darkness. I began to break the stones, and a light flashed. Having made a larger hole, I came out and found myself in a beautiful garden. On one of the alleys suddenly Veselov came towards him. - Nikolai Semenovich, what fate? – I exclaimed in surprise. “I died, and you see...” he answered. His face shone, his eyes sparkled, his chest and neck were bare. I rushed towards him to kiss him, but he jumped back and, eliminating me with his hands, said: “I’m dead, don’t come closer.” I seemed to believe that he was in the next world, and I was scared. I looked at him and noticed that his face was cheerful. The fear is gone. Veselov walked past me, I walked next to him without touching him. “I’m alive, even though I’m dead, dead and alive, it doesn’t matter,” he said. His words seemed so logical to me that I could not object to them. As we approached the old pyramidal monument, Veselov said: “Goodbye, you will go home,” and pointed to the hole. “I climbed up and immediately woke up” (Addition to “Kherson Bishop Ved.” 1891, No. 11). 2. “More than forty years ago, I knew two young people,” says one of the military veterans, “they served in the Pereyaslavl cavalry regiment as chief officers: Mr. A., of the Orthodox faith, and Sh. - Lutheran. These two young friends of mine were friends with each other. They made a vow to each other that whichever of them died first would come to the survivor and say what happens to a person after the departure of the soul and what awaits them in the future life. For several years I did not see either one or the other, but I knew that one of them, namely Sh., had died. In 1836, I had a trip to Tambov, 25 versts from where my aunt lived in a village. I came to her with the intention of staying with her for several days. On the first day of my arrival, she told me about one wanderer who dedicated himself to God. “He leads the most strict life,” she said, “so that, considering himself unworthy to enter the church, he often stands at the threshold and, despite the cold, stands barefoot, wears a monastic caftan and girds himself with a belt. Would you like to see him, I have him now.” I asked you to introduce me to him. The wanderer, at the invitation of my aunt, came, and what? It was A. I jumped up, ran up to him, and we hugged him. - How did fate make you this way? He explained to me that, according to this vow, his friend appeared to him not in a dream, but in reality, told him what the soul experiences after leaving the body, and what exactly, I am forbidden to say,” added A. “But in order to understand at least what it is, it is enough for you to see this scroll on me.” This is the reason why I, having sold my rich estate, used the money for charitable deeds and walk like a poor sinner, praying to the Lord for the forgiveness of sins. I hope the Lord will not leave me” (“Soulful reading,” 1861, part I). 3. At the beginning of this century, a certain N. lived in one of the provincial cities, a retired official of rather elderly years, a kind and truly pious man. He was very friendly with V., his childhood friend and colleague, the same age and the same views on things. When V. died, his comrade fervently prayed to God for the repose of his friend, and from time to time he gave out alms for the salvation of his soul. He often thought about his friend's fate after death. On the fortieth day after V.’s death, his friend, sitting in his room, heard the creaking of the doors. Raising his eyes, he sees his deceased friend V entering the room. “I thank you, friend,” said the one who appeared in a quiet voice, “for your fervent prayers for me and for your alms, which have helped me a lot. By the grace of God, I am delivered from hell: my abode is at peace.” With horror and amazement N. listened to the wonderful newcomer, not daring to interrupt him. “Forgive me, friend, goodbye in eternity,” said the one who appeared, “I hope that we will meet soon, we will live together, but for now, work hard for your eternal salvation,” and with these words he disappeared out the door. Pious N. intensified his pious deeds, leaving all the cares of life to his elder children. Two years after his vision, he, kneeling, died quietly and peacefully in prayer (“Soulful Reading,” 1868, Part I). 4. In one village lived a respectable couple: an old man, a non-regular priest, G.’s father, and an old woman, his wife. They lived for a very long time in the world and, as they say, in perfect harmony. Father G. through his life gained the respect of many in the surrounding area. He was a man of the good old days, hospitable, friendly and affectionate with everyone, and most importantly, pious and kind. But there is an end to everything in the world: Father G. fell ill, went to bed, and, guided by the Christian sacraments, quietly and peacefully passed into eternity, leaving his life partner who bitterly mourned. A year has passed since his death. The old woman, his wife, on the eve of the year-long memorial for him, after various troubles, lay down to rest a little. And so, she sees her late husband in a dream. She happily rushed to him and began asking him: what was wrong with him and where was he now? The deceased answered: “Although I am not obliged to talk to you, but since during my life I did not have any secrets from you, I will say that, by the grace of God, I am not in hell; soon you too will follow me, prepare for death three weeks after this day.” The deceased slowly left, as if not wanting to part with her, and the old woman, waking up, joyfully began to tell everyone about her meeting with her late husband. And, indeed, exactly three weeks later she died peacefully. (“Soulful reading.” 1868, part I). 5. On the night of September 28-29, I dreamed, reports Count M.V. Tolstoy, that I was standing in my living room and heard the voices of children coming from the living room. I looked at different children walking past me into the hall and between them Volodya, our recently deceased son. I happily rushed to him, he smiles at me with his old angelic smile. I extended my hands to him: Volodya, is that you? He threw himself on my neck and hugged me tightly, tightly. - Where are you, my joy, are you with God? - No, I’m not with God yet, I’ll be with God soon. -Are you feeling good? - Okay, better than yours. And I visit you often, everyone is around you. I am almost alone, only Mary Magdalene is with me. Sometimes I get bored. - When are you bored? “Especially when they cry about me.” But it consoles me when they pray for me, when they give to the poor for me. I keep praying, praying for my mother, for you, for my brothers, for Pasha (sister), for everyone who loves me. Hug my dear mother for me, like this, tightly. “You should see her, my joy.” - And I’ll see you, I’ll definitely see you. - When? - When the crying stops. Then I heard my wife’s voice from the corridor, I turned to her, then looked back - he was no longer there. I woke up with an increased heartbeat, in such excitement that I could not resist the loud sobs with which I woke up my wife. At that very moment I jotted down on paper what I had seen in the dream word for word as it was (M. Pogodin “Simple speech about tricky things”). 6. The Mogilev Diocesan Gazette contains the following incident from the life of Metropolitan Platon. “In my life,” says the Eminence, “there is one case in which I saw the shadow of another person, and moreover, as vividly and clearly as I see you now, addressing my listeners. This was in the 30s, when I was an inspector at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Among our other students was Ivan Krylov, from the Oryol seminary, known to me when I was a mentor there. He studied well, was of good behavior and good-looking. One day he comes to me and asks me to let him go to the hospital. I think to myself: that’s right, he was exhausted, let them feed him better there, and he will recover. Or maybe he’ll write a course essay there. Some time passes, I don’t hear anything about him, the doctor doesn’t say anything. But then, one day, I was lying on the sofa and reading a book, and I saw Krylov standing and looking straight at me. I see his face so clearly, just like you, but his body was as if in a fog or cloud. I looked at him. He... I shuddered. The ghost seemed to rush to the window and disappear. I was still thinking about what this meant, when I heard a knock on my door, the hospital watchman came in and said to me: Student Krylov gave his soul to God. - How long ago? – I asked in amazement. - Yes, it took me about five minutes to get ready to see you. “If you please, solve this mystery,” said the archpastor, addressing everyone present during the story. Everyone was silent. “All this,” the bishop concluded, “undoubtedly proves to us some kind of mysterious connection between us and the souls of the dead” (Mogilev. “Eparch. Ved.” 1883). 7. In 1851, on April 20, hieromonk Father Simeon died in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, who was buried with due honor. The day after the burial, one of his spiritual children, M., early in the morning, sitting on his bed, was busy with sinful thoughts. But then he feels that someone is near him; Raising his head, he saw Father Simeon, who, approaching him with a cheerful face and shaking his head, said: “It’s too much for you to indulge in sinful thoughts - fight and resist them, and hold on to the monastery with both hands.” He also said something edifying, but M. was so frightened that he could not remember everything he said (Monastery letters, XXIX). 8. Lord Thomas Erskine relates the following vision. When I was a young man I happened to be absent from Scotland for some time. On the day of my return to Edinburgh, in the morning, coming down from the bookshop, I met the old butler of our family. I found a strong change in his appearance: he was pale, thin and gloomy. - Oh, old man, why are you here? “To meet your lordship,” he answered, “and to ask your intercession before my lord: our steward cheated me at the last settlement.” Struck by his appearance and tone, I ordered him to follow me into the bookseller's store, where I went back; but when I turned around to speak to the old man, he was no longer there. I remembered the house and apartment where he lived, and so I went to see him. But imagine my surprise when I entered his apartment and saw his wife in mourning. “My husband died,” she said, “several months ago. Before his death, he told me that our manager had cheated him, but you will probably help him find the money he needs.” I promised to do this and rather, at my insistence, the unpaid amount was handed over to the widow (“Disputed region between two worlds,” R. D. Owen). 9. The recluse Georgy (Mashurin) tells the following fact in a handwritten note found in his papers after his death. “When everything was resting in peaceful silence in the dead of night and my mother was resting on her bed, suddenly her whole peace was illuminated with light. The door opened, the light increased; The priest, who was her confessor and had already died for three years, appeared and brought the holy icon in his arms. Quietly he approached her bed and blessed his spiritual daughter, who stood in joyful awe and overcome with fear, with the image and announced to her these longed-for words: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God will give you a son, George. Here is the image of St. Great Martyr George." Inexpressibly delighted by God's blessing, she venerated St. the image and, taking it into her hands, placed it in the shrine. Thus the vision ended. This wonderful dream came true: Anna had a son, George. The recluse George ends the story of a wonderful dream with the words: “I had the happiness of hearing all this from my mother herself” (“Posthumous Notes of the Recluse George”). 10. At the end of the last century, landowner Z., a man not yet old, burdened with a large family and having a rather limited fortune, served as his only support for the family. But then, one day, Z. became seriously ill and, apparently, began to approach death; the doctors refused to treat him. The grief-stricken wife mourned her sick husband as if he were dead, imagining a hopeless situation with a bunch of young children. Seeing all this, the hopeless patient began to mentally ask God to extend his life while he settled his eldest sons and thus left his family in their care. After this prayer, he fell asleep and slept for quite a long time. Having woken up, he immediately calls his wife to him and joyfully tells her that he saw in a dream the Archpastor of Belgorod Joseph Gorlenko, whom he remembered while still alive. The archpastor, in a dream vision, told him that by the Mercy of God, for the sake of the innocent little ones, he was given another twenty years of life. But 20 years later, exactly on this day. The Lord will call him to himself. Having told his dream, the patient asked his wife to write all this down in his prayer book, which was done, and the hitherto hopeless patient 3. began, to the surprise of his family and the doctors who treated him, to quickly recover and soon completely recovered. Exactly 20 years later, on the appointed day, Z. fell into eternal sleep in the arms of his sons and daughters, already settled and provided for, with a grateful prayer on his lips. His prayer book with the entry is still kept by his descendants as a family rarity (“Soulful Reading,” 1868, parts 1–3). 11. “In one parish, on the occasion of the death of a priest, the place was taken by another. The new one who took the place of the deceased died a few days later, another one took his place, but this one also died a few days later. Thus, the parish lost three priests in a very short time. These two events eliminated candidates for the priesthood, which is why the said parish remained vacant for a considerable time. The spiritual authorities themselves appointed a candidate to this place. The newly admitted priest, entering the church for the first time and then the altar, saw here, away from St. throne, an unfamiliar priest in full priestly vestments, but chained hand and foot with heavy iron chains. The new altar server did not lose his presence of mind: he began the usual sacred service with the proskomedia, and after reading the 3rd and 6th hours, he performed the entire Divine Liturgy, not at all embarrassed by the presence of a stranger, a mysterious person, who, at the end of the service, became invisible. Now the new pastor realized that the chained priest he had seen was an inhabitant of the afterlife. He only did not understand the reason for his phenomenon, but this was soon explained. The chained priest, throughout the entire service, did not utter a word and only from time to time raised his chained hands and pointed them to one place on the platform in the altar. The same thing was repeated in the next service, during which, at the entrance to the altar, the priest paid special attention to the place to which, as before, the ghost was pointing. Peering closely in that direction, the priest noticed a dilapidated small bag lying there on the floor near the wall. He picked up this bag, untied it and found in it a considerable number of notes with the names of dead and living persons, which are usually given to the serving priest for commemoration at the proskomedia about the repose of souls who have passed into eternity, and about the health and salvation of the living. Now the priest realized that these notes, during the life of his chained brother standing here, who had previously been the rector of the same church, probably remained unread by him during the Divine Liturgies he performed. Therefore, having begun the service, he began to remember at the proskomedia the names of the living and the dead, indicated in the notes of the bag he had found, and as soon as he finished reading them, the heavy iron chains with which the prisoner of the grave was bound in an instant fell with a noise from his arms and fell to the ground; and he himself, having become free from bonds, approached the serving priest and, without saying a word, bowed at his feet to the face of the earth. Then, suddenly, neither him nor the iron shackles were visible. After this, the being from beyond the grave no longer appeared during divine services (“The Wanderer,” 1867, March, p. 125). 12. The daughter of Senator Rezanov, Anna Dmitrievna, soon after the death of her mother, saw her in a dream; the deceased said to her: “How long will you, my friend, cry for me? Take comfort: on April 15 we will unite forever.” Anna Dmitrievna told this dream to her family and friends, and they assured her that this dream was an empty dream, and in July she got married. But April 15, 1822 came, the day when her daughter was safely born. Remembering the mother’s word, A. Dm. on the eve of April 15, she confessed and received communion, and on April 15 she blessed her newborn daughter and said: “It’s not for me to raise you,” and in the evening of the same day she died (“Soulful Reading,” 1862, April book, 463–468). 13. In the first days of September 1848, Father Archpriest E-v saw in a dream a deceased priest Poselsky he knew, who told him: “Write to your friend, Countess Anna Alekseevna Orlova-Chesmenskaya, so that she prepares for death.” But the archpriest did not believe the dream and did not write to the countess. A week later, he dreamed of the same priest again and repeated the same thing. But the archpriest did not dare to write this time either. Finally, the deceased dreamed again, reprimanded him for non-compliance and added: if you miss even one mail and do not write to her, then your news will no longer find her alive, and God will exact it from you. The archpriest woke up, thought, fell asleep again, and now - a new dream: it was as if he was in a cemetery, in the region where the countess lived, and the countess in a crowd of people asked some old man for money; but he refused, and the archpriest gave her as much money as she needed, and after that he saw the countess’s small room in the same cemetery. Waking up from sleep, he immediately wrote a letter to the countess and advised her to be prepared for death every hour. She showed this letter to her confessor and confessed on the same day, and the next day she received the Holy Mysteries and, shortly after communion, died suddenly on the same day, October 6, 1848 (“Soulful Reader,” 1862, Feb. Book, 463–468) 14. In Zhelizovskaya’s book entitled “Inexplicable or Unexplained” we find the following very interesting story. In the spring of 1867, I went to St. Petersburg to bring my sister Lisa, who had completed her course at the institute. Of course, I did not fail to stop by my eternally dear Pskov, where, despite all the life I have experienced in separation, I still have friends. There were still a lot of them back then!… I considered the P-vyh family, consisting of four sisters, to be the most dear of all. What kind, smart, educated and friendly women they were! I, like many others, did not know a better pleasure than to visit their village of Shcheglitsy, 25 versts from Pskov, at the mouth of the Velikaya River. What a wonderful place, what views from the wide terrace and from the garden, running down the steep slope to the river on Lake Pskov, along which steamships smoothly pass, sailing boats glide!... Their bright, cozy, spacious house always hospitably accommodated many friends and visitors. In this he was similar to the hearts of his owners, who knew how to contain within themselves many honest feelings and many ardent affections. How sincerely I was saddened to learn that my older sister, Anna Petrovna, had recently died! It was somehow strange to imagine the Szczeglitz house, the Szczeglitz housewives - without her! It seemed that, having become orphans, they should have been something like a beautiful building - without a roof, a church - without a dome!... Yes, that’s how it was. Despite the joyful, friendly meeting at the entrance, the cheerful, lively conversation of the three sisters, I immediately saw that the whole house still had a mourning stamp on it, a great grief was oppressing everyone and everyone, a grief that had not had time to dull. Less than ten minutes had passed when the conversation turned spontaneously to the eternal topic of memories of the dear, unforgettable departed. Without hiding their tears, my dear old ladies began to tell me about her last days on earth. Then they moved on to her life, always active for the benefit of others, pure, like the azure of that Great River on which she passed!... I myself sincerely cried with them and was ready to remember and ask endlessly about her last years. So we talked tirelessly until midnight. It was a late hour for the early rising sisters. We said goodbye: - And we didn’t ask you! – one of the sisters caught herself. “Won’t it be unpleasant for you to sleep in Anyuta’s room?” Everything in it remains as it was, cozy and comfortable... - Oh, not at all! – I answered with conviction. - What could be unpleasant about this for me? You know what kind of friends she and I were. “Yes... But you wrote to us, remember that you sometimes had these spiritualistic phenomena,” another sister noted. – Does anything like that happen there? – I asked, not entirely pleasantly surprised. - Oh no! Never! – they hastened to assure me. “The late sister’s maid said that she once heard a knock there... It’s the same as your sister’s,” Ekaterina Petrovna, the youngest, added conscientiously. - But this is nothing new to you! Aren't you scared?... - I won’t be afraid; but just not so loud that it prevents you from falling asleep. To tell the truth, the sisters relied too much on my “habit.” Tired from the road and from tears, the sleepless night did not smile at me at all. However, the two older sisters began vying with each other to reproach Ekaterina Petrovna for her trust in the chatter of the servants and assure me that there was nothing like that and could not be in the room where their dear deceased lived so sacredly and prayed so much. We said goodbye, but Ekaterina Petrovna came in with me, and we talked with her for another half hour. “Just a little,” she told me as she left, “please don’t stand on ceremony.” My room, you know, is nearby. Knock and we'll switch bedrooms. She left, but soon an old maid, whom I had known for a long time, entered the room. -Are you awake, Agrafena? - I said. - It's too late! Please go!... I don’t need you at all. But, to my surprise, Agrafena announced that since the death of the “old lady” she always sleeps here, behind the partition, on the sofa. - If you don’t mind, madam, then I will now... I hastened to say that, on the contrary, I was very glad. I was, in fact, pleased that there would be a living creature next to me, behind the chintz curtain. So she settled down. For some time, while I was undressing, she and I talked about something, remembering the past. The hour has struck. Agrafena yawned sweetly, and I fell silent. Around me, all the things and furniture of the deceased stood in exactly the same order as during her life. The hours I spent here with her were still so vivid in my memory that it seemed to me that she was about to come in, or her kind, cheerful voice would be heard... So I thought, washing my face, combing my hair, taking out from my travel case some things that I did not know how to do without and, by the way, my little treasured Gospel, which was here in previous years. I put it on the night table, getting ready, before going to bed on her bed, to pray at her icon case... So what? Would I be scared if I saw her? “Suddenly it came into my head; I think not"... Suddenly, as if in response to my thought, three sharp, distinct knocks were clearly heard on Anna Petrovna’s night table, as if someone had tapped a fingernail firmly. I knew what it meant: yes! Yes! Yes!... I wasn’t scared, but I stepped back from the table, amazed, in bewilderment. “Is this... her answer?...” No, no! No, no!... – at the same second, negative, double blows were heard at once, from several sides. At that same moment I heard Agrafena rise up behind the partition. It was as if the invisible figures were just waiting for this! Knocks began to be heard throughout the room and even behind its walls, on the shutters, on the window panes, everywhere and from everywhere. The blows were not loud, but sharp, as if someone was beating out shot with small sticks in all corners and in all frets. “Hey!..., This is bad! They won’t let you sleep!... - What a misfortune! What is this?... - as if in response to my thought, the maid’s whisper was heard. – What?... Hasn’t this happened before? – I asked. - It was somehow. once... And then nothing was heard... And what is this?... Not good at all! Agrafena stood up. She examined all the walls, felt the windows and tables, and looked in at me. “Aren’t you afraid, madam?” - It’s scary, it’s not scary, let’s put it that way. But you just can’t sleep! - That’s just the point!... How can I be here?... Should I run into the garden and have a look?... Look, it’s like he’s knocking the shutters off... what a miracle?!... - It’s a miracle, it’s truly a miracle; but there is no need to go to the garden, because you won’t see anything!... Maybe it will calm down. Let’s better pray and lie down, Agrafenushka, maybe we’ll fall asleep! But I couldn't sleep! Thousands of thoughts filled my head. I stood in front of the images, bathed in the quiet glow of an unquenchable lamp, and thought, thought... What is this?... Why is this?... Who needs this?... Who is in charge of this?... Let's say, where they call, where there is a medium... Finally, for the sake of some purpose, with meaning - to convince someone or to warn someone of something... But so - for no reason, for no reason - disturbing sleep, frightening others, everyone annoying!... Why is this allowed? And suddenly I was indignant in spirit. “It’s not her, is it?... It can’t be that she’s so kind, reasonable, and delicate! So that she herself or with her consent... No, no!... But if not she, if she does not know what is going on in this place where she spent her entire earthly life, I want her to hear, to see! So that this noise stops by her will!... I stood up, inspired by an extraordinary surge of will, and began to pray fervently. I was sure that this “undignified mess” would have to stop immediately! And it really began to subside... The blows became weaker and weaker, as if they were going into the distance, and finally froze... I prayed, as always, perhaps a little hotter than usual, and thought again. I thought deeply, fixing my gaze on the icons illuminated by the wavering light, completely forgetting about time and the fact that I was standing in prayer. I can’t express my thoughts! All I know is that they all boiled down to one thing: “Does love truly survive everything?... Do those who have departed see, understand, and love us, the living?” I was so deep in my thoughts that I was not immediately distracted from them by a rustling sound behind me. Having heard him, I not only was not afraid, but then for the first minute I did not pay attention to him... The rustling was heard again, more clearly. It seemed to me that someone was opening a book behind me, as if rustling the pages... Then only I came to my senses, turned back, from the icon case to the bed, and saw that there was an open Gospel on the night table... In amazement, with my heart beating strongly, I approached, looked at the open page, and the first line that caught my eye served as a direct answer to my thoughts. ... “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!” - I read it. I fell asleep late that night, but slept peacefully. My last thought before I went to sleep was: “That’s her business! She did it! And I still think so and firmly believe in it. At one time, I told this incident to all my loved ones. Sisters P-you found out about him that same morning. Before I even got up, Agrafena’s story about incomprehensible night knocks greatly confused the God-fearing old women; but when I told them the final details of this wonderful night, they calmed down a little, completely sharing my view of the whole incident (“Inexplicable or Unexplained” by V. Zhelikhovskaya, St. Petersburg, 1886, pp. 62–70). At this point in our common journey with the reader, I think it would be useful to look around and clarify what we have achieved so far. The reader, perhaps, will admit that we have now, indeed, established on fairly solid grounds the possibility of the appearance in some cases (either through bells or in another way) of various noises, which we can logically attribute only to supermundane or spiritual causes; but what, he asks, do we achieve with this proof? He has the right to further note that evidence of the afterlife should, in essence, have a solemn character and inspire awe, and not be expressed in such trifles and pranks as the ringing of bells or banging on the wall. We could answer this with one general consideration. Between the phenomena of nature that surrounds us, no matter how low man may place some of them, there is nothing small and insignificant in the eyes of Him, Who, from the height of His sovereign power, As the God of all that is - living And not alive, looks with an equal eye A shot bird is a hero, Slain in battle, he gives up the ghost; Does the atom die alone, or with it? The system is ending; disappears A bubble swells from the face of water, Or collapses suddenly into dust and ashes Beautiful planet... whatever! But, passing over this great truth, I ask you: is there anything solemn or awe-inspiring for the ordinary mind, for example, in the fall of an apple from the tree that nourished it? The child sees the fall and hits his hands; a simple peasant takes it as a sign that the orchard is beginning to ripen, but it puts Newton on the trail of the law that governs the movement of the planets and operates in more than half of all natural phenomena that occur in the world. To the question of what we achieve by establishing such facts, I will answer Southey’s remark. In the second book, “The Life of Wesley,” speaking about similar concerns in the parsonage of Samuel Wesley and about what kind of good purpose can be assumed in such phenomena, he very thoroughly notes: it will be good if “the stated truth of one such story, no matter how petty and aimless the story itself may be in other respects,” sometimes makes some of these unfortunate skeptics, who see nothing beyond the narrow circle of their earthly existence, think, and will lead him to belief in immortal life. We will go one step further. There is no true, constant communication between the world in which we now live and the one into which we pass after death: only from time to time, very rarely, do the inhabitants of one world notice the inhabitants of the other. We appear to be immortal, probably something like ghosts, just as they appear to us - in those moments when they visit the earth. But if anyone has ever truly loved and accepts a future life, there can be no doubt that the best of the creatures who departed from the earth and left their friends and relatives here for some time still seek their closeness and sympathize with them. We see many examples of this, even on these pages, that they often ardently desire to convince us, to convince us to the point of complete certainty - of their continuing existence, their well-being and their undying love. Examples indicate that they very strenuously strive to communicate with us, sometimes out of a feeling of love, sometimes for other reasons; but they reach us only with great difficulty. And these difficulties are placed between us and them, of course, not without a wise purpose: because if spiritual relations were as simple as worldly connections, who would still agree to live and languish in this troubled and difficult world? From time to time they come to desire to visit us. But, appearing from their spiritual world, in their spiritual image, invisible to our eyes and silent to our hearing, how can they reveal their presence to us? How can we attract our attention to them? What does a traveler do when he approaches the door of a locked house in the dead of night if he wants to penetrate those living in it - does he want to make his presence known to them? Doesn't it achieve its goal by knocking or ringing? Why not allow that the words of Scripture are read in the next world, that they also find application there? And why couldn’t immortal love, yearning for earthly things, follow these words of Christ: “Seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you!” The inhabitants of the house to which the traveler asks, not seeing anyone in the darkness, may at first ignore his knocking or ringing - and the traveler will probably leave that time, having been deceived in his expectations. This could be the case in cases like the one described above. In many, perhaps, and in all such cases, some spirit was looking, perhaps, for communication with the earth (Robert Del-Owen, “The Disputed Region Between Two Worlds,” St. Petersburg, 1881, pp. 51–67). 15. Under the title “Telepathy,” the journal “Annales des Sciences Psychiques” gives a description of a remarkable case, apparently completely authenticated. It is reported by Mr. Riondel, who lives in Montélimar. We present here the most significant part of a letter written by Riondel to the editor of the Annales on May 23, 1894, seven or eight weeks after the incident. “I had a younger brother who died at forty years old, on April 2 of this year. He served at the telegraph office in Marseilles and was also an agent for Messageries Naritimes. My brother suffered from severe anemia and swamp fever, which he acquired due to his long stay in the colonies; however, his death was a complete surprise; no one could have predicted such a quick, fatal outcome of the disease. On Sunday, April 1, I received a letter from him in which, among other things, he said that he felt great. On the night from Sunday to Monday, I was suddenly awakened by an unusual and strong noise: it seemed as if a whole stone slab was rolling with a roar across the parquet floor of my room; I was sleeping alone, and the bedroom doors were locked. I looked at the clock and the alarm clock in the bedroom. They showed a quarter to two o'clock. It goes without saying that in the morning I carefully, but in vain, searched around the room for the object that had frightened me so much at night. At eight o'clock in the morning I received a telegram from a close friend of my brother, who occupied the apartment next to his brother in Marseille. The telegram informed me of my brother’s serious illness and demanded my immediate visit to him. When I arrived in Marseilles, I was told that my brother died that night, without agony, without suffering, without uttering a single word before his death. I inquired of the exact hour of his death from the friend in whose arms he died; It turned out that my brother died at exactly a quarter to two. My old mother, blind for fifteen years, also heard a loud noise at her bedroom door three nights in a row, but this happened a few nights after the death of her son. It must be added that I considered it necessary to hide my brother’s death from her; she herself is so weak that this news would kill her. She still doesn’t know that her dear son is no longer alive. Upon my return from the funeral, my mother, influenced by the noises she heard, said to me in the presence of my wife: “For several nights I received warnings about your brother’s health. You must go to him immediately, he is probably very ill, and he is hiding it from you.” I managed to calm my mother down and convince her that her premonitions were unfounded. Here are the facts literally as they happened. You may, if you find it necessary, print my full name and my address.” (Signed) A. Riondel. Advocate. (“Ann. des Sc. Psych.” 1895, no. 4, see “Rebus”, 1895, no. 44). 16. In Dankovsky district. Ryazan province, lived on her own estate the landowner Muromtseva, nee Countess T-taya, who still lives in Dankovsky district. The Countess had two siblings, both military men and both participants in the glorious Crimean campaign. At the very first stages of hostilities in Sevastopol, one of the brothers was either killed at the beginning of the campaign, or, having become dangerously ill, died in the hospital; another brother was constantly in Sevastopol. The mysterious phenomenon that I want to talk about happened on the first day of Holy Easter and occurred under the following circumstances: Mrs. Muromtseva, returning from church in the morning and feeling tired, wished to rest. As soon as she got into bed, she heard quite clearly and distinctly someone’s footsteps, which were clearly heading towards her bed, which was covered with a curtain. Someone stopped and suddenly opened the curtain; she looked and was dumbfounded with horror: in front of her stood her dead brother, who said to her: “Christ is risen, sister, I congratulate you on the holiday! I came to tell you that our brother was killed today in Sevastopol!” Having said these words, the ghost left the bedroom with the same steps. All this lasted for several moments, and then, when the ghost of her brother disappeared, the countess, trembling all over, burst into hysterical crying. Her servant immediately appeared in response to her screams and sobs and immediately took all measures to calm the lady down. Having come to her senses, the Countess told about what had happened to her. This story soon became known to the entire population of the city of Dankov and Dankov district and reached the local authorities. The police officer in Dankovsky district at that time was Colonel Nikanor Petrovich Belokopytov, now a most venerable old man who lived in retirement in the city of Borovsk, Kaluga province. He and his wife repeatedly recounted this mysterious incident, which happened almost before their eyes and was remarkable in that, a few days after the described incident, the countess received news that on the night of the Holy Resurrection of Christ, at the very time when the ghost appeared to her, her second brother was indeed killed during the sortie he, along with other officers, had undertaken against the enemy (from the “Petersburg leaflet”, see. "Rebus", 1884, No. 25). 17. In Lutsk, the abbess of the “sharytok” 25 was Panna Jadwiga Polyanovskaya, the granddaughter of the famous Polyanovsky, who, together with Stanislav Leshchinsky, was a contender for the Polish throne... Panna Polyanovskaya was a well-known guardian of unfortunate widows and orphans, and people turned to her for help from all sides. It often happened that later in the middle of the night they would come running to her, asking for help, and when the visitor knocked on the door, the little girl serving would open them without asking the lady. Panna Polyanovskaya occupied two rooms on the second floor in the monastery. A few days before the incident described, the chaplain of the sharytok, priest Slezninsky, died. And then one day, late in the evening, when the abbess was walking around the room, reading a prayer, and the servants were making the bed, there was a knock on the door; As usual, the maid ran to open the door. But at the same moment, the abbess was overcome by some amazing feeling, which she later could not define, so she said to the maid: - Don't open it! Ask who is this? The maid carried out the order - she asked, and immediately a voice was heard from behind the door: Panna Polyanovskaya, not afraid of anything, answered: She knew well that if it was a simple hoax, it would fail, since the window was on the second floor. However, she noticed the amazing, indefinable sound of the voice. It was not an ordinary voice, the kind that is heard when we talk to someone, but the same one that we sometimes hear in thought, the voice of well-known but absent persons, however, it is heard as clearly as if we had the speaker in front of us. So she went to the window and lifted the drawn curtain; at the same instant, priest Slezninsky appeared in the window in the same clothes in which he was buried. - Requiem mass for my soul. “Then go to the prior yourself - he won’t believe me if I tell him that you were with me.” Having said this, she lowered the curtain. Having looked around and not seeing the maid anywhere, she began to look for her and found her fainting under the bed. When she pulled her out of there and brought her to her senses, she asked: - Hey lady! Father Slezninsky was in the window! Panna Polyanovskaya did not answer anything and began to walk around the room, finishing the interrupted prayer. Then she went to bed quite calmly. The next day she went to early mass and found a deathly pale prior at the altar, who was serving the funeral mass. After mass, a clergyman approached the abbess, informing her that the prior asked her to speak with him for a few words. When Panna Polyanovskaya entered the closing room, the prior exclaimed, wringing his hands: “Madame Superior, is it good to send dead people to attack me?” – Would you, priest prior, believe me if I said that priest Slezninsky visited me and asked for mass?! The prior did not answer and just lowered his head to his chest. The poor fellow fell ill with typhoid fever out of fear and almost died (see the book by V. Bitner: “To believe or not to believe?” St. Petersburg, 1899, pp. 94–96). 18. In 1853, in the city of R., in Massachusetts, there lived a very respected and prosperous family, whose name, although it is known to me, I am not authorized to reveal here, says Robert Owen. – Let it be Mr. and Mrs. L. Mrs. L., when she was about twelve years old (1830), was an eyewitness to one of those phenomena that is never forgotten and has a strong influence on a person’s way of thinking and feeling for the rest of his life. At that time, there lived in her mother’s house one hopelessly ill lady named Marshall, who, out of compassion, was given temporary shelter. Cecilia, that was Mrs. L.'s name, stayed up later than usual one evening and, like a child, lay down and fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. Waking up some time later, she realized that it must be late, because the fire in the fireplace was burning out and the room was empty. Making a move to rise, she suddenly saw the figure of Madame Marchal, dressed in white, bending over her. “Oh, Madame Marchal,” she exclaimed, “why did you come down here? After all, you can catch a cold!” The figure smiled without answering, but, heading towards the door, made a sign for Cecilia to follow. She obeyed, not without a certain feeling of fear, and watched with even greater fear as this figure, which she still took to be Madame Marchal, climbed back up the stairs, in a slow sliding movement, to the door of her bedroom. Cecilia followed, and when she was already on the landing of the stairs, the image of Madame Marchal before her eyes, without turning the lock or opening the door to the room, passed through the walls and thus disappeared from her sight. The girl’s cry attracted her mother, who, leaving Madame Marchal’s room, asked her what was the matter. “Oh, mother, mother,” exclaimed the frightened child, “was it a ghost?...” Her mother scolded her at first for her stupid fantasies; but when Cecilia told her in detail what she had seen, her mother shuddered. And there was a reason. No more than half an hour passed before Madame Marchal died before her eyes! She also remembered that a few minutes before her death, Madame Marchal mentioned Cecilia, who was her favorite, and expressed an ardent desire to see her. But Mrs. F., fearing that such a scene would have too strong an effect on the child, was careful not to call her. Didn't the ardent desire suddenly develop into action when earthly fetters were thrown off? Was the dying impulse not yet satisfied, despite the mother’s precautions? Here is another dream or vision that Mrs. L. had one night, at the beginning of November 1853. Her sister Esther, who had been briefly married, had left with her husband for California a few weeks ago, and her family expected news of her arrival shortly. And so, this sister seemed to come up to her and said: “Cecilia, come with me to California.” Mrs. L. in her dream objected to her that she could not leave her husband and children for such a long and difficult journey. “We will arrive there very soon,” said Esther, “and you will return home by morning.” The proposed journey in a dream did not seem impossible to her. She got out of bed, took her sister’s hand, and felt that, behold, they stood up and quickly rushed through the vast space. They went down to a dwelling, very simple and rude in appearance, which in her imagination she would never have given to her sister in this new country, where she had gone with her husband to seek happiness. The sisters entered, and Cecilia recognized her brother-in-law; he was sad and dressed in mourning, then Esther led her into a room in the middle of which stood an open coffin, and pointed out the body lying in it. It was Esther's own body, deathly pale in appearance. Mrs. L. looked in silent amazement, first at the corpse lying in front of her, then at that image, apparently shining with life and intelligence, which had brought her here. To her questioning and amazed look, this living image answered: “Yes, sister, this body was mine; but illness struck him down. I fell ill with cholera and passed on to another world. I wanted to show this to you in order to prepare you for the news that you will soon receive about me.” After some time, Mrs. L., as it seemed to her, rose into the air again, was again transported through a huge space and finally entered her bedroom... Soon she woke up, with such a vivid impression (from the dream) that for a long time she could not figure out whether she had made this journey in a dream or in reality. - What a dream I had! – she immediately told her husband. But the disapproving one: “Oh, you are always with your dreams!” closed her mouth; and she did not say a word more about it - neither to him nor to anyone else in the family. About four weeks later, the Californian mail brought a letter from Esther's husband, with which he informed his relatives about the sudden death of his wife from cholera - on the eve of the very night that Mrs. L. had her dream. When, six months later, the son-in-law, who returned to Massachusetts, heard from Mrs. L. a description of the rough housing into which she saw herself transferred in a dream, he confirmed that the description corresponded in every detail to the house in which his wife actually died. (Robert Del Owen: “The Disputed Region Between Worlds” St. Petersburg, 1881). 19. The penitent maid. There is a certain Miss V., a young girl, a close and good friend of mine, of an upright character, developed and educated, and comes from old New York families. Some years ago she stayed a week or two with her aunt, the hospitable hostess of a vast and beautiful old palace on the Hudson River. In this palace, like in some ancient castles in Europe, there was one room that had long been known as “restless.” They talked little about it, but did not use the room except in cases of the most urgent need. During Miss V.’s stay there, a lot of guests gathered there, and the hostess, apologizing, turned to her niece with a request if she would give up her room for a day or two to the newly arrived guests, and she herself would live in the “restless” one. Miss V. replied that she was not afraid of visitors from the other world, and the matter was decided. The girl went to bed calmly and without any fear. Waking up around midnight, she saw an elderly woman walking around her room, in a neat, slightly old-fashioned dress - obviously one of the older maids: but her face was unfamiliar. At first, Miss V. did not feel any alarm, deciding that it was one of the maids of the house who had come here for some need; but, on reflection, she remembered that she had locked the door when she went to bed. This confused her, and her horror increased when the figure approached the bed, leaned towards her, and apparently made an effort, though in vain, to speak. In terrible fright, Miss V. pulled the blanket over her head; and when, a little later, she decided to look out, the figure was no longer there. She rushed to the door, and the door was still locked from the inside. “But are such things as ghosts possible? - she thought, laying down again in bed - it was something real, if you only believe your eyes.” In this conviction, after two or three sleepless hours, she fell asleep. But the next morning, in the bright light of day, this conclusion no longer seemed so certain to her, and after a few months it turned, as happens with young people, into a feeling of some kind of vague faith. Then events occurred that strengthened this belief in the reality of her midnight visitor. Having accepted the invitation of one of her close friends to stay with her for several days, she learned that the hostess was conducting spiritualistic experiments. Miss V., interested in the subject, took part in several sessions of her friend. At one of the sessions, the spirit that appeared called itself Sarah Clarke, a name that was unfamiliar to both ladies. The gist of the message was that she, Clark, had many years ago served as housekeeper in the family of Miss W.'s aunt, who had tried, but without success, to enter into direct intercourse with Miss W., when she was last visiting the old palace; that her goal then was to confess to one crime she had committed and to ask her former mistress for forgiveness. An unshakable desire to fulfill this (she added) prompted her to visit the room she occupied during her lifetime. She further said that, being the housekeeper, she was tempted to steal and hide several items of the family service, including a silver sugar bowl and other items, which she listed, and that she would be very grateful to Miss V. if she would tell her aunt about all this and express to her her deep regret, Clarke, for her action and the hope of receiving forgiveness. On her first visit to her aunt, Miss V. asked her if she had ever known a person named Sarah Clarke. “Of course,” she answered, “Clark served as a housekeeper in our family, about thirty or forty years ago.” -Who was this person? - A good, caring, neat woman. - Did you, auntie, lose any silver items at that time? The aunt thought. – Yes, it seems that the silver sugar bowl and several other things disappeared in some inexplicable way. Why on earth are you asking? – Did you ever suspect Sarah of this theft? - No. Of course, she had access to things, but we considered her too honest to suspect her of theft. Then Miss V. conveyed the news that she and her friend had received; and it turned out that the list of things Sarah communicated to both ladies exactly corresponded to the actual loss, as far as the aunt could remember it. What this lady thought about her niece’s story, I don’t know; she expressed only one thing - that if Sarah really took those things, she very willingly forgives her. From that time on, the “restless” room became completely calm. Sarah Clark never appeared to any of its inhabitants again. Knowing the position and character of the persons involved, I can vouch for the authenticity of this story. Let's see what he reveals to us regarding the future life. There is an alarming contrition for the grave sins committed in this life. There is a passionate desire for forgiveness on the part of those to whom the spirit was unjust on earth. In other words, the natural consequences of evil deeds haunt us even in that phase of existence. I also draw attention to the strong evidence of “personal identity” that Miss V’s story presents. The name of the housekeeper was not known to both ladies when her spirit appeared and made its message. There was absolutely nothing to suggest either this name or the confession made. And, meanwhile, according to verification, both the name and the recognition fully corresponded to what actually happened thirty or forty years ago; not to mention a new fact: the cessation of his visits in spirit: as soon as the visitor no longer had a reason to appear to people (see the book by Robert Del Owen: “The Disputed Area between Two Worlds,” St. Petersburg, 1881, pp. 17–31). 20. One of our acquaintances, a person with a higher education and deserving of complete trust, A. N. S-in, told us the following incident from his life. “Several years ago,” he said, “I fell in love with a girl with whom I had the intention of entering into a legal marriage, and the day of our wedding had already been set. But a few days before the marriage, my bride caught a cold, developed transient consumption, and died three or four months later. No matter how great the blow was for me, time took its toll - I forgot about the bride, or, at least, did not grieve for her as much as in the first time after her death. It happened to me one day, on business, to pass through a city in our Ya-province, where I had relatives, with whom I stayed for one day. I was given a separate room for the night. I had a dog with me, smart and loyal. The night was, as I remember now, moonlit, at least read it. I had just started to fall asleep when I heard my dog ​​start to grumble. Knowing that she never grumbles in vain, I thought that, probably, a cat had been accidentally locked in the room or a mouse had run through. I got up from the bed, but didn’t notice anything, but the dog grumbled louder and louder, apparently frightened of something; I look and her fur is standing on end. He began to calm her down, but the dog became more and more frightened. Together with the dog, I was unconsciously frightened of something, although I was not a coward by nature, but I was so frightened that the hair on my head stood on end. Remarkably, my fright intensified as my dog ​​became frightened and reached such an extent that it seems that in another minute I would probably have fainted. But my dog ​​began to calm down, and with it I began to calm down, and at the same time I began to seem to sense someone’s presence and expect an appearance, without knowing which one. When I had completely calmed down, suddenly my bride came up to me and, kissing me, said: “Hello A.N.! You don’t believe that there is life beyond the grave, so I appeared to you, look at me, you see - I’m alive, then I kiss you. Believe, my friend, that a person’s life does not end with death.” At the same time, she indicated to me what to read from the Holy Scriptures about the afterlife and from other various spiritual works. She told me something else that she had forbidden me to tell others. When I got up the next day, I saw myself completely gray overnight, so that my family were afraid when they saw me at morning tea. At the same time, I must admit,” our acquaintance continued, “that until this incident I did not believe in anything - neither in God, nor in the immortality of the soul, nor in the afterlife; I didn’t go to church for several years, remaining without confession and St. communion, laughed at everything sacred; fasts, holidays and sacred rites of the Orthodox Church did not exist for me. But now, by the grace of God, I have become a Christian again, a believer, and I don’t know how to thank the Lord for tearing me out of the abyss of harmful delusions. We will add from ourselves that A. N. S-in, currently serving as a justice of the peace in one of the district towns of the north-western region, is so devout that, it seems, there was no case when he missed the service of God (“From the Underworld”, priest D. Bulgakov). 21. N. N. M... is a highly intelligent person, the following case reports. “One of my student acquaintances, A.K., poisoned herself, and I considered myself to be the culprit of her suicide. The first days after her death, my conscience tormented me so much that I reached despair and fell into unconsciousness. The seizures soon stopped, but I became very nervous. At the slightest excitement, the hair on my head stood on end. Paroxysms of despair poisoned my life so much that I could hardly restrain myself from committing suicide, which I considered a dishonest and weak-willed act. But my critical thought did not weaken, I could observe myself, and the doctor who treated me praised my objectivity. However, despite taking various sedatives and sleeping pills, nervousness and insomnia increased. Just when you fell asleep, you woke up again, as if someone would push you. One day, about three weeks after A.H. died, I woke up and felt her presence. I attributed this to a dream. But the next night I woke up again with the same thought about her proximity. The lamp was still burning, and my comrade, who had spent the night with me that night, went to bed. “It’s like someone walked into the room,” I said. “There’s no one to get up, but the wind blew it from somewhere,” he noted; then he calmly blew out the lamp and lay down. “I stayed up all night and thought. On the one hand, the feeling of A.K.’s presence was extremely vivid in me, on the other hand, I could not allow the existence of the soul after death. Thinking about my feeling and its reasons, I came to the conclusion that I heard a rustling in the corridor, and this rustling was the rustling of A.K.’s dress and steps. The next day after lunch, before dusk, I lay down on the bed and dozed off. I woke up from that rustling sound and immediately decided: look and don’t move. Gritting my teeth, digging the nails of my right hand tightly into my left, and opening my eyes wide, I looked at the door. I don’t remember whether she opened or not, I didn’t notice, but I clearly saw A.K. She was in a white dress, with blue flowers, and slowly walked towards me from the door. The ghost's face was pale and sad. Approaching the bed itself, she extended her hand to put it on my forehead. I distinctly remember that I had an unpleasant image of a dead, cold hand; but when it touched and lay rather heavily on my forehead, I felt a living, warm, slightly damp hand. The shadow said a few words to me in a quiet voice and a particularly convincing intonation. I still imagine these words and tone very vividly. Then I imagined that she was alive, I screamed, jumped up, wanted to grab her, but the shadow disappeared. My scream was heard by a friend walking towards me. “I thought you stabbed yourself,” he told me, jumping into the room with a frightened face. “I saw S.,” I told him. - Hallucination! - he noted, but carefully examined the room and, after a pause, added: did you extract ozone, or what? You smell strongly of ozone. Indeed, there was a strong smell of ozone, but it was mixed with some other smell that we could not identify. I remember that my friend said something about the new ability of the human body to release electricity, which converts atmospheric oxygen into ozone, but, after sniffing me, he doubted his hypothesis” (V. Bitner, “To believe or not to believe?” St. Petersburg, 1899, pp. 239–240). 22. In 1871, A. Ya., who was a member of the singing choir, having lived no more than 24 years, says Yaroslavl Archbishop Neil, died of epidemic cholera. Ten days after his death, precisely on the morning of July 16, he appeared to me in a dream. He was wearing a frock coat familiar to me, only extended to the heels. At the moment of the apparition, I was sitting at the table in my living room, and he came out of the hall with a fairly quick step, as always happened, showing signs of respect for me, approached the table and, without saying a word, began pouring copper money with a small admixture of silver onto the table from under his vest. I asked in amazement: “What does this mean?” He answered: “To pay the debt” 26. This amazed me very much, and I repeated several times: “No, no, I don’t need your money, I’ll pay your debt myself.” At these words, Ya. said to me with caution: “Speak quietly so that others do not hear.” He did not object to my expressed readiness to pay the debt for him, and he was not slow in sweeping the money off the table with his hand. But I couldn’t notice where he put them, and it seems they immediately disappeared. Then, getting up from the chair, I turned to Ya with the question: “Where are you, having left us?” - It’s like being in a prisoner’s castle. – Do you have any rapprochement with angels? -What do you have to do with God? “I’ll tell you about this someday.” - Isn’t Misha in the same place with you? 27 – Do you have any entertainment? - None. We never even hear sounds; for spirits do not speak to each other. – Do the spirits have any food? - No, no... These sounds were uttered with obvious displeasure and, of course, due to the inappropriateness of the question. - How do you feel? “Pray for me; to this day funeral liturgies have not been performed for me.” At these words, my soul was indignant, and I began to apologize to the deceased for not ordering the magpie, but that I would certainly do it. The last words apparently calmed the interlocutor. Therefore he asked for blessings to go on his way. At the same time, I asked him: “Is it necessary to ask anyone for permission to leave?” The answer was only one word: yes. And this word was pronounced drawn out, sadly and as if under duress. Here he asked for a blessing a second time, and I blessed him. He left me by the door facing Mulberry Mountain, on which his ashes rest (“Soulful Reflections” 1880 - 1881). 23. In 1851, in November, our singers left us for Jerusalem, says Father Seraphim of the Holy Mountain. Monk N. was given to them as dragomans, who a little earlier wanted to leave the monastery. God knows what his life was like, especially in Jerusalem, only later was his abuse of the name of the monastery discovered: he made a false signature of the abbot on a sheet with the official monastery seal and with this sheet he made collections in Palestine. The period of their wanderings ended happily; Easter passed, and N., among the Russian pilgrims, boarded a ship departing from Jaffa to us in Athos. On the first night, when everyone had settled down in their places on the ship, in the darkness of the night, during the rocking, N., dressed in a Russian fur coat, for some reason made his way to the front of the ship and, God knows how, broke off and flew into the sea... Three times a voice was heard pleading to the ship: “Save, save!”, but after a few minutes these words froze in the distance, and the very sound of the voice merged with the howl of the wind and storm. N. drowned. A week after this misfortune, precisely at the end of November, one of the monastic brethren S. was suddenly struck by a vision. The drowned man N. enters his cell and, having crossed the threshold, says: “Don’t be afraid of me, I’m not a ghost, but, really, N.” Brother S. peered into the face of the deceased and asked incredulously: “Aren’t you a devil?” “No,” answered the one who appeared, “I am truly N.” “Read: “May God rise again,” S. told him, “and cross yourself, then I will believe that you are not a demon.” “You crossed me,” the one who appeared remarked, “you read: “May God rise again,” then you will be convinced that I am definitely N. S. crossed himself and began to read a prayer. When he came to the words: “so let the demons perish from the face of those who love God,” N. interrupted him and read: “so let the sinners perish from the face of God, and let the righteous rejoice” and, taking a deep breath, thought. Then he humbly began to ask that they pray for him. – Do you need our prayers? – asked S. - Oh, and how I still need it! - he answered with a sigh and, taking S.’s hand and squeezing it tightly, he continued: “Please pray for me.” “Yes, I don’t know how to pray for myself either,” objected S., “you need to ask your confessor about this.” “And ask,” said the one who appeared, “ask all the brethren to pray for me.” “Sit down,” S. told him. - Oh, no, I was given a little time, and I flew here from afar, from afar, and was in a hurry... Then it suddenly occurred to S. to ask N. to make peace with the brethren. N. thought for a moment, then, sighing, said sadly: “It’s not the right time now.” Meanwhile, S. noticed that the deceased’s skull was broken. - What do you have? From what? – he asked the one who appeared, pointing to the wounds. “And when the waves brought me to the shore, my head smashed on a stone.” Then, having also asked that they pray for him, N. hastily said that it was time for him to return, and disappeared (op. Svyatogorets - “Letters to Friends”, vol. III). 24. Here is an incident that happened recently in Paris. One morning a lady appeared to the priest and asked him to go with her in a prepared carriage to convey the holy mysteries to her dying son. Taking spare gifts and everything needed for communion, the priest, accompanied by a lady, soon arrived at the indicated house. But when he went up to the apartment, the lady disappeared unnoticed. A young officer, in blooming health, responded to the priest's call. - What do you want, father? - he asked the shepherd who entered. “Some lady invited me here to see her dying son, to confess and give him communion,” answered the priest. “There’s an obvious misunderstanding here,” the officer objected, “I live alone in this apartment and didn’t send for you, I’m quite healthy.” Meanwhile, the interlocutors entered the living room. A large portrait of an elderly woman hanging over the sofa involuntarily attracted the priest’s attention, and he said: - Yes, this same lady was with me, alone, and showed me your apartment. “For mercy,” answered the owner, “this is a portrait of my mother, who died 20 years ago.” Struck by this circumstance, the officer expressed a desire to confess and commune, and the next day he died of a broken heart (“From the Realm of the Mysterious” by Priest D. Bulgakovsky, ed. 1895). 25. From the memoirs of V.I. Panaev. In the fall of 1796, a serious illness of my parent called my father to Turinsk. He hurried to him together with his wife, whom he dearly loved, and almost all the children, and had the sad consolation of personally paying his last debt to his father; but a few days later (October 26), on the way back from Siberia, he died of bilious fever in Irbit, where he was buried near the cathedral church. The marital union of my parents was exemplary; they lived, as they say, soul to soul. My mother, already distressed by her recent loss, having now unexpectedly lost her dearly beloved husband, being left with eight young children, of whom the eldest was 13 years old, and the youngest only one year old, fell into complete despair, went to bed, not taking any food, and only occasionally asked for a drink. The wives of Irbit officials, seeing her in this position, established a watch among themselves and did not leave her either day or night. So 13 days had already passed, when on the last of them, around midnight, one of the ladies on duty, sitting on a feather bed laid out for her on the floor and knitting a stocking (the other was sleeping next to her), ordered the maid to lock all the doors, starting with the front, and go to bed in the room in front of the bedroom, directly opposite the unlocked doors, so that, if necessary, they could call her sooner. The maid carried out the order: she closed and latched all the doors, but had just laid out her bed on the floor and wanted to cover herself with a blanket, when the sound of the door opening in the third room stopped her; leaning on her elbow, she began to listen. A few minutes later, the same sound was heard in the second room and, in the silence of the night, reached the ears of the lady sitting on the floor in the bedroom; She left the stocking and also began to listen carefully. Finally, the last door clicked, leading to the room where the maid was... So what? My recently deceased father comes in, slowly shuffling his feet, with his head hanging and groans, wearing the same vest and shoes in which he died. The lady on duty, hearing the steps and groans familiar to her, because she was with my father during the last two days of his illness, hurried, without rising from the floor, to reach and close the canopy of my mother’s bed, which was thrown back for air, who was not sleeping and was lying facing the door - but, overwhelmed with horror, she did not have time. Meanwhile, he entered with the same painful groans, with the same drooping head, pale as a sheet, and, not paying attention to anyone, sat down on a chair that stood near the door, at the foot of the bed. My mother, not obscured by the curtain, saw him at that very moment, but out of joy, completely forgetting that he had died, imagining him only as sick, she asked with vividness: what do you need, my friend? and had already lowered her legs to go to him, when his unexpected answer: better give me a knife - an answer completely contrary to the well-known way of his thoughts, his high religious feeling, stopped her and confused her. The vision stood up and, still not looking at anyone, slowly walked away the same way. Having recovered from her stupor, the lady on duty woke up her friend, and together with her and the maid they went to inspect the doors: they all turned out to be open! The event is incomprehensible, inexplicable, and for people who doubt everything supernatural, incredible; but it is confirmed by the testimony of three persons! If the vision appeared only to my mother, then, perhaps, one could call it the result of the frustrated imagination of a sick and distressed woman, all of whose thoughts were focused on the loss she had suffered. Here, on the contrary, there were two more outside women who did not have a similar mood, who were in two different rooms, but saw and heard the same thing. Let us humble ourselves before the phenomena of the spiritual world, which are still inaccessible to the research of the human mind and, apparently, completely contrary to the laws of nature known to us. Have we fully comprehended them? (“Western of Europe” September 1866). 26. The miser visiting his treasure. The following story is reported by Miss Blak, from Manville Gardens in Edinburgh, who wrote it down from the words of an old, deeply respected friend, a very respectable old woman, who witnessed a strange incident. In 1839 or 1840, when I was still a young woman, my brother rented a house in the south of Scotland to improve his wife’s health. Soon after they moved there, two of the children fell ill with measles, and my brother wrote to me, inviting me to come help them care for the sick children. He hired the house through an agent and knew nothing about its previous occupants. On the day of my arrival, we stayed up quite late; It was already about midnight when we parted ways. Although I, very tired, hurried to go to bed, worrying about the children, I could not sleep for a long time. About an hour passed like this; I was lying with my eyes open when I noticed a flickering light that seemed to be rising from below the stairs. Assuming that it might be the nanny coming to tell me something about the children, I sat up in bed and began to listen. The light stopped at my door, the handle of which quietly turned, and a very strange figure appeared on the threshold: a small old man, with one shoulder higher than the other, with a huge head covered with spiky hair streaked with gray, entered the room, stealthily and limping. In one hand he held a green copper candlestick of a very original shape. Without even looking in the direction of my bed, he went straight to the corner of the room adjacent to my headboard, and, moving the panel from its place, began to count the gold coins that lay in piles in the opened recess, muttering something to himself and shaking his head. I was not particularly frightened, I was only very amazed at the unexpectedness of this appearance, and watched him all the time until the clock struck two. Then he pulled the panel shut, pulled his old dressing gown around him and slowly limped towards the door. I jumped out of bed and followed him, but I could not speak as I had intended, since my tongue seemed to be stuck to my larynx. Still muttering something, the old man went downstairs, I followed him, and suddenly, halfway up the stairs, he instantly disappeared from my eyes, and I came across a nanny’s assistant, pale, excited and hurrying upstairs. “Did you see anyone on the stairs, Jane?” – I asked. She answered negatively. she was sent to me to tell me that one of the children had convulsions. The next day the child died, and I changed the bedroom and never slept in that room again. In the evening after the funeral, I told my brother about the strange phenomenon, and we both decided that it was a very remarkable dream in its vividness. I stayed with my brother for several weeks. One day, the village doctor, having dinner with us, told us that the house we occupied was considered troubled in the area, and that the deceased owner supposedly walked in it and guarded his treasure. Everyone knew him to be a big miser, the doctor added, and in response to our questions about his appearance, he described him as lopsided and very similar to the mysterious person I had seen. The brother did not live in this house for long, and a few years later he accidentally read in the newspapers that during the renovations in the house begun by the new owner, the workers found in one room a movable panel on hinges and in a recess a pile of gold in coins, and what is even stranger, the newspaper mentioned that along with the gold they found an old candlestick made of green copper, similar in description to the one that I saw in the hands of a ghost "("Light", see "Rebus" 1885, No. 16). 27. Black lady. An excerpt from the memoirs of Count Nostitz, who was for a long time the adjutant general of Emperor Nicholas I, a story about a ghost called the “Black Lady,” who has been appearing for more than a hundred years in the palaces of Darmstadt and Munich. a) The adjutant on duty once reported to the Grand Duke of Hesse Ludwig I that the previous night the sentries had announced to the chief of the palace guard their decision to be shot rather than once again find themselves face to face with the terrible ghost of a black woman, who at midnight passed by them into the small courtyard where the palace chapel opens. At the same time, the adjutant reported that one young grenadier wanted to ask the Duke’s gracious permission to stand guard at the chapel the next night in order to discourage the ghost that had so frightened his comrades from making further appearances. The Grand Duke willingly gave his permission to the brave soldier's request, ordering him, after calling out three times, to shoot at the suspicious vision if it did not pay attention to the call; himself. The Duke invited his entourage and, shortly before midnight, together with them, accompanied by lackeys carrying torches, went to the chapel. The clock had barely struck midnight when three shouts were heard from the neighboring yard, followed by a shot. The Duke, accompanied by his entourage and lackeys, hurried from the chapel and in the courtyard saw a young grenadier stretched out, not wounded, but dead; Beside him lay a gun with the barrel torn from the butt. b) King Ludwig I of Bavaria used to spend the summer with his wife Queen Theresa in a castle near Aschaffenburg - a custom that the king followed even after he became a “private man.” In 1854, cholera was raging in Munich, and, out of fear for his wife, the king left for Aschaffenburg, where Grand Duke Ludwig III of Hessendarmstadt was his frequent guest. Talking merrily, Their Majesties were sitting at the tea table in the company of the Grand Duke, their son-in-law, and the Marshal Baron de Laroche-du-Jaris, when suddenly, almost simultaneously, all three men, turning pale, fixed their gaze on the Queen, behind whose chair they saw a figure wrapped in a black robe, which slowly disappeared through the doors leading to the room of the attendant Goff-Fouriere. Tormented by an inexplicable premonition, the Duke stood up from the table and hurried after the disappearing figure into the next room, where he angrily attacked the Hoff-Fourier who was there: - How can you let a stranger into their Majesties without a report? Gough-Fourier answered with amazement: “Your Majesty, I’ve been on duty for three hours now, and during all this time not a single person has entered or left the room.” – But that lady who just came here from the hall? – the Duke asked excitedly. “There was no lady here,” Hoff-Fourier repeated confidently. Barely overcoming his embarrassment, the Duke returned to society. - Why did you leave so quickly? – the queen asked her son-in-law, who was not unaware of the change that had taken place in his face. The Duke had no choice but to tell her about the mysterious incident. The Queen jumped up from her chair in horror and exclaimed: A few months later the court moved from Aschaffenburg to Munich, where the epidemic had already ceased. But Queen Teresa fell ill and became the only victim from the entire royal house. c) In the last days of March 1884, the duty officer of the Royal Life Guards made a night tour along the corridors of the Munich residence. Approaching the narrow side passage that led to the half of Queen Mary's court ladies, while the bell of the old palace chapel was striking midnight, he saw a lady dressed in black who, having passed the main staircase, headed towards the White Hall, connected by several steps to the old chapel. The officer, believing that the lady was returning from the Countess du Moulin or from Baroness Revitz and had gotten lost, politely said to her, pointing to the main staircase: - This is where you are closer to the exit, madam. Not paying the slightest attention to these words, the lady continued to walk in the same direction. The officer, suspecting something was wrong, quickened his steps and saw a black figure already on the small staircase on the other side of the White Hall. - Detain her! - he shouted to the guard standing at the door of the chapel and ran down the small stairs. When he asked where the lady in black, who had just descended from the stairs, was going, the soldiers reported that no one had passed by them. The news of the appearance of the “black lady” spread throughout Munich and served as the topic of the liveliest discussions; no one knew what to attribute to this second appearance of the ghost, which foreshadowed misfortune for the royal house, since all members of the royal family were in excellent health. But on March 9, terrible news spread around Munich: King Maximilian II became dangerously ill, and the next day the state herald announced to the residents of the capital about the accession to the throne of Ludwig II. The king died (“Rebus” 1894, 4° 38). 28. Vision of Sofia Alexandrovna Aksakova. The following story dates back to the time of my late wife’s first marriage (reported by A. Aksakov) and was written by her, at my request, in 1872; I reproduce it here verbatim from her manuscript. When in 1873, while in Bern, we met prof. Perti, who, as is known, specially studied such phenomena, became very interested in this story; Having received it from his wife in a German translation, he placed it in the “Psychische Studien” (1874, pp. 122-166) with his own note, in which he explains why this vision could not be purely subjective; My, as it seems to me, quite suitable explanation for the mysterious “parchment bundle” is also included here. This story later appeared in English in the magazine “Spiritualist” 1874, vol. I, p. 183, and the book: “Spirits before our eyes”, published in London, in 1879, by Harrison. It was in May 1855. I was nineteen years old. At that time I had no idea about spiritualism; I had never heard of this word. Brought up in the rules of the Greek Orthodox Church, I knew no prejudices and was never inclined towards mysticism or daydreaming. We lived then in the city of Romanov-Borisoglebsk, Yaroslavl province. My sister-in-law, now a widow from her second marriage, Colonel Varvara Ivanovna Tikhonova, who at that time was married to Doctor A.F. Zengireev, lived with her husband in the city of Ranenburg, Ryazan province, where he served. On the occasion of the spring flood, any correspondence was greatly hampered, and for a long time we did not receive letters from my sister-in-law, which, however, did not bother us at all, since it was attributed to the above-mentioned reason. In the evening, from May 12 to 13, I prayed to God, said goodbye to my little girl (she was then about six months old, and her crib was in my room, four arshins away from my bed, so I could see her at night), went to bed and began to read some book. While reading, I heard the wall clock in the hall strike twelve o'clock. I put the book on the nightstand that stood next to me, leaned on my left elbow, and stood up a little to put out the candle. At that moment I clearly heard the door from the hallway into the hall open and someone walk into it with manly steps; it was so clear and distinct that I regretted that I had managed to extinguish the candle, confident that the person who entered was none other than my husband’s valet, who was probably going to report to him that they had sent for him from some sick person, as happened quite often in his position as a district doctor; I was somewhat surprised only by the fact that it was the valet who was walking, and not my maid, who was entrusted with this in such cases. Thus, leaning on my elbows, I listened to the approaching steps - not fast, but slow, to my surprise - and when they were finally heard in the living room, located next to my bedroom, with the doors constantly open at night, and did not stop, I called out: “Nikolai (name of the valet), what do you need?” There was no answer, but the steps continued to approach and were already quite close to me, right behind the glass screens that stood behind my bed; here, in some strange embarrassment, I leaned back on the pillows. Before my eyes there was a figurative icon case standing in the front corner of the room with a lamp burning in front of it, always deliberately so bright that the light would be enough for the nurse when she had to feed and swaddle the child. The nurse slept in my own room behind the screens, to which I lay with my head. With such lamplight, I could clearly discern, when the person coming in leveled up with my bed, on the left side of me, that it was my son-in-law, A.F. Zengireev, but in a completely unusual form for me - in a long, black, as if monastic robe, with shoulder-length hair and a large thick beard, which he never wore while I knew him. I wanted to close my eyes, but I could no longer, feeling that my whole body was completely numb; I had no power to make the slightest movement or even call for help with my voice; only hearing, sight and understanding of everything that was happening around me were preserved in me completely and consciously - to such an extent that the next day I told verbatim exactly how many times the nurse got up to see the child, at what hours, when she first fed him, and when she swaddled him, etc. This state of mine lasted from 12 o’clock to 3 o’clock in the morning, and this is what happened at that time. The man who entered came close to my bed, stood sideways, turning his face to me, on my left side, and, placing his left hand, completely deathly cold, flat on my mouth, said out loud: “Kiss my hand.” Not being able to do anything physically to free myself from this influence, I mentally, by force of will, resisted the command I heard. As if foreseeing my intention, he pressed his lying hand more firmly on my lips, and repeated louder and more commandingly: “Kiss this hand.” And I, for my part, again mentally resisted the repeated order even more strongly. Then, for the third time, with even greater force, the same movement and the same words were repeated, and I felt that I was suffocating from the heaviness and coldness of the hand pressing on me; but still she could not and did not want to give in to the command. At this time, the nurse stood up to the child for the first time, and I hoped that for some reason she would come up to me and see what was happening to me; but my expectations did not come true: she only slightly rocked the girl, without taking her further out of the crib, and almost immediately lay down in her place and fell asleep. Thus, not seeing help for myself and for some reason thinking that I was dying - that what was happening to me was nothing more than sudden death - I mentally wanted to read the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father”. As soon as this thought flashed through my mind, the one standing next to me took his hand from my lips and again said out loud: “You don’t want to kiss my hand, so this is what awaits you,” and with these words he placed with his right hand on the night cabinet, completely next to me, a parchment package, the size of an ordinary sheet of writing paper, rolled into a tube; and when he took his hand away from the folded bundle, I clearly heard the rustle of a thick parchment sheet unfolding halfway, and with my left eye I further saw from the side a part of this sheet, which thus remained in a half-unfolded or, better yet, in a lightly folded state. Then, the one who laid it turned away from me, took a few steps forward, stood in front of the icon case, blocking the light of the lamp from me, and loudly and clearly began to pronounce the prayer I had planned, which I read from beginning to end, bowing from time to time with a slow bow from the waist, but without making the sign of the cross. During bows, his lamp became visible to me every time, and when he straightened up and became motionless, as if waiting for something; my condition did not change in any way, and when I again wanted to read the prayer to the Mother of God, he immediately began to read it just as clearly and loudly; the same thing repeated with the third prayer I conceived - “May God rise again.” Between these last two prayers there was a long period of time during which the reading stopped while the nurse got up when the child cried, fed him, swaddled him and put him to bed again. During the entire reading, I clearly heard every chime of the clock, which did not interrupt this reading; I heard every movement of the nurse and the child, whom I passionately desired somehow instinctively to bring to myself in order to bless him before the death I expected and say goodbye to him; There was no other desire in my thoughts, but it also remained unfulfilled. Three o'clock struck; here, I don’t know why, it occurred to me that six weeks have not yet passed since Easter and that in all churches the Easter verse is still sung - “Christ is Risen!” And I wanted to hear him... As if in response to this desire, suddenly from somewhere far away came the divine sounds of a familiar great song, performed by a large full choir at an unattainable height... The sounds were heard closer and closer, fuller, more sonorous, and flowed in such an incomprehensible, unheard of, unearthly harmony that my spirit froze with delight; the fear of death disappeared, and I was happy with the hope that, behold, these sounds would capture me completely and take me with them into vast space... Throughout the singing, I clearly heard and distinguished the words of the great Irmos, carefully repeated by the choir and the man standing in front of me. Suddenly the whole room was suddenly filled with some kind of radiant light, also unprecedented by me, so strong that everything in it disappeared - the fire of the lamp, the walls of the room, and the vision itself... This light shone for several seconds with sounds that reached the highest, deafening, extraordinary power, then it began to thin out, and I could again discern in it the person standing in front of me, but not all of it, but starting from head to waist, she seemed to merge with the light and little by little melted into it, as the light itself faded or dimmed; the bundle that had been lying near me all the time was also captured by this light and disappeared with it. As the light faded, so did the sounds, just as slowly and gradually as they had initially approached. I began to feel that I was beginning to lose consciousness and was approaching fainting, which, indeed, came, accompanied by the strongest writhing and convulsions of the whole body that had ever happened to me in my life. This attack, with its force, woke up everyone around me and, despite all the measures taken against it and the help provided to me, it lasted until nine o’clock in the morning; It was only then that they finally managed to bring me to consciousness and stop the convulsions. Then for three days I lay completely motionless from extreme weakness and extreme exhaustion due to severe throat bleeding that accompanied the attack. The day after this strange event, news was received about Zengireev’s illness, and two weeks later about his death, which followed, as it later turned out, on the night of May 13, at five o’clock in the morning. The following is also remarkable: when my sister-in-law, about six weeks after the death of her husband, moved with her entire family to live with us in Romanov, then one day, quite by accident, in a conversation with another person, in my presence, she mentioned the interesting fact that the late Zengireev was buried with shoulder-length hair and a large thick beard, which had managed to grow during his illness; She also mentioned the strange fantasy of those in charge of the burial - which she was not able to do herself - who could not think of anything more decent than to put the deceased in a coffin in a long, black cloth robe, like a shroud, which they had specially ordered for this. The character of the late Zengireev was strange; he was very secretive and uncommunicative; he was a gloomy melancholic; sometimes, very rarely, he would perk up, be cheerful, and playful. In his melancholy mood, he could sit in one place for two, three, then eight, ten hours, without moving, without even saying a single word, refusing all food, until such a state of its own accord, or for some reason, stopped. His mind was not particularly outstanding; by his convictions, perhaps as a doctor, he was a complete materialist; He did not believe in anything supersensible - spirits, ghosts and the like; but his way of life was very correct. My relationship with him was rather strained due to the fact that I always stood up for one of his children, his little son, whom he had been constantly pursuing for no reason since his birth; I defended him in any case; This made him very angry and turned him against me. When, six months before his death, he, along with his entire family, was visiting us in Romanov, I had a strong clash with him, all on the same occasion, and we parted very coldly: These circumstances are not without significance, perhaps, for understanding the extraordinary phenomenon I told (see “Rebus”, 1890, No. 13). 29. Proof of afterlife existence. On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1890, at 6 o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Gladkevich reports, I, my now deceased younger sister and 10-year-old brother, returned overtired from the funeral. We were burying one of our good friends, an elderly lady, who, having been ill for a very short time, died on December 22 from the so-called “sugar disease.” Three hours after our arrival from the funeral and the arrival of my relative and his wife, we sat down to dinner, during which my father, who sometimes loved to joke, asked: “What would you do if the deceased Elena Konstantinovna suddenly appeared among us?” “Well, well,” I answered, “I would invite her to sit next to me and ask how she feels after death and how she generally lives in that world” 28 . My sister, who was at the funeral and saw the deceased in the coffin, whose height and appearance made an unpleasant impression on her, protested and demanded to stop the conversation, which was so unpleasant for everyone, for the night, which, of course, was done. The dinner, to the satisfaction of all those present, was held in a cheerful and unanimous mood. After dinner, at about 11 o’clock, my father, mother, sisters and brother went to their rooms, and my relative and I remained sitting at the table, continuing our conversation, which, in the end, took on the character of a reproach addressed to me for not buying him tickets to the opera, where he, as a music lover, hoped to spend a pleasant festive time and listen to the best operatic forces. And indeed, this time, because of the funeral, I did not bother about tickets, and the opera repertoire was selected and attractive. To correct my mistake and satisfy the desire of a relative, I delved into thinking about how to get the required number of tickets for the best performances tomorrow, knowing well that the box office would be open at a time when I would be busy. At the moment of my thoughts on how to purchase tickets, I shuddered from some strange crackling sound that I heard either next door in the kitchen, where my mother and servants were, or in the living room located opposite us, or in my room, where my three sisters were crowded, having some kind of animated conversation - in a word, I could not determine where and how this strange crackling occurred, which brought me out of my thoughts and which was heard by everyone, but for each in different places, as was subsequently explained. It seemed to me that the maid was breaking wood chips in the kitchen. At the same time, I raised my head and looked into the open doors of the unlit living room, where, to my horror, I saw red tongues of fire writhing along the edges of the tablecloth of the round pre-sofa table, and a second later, on the same table, among the increasing tongues of fire, I saw a living bust of a deceased woman, whose face seemed to me all sweaty and red, her eyes looked at me in fear, and the hair on her forehead was in disarray, i.e. She appeared to me in a form in which I had never seen her during my lifetime, despite the fact that there were times when I visited her house quite often. This sight, completely unexpected, amazed me so much that I could not utter a single word for 10-15 seconds, and what is strange is that I did not feel any fear, but was only surprised and wondered, thinking, what is this? Finally, I turned to a relative leaning over the dining table, who was also thinking about something, and said to him: “Look, what is this happening above the table?” And since I did not explain where and over which table “this was happening,” he began to look around the table at which we were sitting and repeat: “Nothing, I don’t see anything.” This outraged me, and I directed my gaze again to the vision, but... it was no longer there, and there were no tongues of fire either. It’s clear, I immediately told everyone at home about the vision, and after an hour or an hour and a half I went to bed. Instead of the sleep that was necessary for me, I racked my brain almost all night - what could it be? I know very well that I do not suffer from hallucinations, I did not allow myself to excessively “libate to Bacchus” at dinner, and at the moment of the vision I was not thinking about the deceased at all. As soon as in the morning I remembered that one evening I went to her - as I remember, it was in the summer - and she invited me to drink tea, during which they talked in private about incomprehensible phenomena in the world, etc., and then, when the conversation touched on the afterlife of humanity, she, without thinking twice, extended her hand to me and said: “I am already old, and you, although young, have poor health; whichever of us dies first will try to manifest himself to the other and thereby prove the real existence of an afterlife, if it exists.” In turn, I shook her hand and promised her to appear from the other world if I died before she did. When I remembered all this, I began to shake, and for several days I walked like a dead man: I didn’t know what to think, what to do and where to go; although the image of the vision did not haunt me, the thought of an afterlife, proven by the deceased, made me indifferent to everything around me. Since then I have changed my lifestyle (Rebus 1897, No. 41). 30. Guest from another world. In the spring of 1868, reports Mrs. Augusta Duinels of Boston, I spent several weeks at the house of the Honorable Mr. Kimball, in the city of Brentwood, to improve my health, which had been shaken by the cruel trials I had recently suffered. I had no idea about their relatives and friends who had passed on to another world. I was placed in a large room, distant from the living quarters, opposite which there was another similar room connected to a small hall. One night, when Mrs. Kimball, the archdeacon's wife, kissed me goodbye, leaving me alone in my bedroom, I suddenly felt a special feeling of fear. If I could throw off the force that had taken hold of me, I would run away from the room; Realizing that this was beyond my power, I could only lock the door and hurried to put out the candle and go to bed, hoping to fall asleep, which I initially succeeded in doing. But less than ten minutes passed when something woke me up, and then I felt as if I was in a normal state: the force that had been pressing me before sleep seemed to fly away. But then, to my great horror, the locked door quietly opened, and through it the unusually ethereal figure of a beautiful young girl of about twenty slowly floated into the room rather than entered; a cheerful, happy, smiling pink face looked at me welcomingly. She was wearing a light yellow dress with a small cape of the same color and material as her dress. Again I could neither move nor say a single word and only passionately wished for the girl to leave quickly. But she, on the contrary, began to approach, stopped about three feet from my bed and spoke in a clear, somewhat sad voice: “Don’t be alarmed, I am Mr. Kimball’s youngest daughter. I died of scarlet fever and a sore throat in the room opposite yours, I was two years old, but now, if I had remained alive, I would have been twenty-one. Tell your mother and father that I came to you, tell me that there is no death, and I am very happy.” Having said this, she disappeared, and almost at that very moment I fell fast asleep. Wanting to check this strange phenomenon, the next morning, after breakfast, I asked my hosts several questions, which I asked them to answer briefly: yes or no. When they promised, I asked: “Did you have a little daughter who died of scarlet fever and throat disease?” “Yes,” they both answered me. "She was two years old?" “Yes,” they both answered again. “If she had remained alive, would she now be twenty-one years old, and would she have a particularly vibrant complexion?” - “Yes, oh yes!” - they both exclaimed. “Wonderful, now tell me again, was the last dress she wore before her illness light yellow in color and with a cape?” The Archdeacon moved away from the table: a light groan escaped from his chest. “Yes, yes, our treasure was wearing exactly such a dress! Have you seen her? If she comes again, tell her to come to dad, dad wants to see her so much!” Mrs. Kimball, in tears, said: “Yes, that was the last dress we saw on her. Come to me, I’ll show it to you.” And when she showed me the dress and cape, I conveyed to them an order from their dear daughter from another world (“Facts”, vol. VI, No. 1; see “Rebus” 1890, No. 34). 31. Posthumous phenomenon. A certain B-sky, now a retired artillery lieutenant, deeply respected among his acquaintances, told me the following incident that happened to him at the end of September 1864, an incident that took place in the house of his distant relatives, wealthy landowners of that time, the village of Tselestsev, Minsk province, Mozyr district. In September 1864, he decided to make a trip from Zhitomir to Minsk province. to his highly respected relatives, Messrs. L-sky, whose 18-year-old daughter Camilla, a beautiful and educated person who during her lifetime had some indifference to Mr. S-tsky, died of consumption six months ago. The latter, knowing very well about her incurable illness, ignored this disposition and was fully aware that in the near future she would die. Having received leave, Mr. S-kiy set off under the most favorable conditions of the autumn time: the roads are dry, the nights are moonlit and cloudless, and the horses, as they say, are eagles. He arrived at the place, as he says, in a very good mood and was received very cordially. Despite the late evening hour, which forced us to wish each other good night, the hospitable host and his respected family and visiting relatives - the doctor and his wife - settled down to drink tea and talk about current everyday affairs. When they had talked enough and wished each other good night, everyone went to their bedrooms; for me, in the absence of a free room, they prepared a bed on the sofa in the hall, where, of course, I was left alone and, taking advantage of complete freedom, tired after the journey, took off my uniform, took tobacco out of my suitcase and began to crumble it almost all over the table, in order to dry it. While doing this with a lit candle, I suddenly heard behind me, near the tropical flowers and near the piano, the rustling of a silk dress, which made me come out of some reverie and turn around. But before I had time to completely turn around and figure out why there was a rustling in the empty room, as if from a silk dress, I suddenly saw a real female figure, dressed in a long black silk dress and a red bow on her neck, who either walked or floated through the air along the piano, and, having passed the last one, disappeared into the partition between the piano and the doors leading to the room of the visiting doctor and his wife. While I was peering at the mysterious visitor and could not yet see her face, there was cheerfulness and that warlike courage in me that every military man, and even more so an officer, is proud of; but when I saw the profile of the visitor’s face and recognized the deceased Camilla in it, all the energy and self-control in me disappeared: frost set in throughout my body, my hair stood up, and, instinctively grabbing my uniform in one hand, I automatically ran out of the room into the corridor. I don’t remember how many doors I ran through; It seems that before the last ones I stopped and remembered that I was in someone else’s house, where it would be indecent to run around with a uniform in my hands. Hastily putting on my uniform in the darkness, I somehow caught my breath, gave myself, as it seemed to me, a cheerful and heroic look, grabbed the door handle and, opening the doors, entered the room without any permission. This room, which I knew little, turned out to be a child’s room, and, to my great happiness, in it were, in addition to my two young cousins, an old mother, a wife and an adult, healthy and tall cousin E., the son of Mr. L-sky. They weren't asleep yet. I called the latter into the corridor and told him that I would not spend the night alone in the hall due to some ill health. “Yes,” he said with some embarrassment, “it’s clear from your pale face that you are unwell and, moreover, you are excited,” and he asked to explain the reason for my noticeable excitement, and what exactly happened to me, emphasizing “happened.” Not being able to explain to myself whether this was truly a supernatural phenomenon, incomprehensible to me, or simply the consequences of my path, which could unexpectedly upset the nervous system, I reassured him by saying that tomorrow I would explain in detail, but in great secrecy. G. E., as expected, agreed to spend the night on the couch in the hall; Before I had time to completely lie down and turn off the light, he was already snoring, which greatly encouraged me. Having turned off the light, I lay down as if nothing had happened, although my mind was working to a small extent to explain what had happened, and I inevitably had to look for the motives for such an unprecedented incident in my life, which could only have occurred in a person suffering from hallucinations or prone to alcoholism. Lying and reasoning in this way, I finally sank into a pleasant sleepy stupor, which did not last long, because I had to pay attention to the noise of an easy chair approaching the middle of the room, which had been standing in front of me somewhere at my head, near the piano or the wall. I slowly turned my gaze, without getting out of bed, towards the chair moving spontaneously and, to my horror, I saw this very figure, in a black dress with a red bow around the neck, moving the chair towards me; when the chair was already facing me, the figure puts both hands on the back, and bows his head on his hands and stubbornly looks at me with his dull eyes, with a face as white as marble, illuminated by the moon. I was neither alive nor dead; My state at that time is difficult to explain in words: I try to pray mentally - I get confused, I want to scream - my tongue is dead and my jaws are frozen; coldness, trembling all over my body and an insurmountable fear overwhelmed me, something I had never experienced before in my life; I haven't experienced it. However, thanks to my strong temperament, I managed to overcome myself and say in a frightened, deathly voice three times the name of my sleeping nephew: “Edward?!” Edward?!" Simultaneously with the awakening of Edward, who jumped to his feet as if stung, the doctor came out of the bedroom with a candle in his hands, and both of them began to ask what happened to me? Then I had to explain to them what was wrong and ask Edward to immediately move me to another room for the rest of the night. After listening to my statement, the doctor smiled ironically and, turning to his room, said that I was talking nonsense, and Edward asked, for the sake of everything, not to tell my family about this, especially to keep it secret in front of my mother and grandmother. Since all this was very unpleasant for me, I gave my cousin my word of honor that I would keep it a secret, but from his preoccupied and changed face I noticed that he was also well acquainted with the appearance of this ghost. Without thinking twice, we both moved to the dining room and lay down on one wide sofa; Despite the several sleepless nights I spent on the road, I could not sleep until 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning. I woke up at 10 o’clock in the afternoon, and just at that time an old Pole footman came to me with his boots polished, and with some of his inherent familiarity he pestered me with the question why I did not sleep in the hall, but went with the panicked one to the dining room. I did not give him an explanation, but he did not let up and began to insistently say that he guessed what was going on, and knew well that the reason for all this was the deceased “panenka”, who is often and whom not only “you, the panicker,” he continued, saw, but all of us, in the same way, the master and the master’s children saw the lady, now in the hall, then on the balcony, then in the garden on the terrace, and she is not at all scary to us” (“Rebus” 1895, No. 20). 32. Appearance at the moment of death. In 1855, Mrs. Sh. was a classy lady at one institute in Odessa. her beloved brother was with the army in Sevastopol, and they corresponded carefully every week. Once - it was May 25 - Mrs. Sh. woke up in the morning at the first ringing of the bell that woke up the college girls. The pupils with whom she slept in the same room lazily got up. “Get up quickly, children,” said Mrs. Sh., “look at what a wonderful morning.” Her bed was very close to the window. It didn't lock all night. Below this window was the roof of the institute's infirmary, the low building of which formed a right angle with the building of the institute itself. Mrs. S., speaking about the weather, looked out the window and suddenly saw a strange change in scenery: instead of the infirmary roof, a green rampart with a moat at the bottom rose before her eyes. An officer in a cap was running along the rampart. He ran straight to the window, and Mrs. S. was surprised to recognize him as her brother. The young man jumped out the window, walked up to her, and taking her firmly by the shoulders with both hands, kissed her just as firmly on both cheeks. - What you? How did you get here? – she exclaimed in surprise. But at that very moment he turned around, jumped out the window again and ran back along the shaft. Having reached the middle, the young man suddenly swayed strongly, his cap flew off his head, and after it he himself rolled into the ditch... And everything disappeared. Under the window of the institute's bedroom the hospital roof stretched again. Mrs. S. rubbed her eyes, wondering if she was dreaming. But his brother’s strong kisses burned on both cheeks, and marks from his fingers remained on his shoulders. She looked at the girls. They sat in silence and looked at her with all their eyes. - Children, am I awake just now? – Mrs. Sh asked in embarrassment. “No,” the children answered, “you looked out the window and then talked to someone.” This week, instead of the usual letter from her brother, Mrs. Sh. received news of his death. He was killed on May 25, at that morning hour when his sister saw him.” (“Rebus”, 1884, number 35) “The best walk in the summer for the residents of Simbirsk is the so-called Kindyakovskaya Grove, located three miles from the city, along the Saratov highway. In this grove, in the very depths of the trees, there still stands, although extremely damaged by bad weather and years, a massive stone gazebo in the form of a rather large (sort of pagan) temple with columns and stone urns on four pillars around a round dome. The old residents of the city associated many legendary stories with this gazebo, and many treasure hunters, believing that treasure was hidden under the gazebo, often undermined the foundation or damaged the stone floor. But here is the true story, which I personally heard from the old owner of the village of Kindyakovki, who died in the sixties as a hundred-year-old man, Lev Vasilyevich Kindyakov. The above-mentioned gazebo, according to him, was built in the middle of the last 18th century over the ashes of one relative of the Kindyakov family, Lutheran, and Kindyakov himself, who served under Emperor Pavel Petrovich, does not remember the time of this construction. This is what happened to him in 1835. One day, guests gathered in the house of Mr. Kindyakov in the village of Kindyakovka in the summer and played cards. At about midnight, a footman entered the room and reported to Lev Vasilyevich that some old lady had entered from the garden through the terrace into the footman's room and was persistently demanding to know about herself, having an important matter to tell. G. Kindyakov got up from the table, went out into the hallway and actually saw a tall, pale old woman, dressed in an old-fashioned suit. When asked what she wanted at such a late time and who she was, the old woman replied: “I am Emilia, your relative, buried in the garden under the gazebo.” Today at eleven o'clock two robbers took off my gold cross and gold wedding ring and disturbed my ashes. With these words, the old woman quickly went through the open doors of the terrace and disappeared into the garden. Mr. Kindyakov, who had never been afraid of anything, considered this whole phenomenon to be the product of an imagination upset by a game of cards, ordered him to wash himself with cold water and, as if nothing had happened, returned to the guests to throw the bank. But imagine his surprise when the next day, at ten o’clock in the morning, the garden guards came to him and reported that the floor in the gazebo had been broken out and some skeleton had been thrown out of a half-rotten coffin onto the ground. Here, involuntarily, I had to believe, and Mr. Kindyakov, having previously made sure that the footman had seen the same vision the previous night and heard clearly (from word to word) everything said by the ghost, immediately turned to the police chief who was at that time in Simbirsk, Colonel Orlovsky. He energetically began the search, and indeed it was discovered that two Simbirsk tradesmen had robbed the corpse and pawned a gold cross and ring in one of the taverns; Their main goal was to find the treasure. We heard the same story personally from Mr. Kindyakov, Simbirsk landowner Sergei Nikolaevich Neykov, doctor Evlanov and many others. Among similar facts, this fact is remarkable in that the ghost not only appeared, but also clearly said that it was rare, and that, finally, the posthumous ghost appeared no earlier than a hundred years after death. To this we can add that Mr. Kindyakov was an old man, extremely truthful and did not believe in anything supernatural, and enjoyed excellent health until his death.” (“Rebus”, 1886, number 11) 34. The late Lord M. went to Scotland at the end of the last century, leaving his wife completely healthy in London. At night, on the first day of his arrival at his Scottish estate, he was awakened by a bright light that illuminated his bedroom. The curtains of the bed parted, and Lord M. saw the ghost of his wife standing by the bed. He called and asked the servant who came in: “What do you see?” The frightened footman exclaimed in horror: “This is my lady.” Lady M. died suddenly that same night in London. This story caused a lot of noise at the time. George III sent for Lord M. and, having received confirmation of this incident from him, asked him to set out in writing all the circumstances of this matter, which was done, and the servant certified the correctness of the description with his signature. About a year later, Lord M.'s five-year-old youngest daughter ran headlong into the nursery shouting: “I saw mom! She stood at the top of the stairs and beckoned me to her.” That same night this child, little Arabella M., fell ill and died. I can fully vouch for the authenticity of both of these cases, for I received a written account of these incidents from one of the members of the family of Lord M. (Robert Del-Owen: “Grave Echoes”). 35. Tangible ghost. Bishop Wilberforce of Winchester, at one time one of the highest dignitaries of the English Church, once received an invitation to dinner at a mansion in the central county. Arriving somewhat earlier than the time indicated in the invitation, the bishop found an unknown Catholic priest in the living room, sitting on the sofa, carefully reading a thick book. When the bishop entered the living room, the priest looked up, bowed silently to him and then plunged back into reading. He was a slender, strongly built and serious-looking man. His face bore an expression of such fatigue and anxiety that it involuntarily attracted the bishop's attention, arousing his curiosity. After the other invitees had gathered, the bishop, sitting near the hostess, quietly asked: “By the way, you didn’t introduce me to the priest I found in the living room when I arrived.” Who is this? Now he is not visible among those present. At this question, a strange expression appeared on the hostess’s face, and she quickly said in a quiet voice: - How, did you really see him? “Yes, undoubtedly,” answered the bishop, “but forgive me if I unwittingly touched on some family secret.” I thought that this priest was just a guest, like me, and his appearance struck me so much that I would like to get to know him better. But if for any reason you wish his identity to remain unknown, you can count on my modesty. “No, no, your Eminence,” said the hostess in the same quiet voice, “you are mistaken, since I have nothing to hide, although my husband would like it not to be disclosed.” I’m only surprised that this priest showed himself to you, whereas until now he only showed himself to members of our family. The one you saw was not a guest... He is a ghost. “Yes, exactly,” continued the hostess, “a ghost, the existence of which cannot be doubted, since during the entire two years that we lived here, this ghost appeared several times to me and my husband under such conditions that any mistake or suspicion of anything else is impossible.” We saw it a dozen times and, being unable to explain this phenomenon by any natural causes, decided to simply remain silent. But since you also witnessed this ghost, may I, Your Eminence, ask for your help? “I am ready to help you in every way I can,” answered the bishop. “It often occurred to me that if someone had the courage to talk to him, then perhaps it would be possible to get rid of his visits. You can, if you wish, under some pretext return to the living room and, if he is there, ask him to leave our house - in a word, make a spell. After some hesitation, the bishop agreed. He apologized to the guests for the need to leave them for a minute and left the dining room. Upon entering the living room, he was seized by a sudden fear: the bishop saw the same priest, still immersed in reading. Having mastered himself, he resolutely walked towards the ghost. Just as the first time, he silently bowed in greeting, but instead of immersing himself in reading again, his eyes rested anxiously on the newcomer. After a moment's hesitation, the bishop said in a slow and solemn voice: – In the name of God, who are you and what do you want? In response to this spell, the priest closed his book, stood up and, standing in front of the bishop, answered in a dull voice: “No one has ever conjured me this way before.” I'll tell you who I am and what I want. As you can see, I am a priest of the Catholic Church, and 80 years ago this house belonged to me. I had a passion for hunting and took every opportunity to hunt. One day I was preparing to go into the forest next door, but suddenly a young lady of aristocratic origin came to me for confession. I will not repeat to you what I heard, but it was closely related to the honor of one of the most famous houses in England. her confessions seemed so important to me that I decided to write them down. This, without a doubt, was immodesty and even a sin, since such a thing is strictly prohibited by our church. When the confession was over and the penitent received absolution, I noticed that I had very little time left. When leaving home, I carefully hid what I had written down in the book I was reading at the time, and put it all in a niche, after which I sealed the hole with the bricks I had previously removed, with the intention of destroying the incriminating note upon returning home. Unfortunately, death prevented me from fulfilling this intention, since on that day I died falling from a horse. Since then, I have been destined to visit this house in order to prevent the consequences of my mistake, preventing these fatal notes from falling into anyone's hands. Until now, no one has dared to address me as boldly as you; no one else could help me and did not even show such a desire... Do you want to help me? If I tell you where this book is, will you swear on all that is holy to you to destroy this paper, without reading it or allowing anyone to read it? Do you give me your word to do this? “I swear,” the bishop answered solemnly, “that I will literally fulfill your request.” “In that case, follow me.” With these words, the priest went forward and went down the main staircase with the bishop, and then along the back door into the basement. “Here,” said the ghost, touching the wall with his hand. The bishop carefully examined the indicated place and, turning to his interlocutor to ask him a question, suddenly saw that he was left alone in the gloomy basement. Extremely agitated, he hurriedly returned to the dining room, and later told the hostess what had happened to him. In conclusion of this story, it must be said that in the place indicated by the ghost, a book, yellowed with time, was actually found with the priest’s notes lying between the pages... The bishop sacredly fulfilled his oath, destroying the incriminating notes in the presence of the owners. Needless to say, from then on the visits stopped. (Messager 1889 No. 20: see Rebus 1890 No. 12). 36. The ghost of a grieving mother. The following article appeared in the weekly magazine Woman, one of the many publications whose success testifies to the rapid development of the women's issue: “I recently heard an interesting story about a ghost, communicated to me by one of my friends, a truthful, completely trustworthy person and, as far as I know, never distinguished by a ardent imagination or special impressionability. Some time ago, he was visiting a friend in Ireland who had recently married for the second time. The first evening my friend spent in this house was very lively, and he retired to his room in the most pleasant mood, went to bed and soon fell asleep. After a little time, he was awakened by the noise of the door opening, he woke up and saw that the figure of a woman, apparently deeply distressed, appeared on the threshold, illuminated by a bright light. He spoke to her and, receiving no answer, hastily lit a candle. At that very moment both the woman and the light disappeared, and my friend became convinced that the door was still locked. Severely struck by this mysterious phenomenon, Mr. G. could no longer fall asleep and tried to convince himself that everything he saw was nothing more than a dream; but then, two hours later, he saw with horror that the door again slowly and this time silently opened, and the same woman entered the room. Now he could see her face, and at that very moment he recognized the original portrait that was hanging on the wall in the dining room. Tears streamed down the woman's cheeks; she was apparently under the influence of desperate grief; With quick steps she approached the window, and at that very moment the cry of a child was heard, coming as if from outside the window. Not remembering himself, my friend jumped up and wanted to talk to her, but, like the first time, the vision instantly disappeared. Mr. G. was not a coward, but he confessed to me later that he had never before experienced such fear as he did that night. The next day at breakfast he told the owner of the house about his night's adventure, and he explained its significance. The portrait hanging on the wall in the dining room depicts his first wife. She died of grief after the death of their only child, who fell from the window of the very room where the guest was sleeping. The unfortunate mother, as long as her strength allowed her, constantly went to the room in which she lost her adored son, and after her death, according to many people, these phenomena and sounds were repeated almost every night. My friend spent the night in this room, thanks to the ignorance of the servant who had recently arrived, since after the death of the mistress it remained inviolable. Thus, we have to conclude that if ghosts really exist, then they do not belong exclusively to times long past, but the last half of our prosaic nineteenth century can introduce new facts into the field of supernatural phenomena” (“Light”, No. 619, see “Rebus”, 1894, No. 1). 37. Stories of Camille Flammarion. a) Among many others, I remember a story I heard from one of the old friends of my youth, Jean Best, who founded the Picturesque Store in 1833, together with his famous friend Edward Chartne, and died several years ago. He was a completely respectable, reasonable and cold-blooded person. Everyone who knew him knows how strong his nerves were and how alien by his temperament he was to everything fantastic. So, according to him, the next adventure happened to him when he was only five or six years old. The scene of action was his homeland Tul. One fine evening he lay down in his bed and before he fell asleep, he was surprised to see that his mother had entered the room and walked through it into the next room, where the doors were open and where his father was playing cards with one of his friends. But at that moment his sick mother was far away from here - in Pau. He immediately jumped out of bed and ran after his mother into the living room, where he began to look for her, but, of course, to no avail. His father shouted at him somewhat irritably and told him to go to bed, saying that he had dreamed it all. After this, the child, believing that it really was a dream, lay down again and tried to fall asleep. But not even a few minutes had passed before he, looking with all his eyes, again and this time quite clearly saw his mother passing by him. He rushed to her, trying to hug her, but she immediately disappeared. Then he didn’t want to go to bed anymore and stayed in the hall, where his father continued to play. Later it turned out that his mother died in Pau on that day and at that exact hour. I heard this story from Best himself, who indelibly preserved it in his memory. How to explain it? We can say that the child, knowing about his mother’s illness, often thought about her and that this caused a visual hallucination that coincidentally coincided with the death of his mother. This explanation is possible; but one can also think that in this case there was some kind of sympathetic connection between mother and child, and that at the sad and solemn moment of death the mother’s soul was in actual communication with the soul of her child. But how? - they will ask me. I don’t know this, and no wonder, because the relationship between what we don’t know and what we know is the same as between the ocean and a raindrop. Hallucinations! This is easy to say, but how many medical treatises have been written on this issue? Everyone knows the composition of Brierade Baumon. Of the countless observations collected in it, we present here the following two: b) When King James returned to England and, on account of the pestilence that was raging in London, lived on the estate of Sir Robert Cotton with old Cambden, he saw in a dream his eldest son, who remained in London, with a bloody cross on his forehead, as if he had been wounded by a saber. Frightened by this vision, the king began to pray and, when morning came, he came to Cambden’s room and told him about the dream he had seen. Sir Cambden assured the monarch that this was nothing more than a dream, and that there was no need to worry about it. But on the same day, the king received a letter from his wife, informing him of the death of his child, who had become a victim of a pestilence. When the child appeared to his father, he had the height and appearance of an adult. c) The girl R., who had great prudence, was religious, but without any hypocrisy, lived before her marriage with her uncle D., a famous physician and member of the Academy of Sciences. Her mother lived in the province and at that time became quite dangerously ill. One night, a young girl dreamed that her mother stood before her, pale, terrible, almost giving up the ghost; she complained bitterly that she now had no sons near her, one of whom lived in Paris, and the other, who was a parish priest also in Paris, moved to Spain. The girl thought that her mother called her by name several times, and she saw that the people surrounding her mother, thinking that she was calling her granddaughter, who had the same name, followed her into the next room, but the patient showed them with signs that her words did not refer to her granddaughter, but to her daughter who lived in Paris, whom she would like to see. It was clear that the absence of her daughter was very sad for her. Suddenly her face became deathly pale, her features changed, and the dying woman fell onto the bed without any signs of life. In the morning D., noticing that his niece was very sad, asked her to tell him the reasons for her grief. She told him in full detail the dream that had frightened her so much. Then D., seeing that she was already prepared for the sad news, hugged her affectionately and said that all this, unfortunately, was absolutely true, that her mother had indeed died, but did not provide any details. A few months after that, Mrs. R., taking advantage of her uncle’s absence, began to put in order his papers, which he, like many other scientists, did not allow to be touched at all; By chance she came across a letter informing her uncle about her mother’s death. Imagine her surprise when in this letter she read all the details of her dream! Hallucination! Coincidence! But is this explanation sufficiently satisfactory? In any case, it explains absolutely nothing. The fact remains a fact and cannot be ignored, although it was impossible to explain it in the present state of our knowledge. d) General Parmentier, one of our most outstanding scientists, told me the following fact that happened in his family. Several people gathered for breakfast at a country house in Andlau, Alsace. They waited for a long time for the owner of the house, who had gone hunting, but at the appointed hour they sat down at the table without him, since the mistress of the house assured that her husband would not be slow to return for breakfast. We started breakfast amid cheerful chatter, expecting that a belated member, an overzealous lover of hunting, would appear any minute. However, time passed, and everyone began to be surprised at such a long delay, when suddenly, in the clearest, calmest weather, the window in the dining room, wide open, slammed shut with a strong thud and immediately opened again. The guests were all the more surprised and amazed that this movement of the window frames was supposed to overturn the decanter of water, which stood on the table in front of the window, and, meanwhile, the decanter remained in place untouched. Everyone who saw and heard this movement could not understand how it happened. - There must have been an accident! – the frightened hostess exclaimed, jumping up from her seat. Breakfast was interrupted. Three quarters of an hour later, the body of the hunter was brought on a stretcher, who had been hit in the chest by the entire charge. He died almost immediately, having only managed to utter words; “My wife, my poor children!” Here is a coincidence that requires explanation. At first glance, it will seem trivial and absurd to us. What does this strange movement of the window mean, and what does it relate to? Is it worth wasting time on a serious discussion of such an insignificant incident? Galvani's frogs also seemed like nothing, Papin's cauldron too. Meanwhile, electricity and steam are far from trifles. Recently, a lightning strike knocked a man into a field, he remained unharmed, but his shoes were torn off and thrown twenty steps, and nails jumped out of them, every single one. Another time, the same lightning tore off the dress of a young peasant woman, stripping her naked. Her clothes were later found hanging on a tree. Here's another case for you. A lightning strike killed a man on the spot at the moment when he brought a piece of bread to his mouth. He remained motionless. They come up to him, touch him, he crumbles into dust. His dress remained intact. The quirks of nature should not prevent us from studying its phenomena. Against. Without a doubt, when we hear the story of the incident with the hunter in Andlau, the first thing that comes to our mind is to simply deny the fact. Of course, it cannot be assumed that the story was entirely fictitious and false from beginning to end; The circumstances under which it played out and the respectability of the narrator himself do not allow this. But we can say that there was a slight movement of the window frame, caused by some extraneous trivial reason: a gust of wind, a push, a cat - you never know what else. The coincidence of this movement with the tragic incident later gave it serious significance. An assumption that is difficult to accept, however, since the mistress of the house and her guests were so greatly shocked by it. With greater probability, we must assume that the cause of the phenomenon was the psychic power of the dying person, the person who was expected at the table at that hour, the person who was transported there mentally and directed all his dying energy to this place. Telegraph without wire... Why did this power manifest itself in this way? How could a brain impression be collective? Why?... Why?... We are surrounded by complete mystery, and we can only build hypotheses. Oh, of course, if this case were an isolated case of its kind, then it might go unnoticed, but this is only one of many others that we have to cite in our study. For now, we will not dwell on how to explain the phenomenon and move on. e) Andre Bloch, a young, very talented musician sent to Rome on public account, a member of the Paris Astronomical Society, recently approached me with the following story about an incident that happened to him in 1896: This happened in June 1896. For the last two months of my stay in Italy, my mother came to me in Rome and settled not far from the French Academy in a boarding house on Via Gregoriana, the same place where you yourself once lived. Since at that time I had to finish some urgent work before returning to France, my mother inspected the city alone in the morning, without me, and returned to the Villa Medici only at 12 o’clock, for breakfast. But one day she showed up at eight o’clock in the morning, terribly upset. To my questions, she replied that while getting dressed in the morning, she suddenly saw her nephew, Rene Kremer, next to her; he looked at her and, laughing, told her: “Well, yes, I really died!” Very frightened by this phenomenon, she hurried to me. I calmed her down as best I could, then turned the conversation to other subjects. Two weeks later, we both returned to Paris, having explored part of Italy, and learned of the death of my cousin René, which followed on Friday, June 12, 1896, in his parents' apartment. He was 14 years old. Thanks to some work that occupied me at that time in Rome, I was able to accurately check the day and then the hour at which this phenomenon occurred. It turned out that just on that very day my little cousin, suffering from inflammation of the peritoneum, fell into agony from six o'clock in the morning and died at 12 o'clock; Before his death, he several times expressed a desire to see Aunt Bertha, that is, my mother. It should be noted that in none of the numerous letters we received from Paris, no one said a single word about my cousin’s illness. Everyone knew that my mother had a special affection for this child and that she would certainly return to Paris at the slightest indisposition. We were not further telegraphed about his death. I will also add that when it is six o’clock in Paris, the clock in Rome shows seven, due to the difference in the longitude of these areas, and that it was at that moment that my mother had this vision.” The incident that happened to Mrs. Blok belongs to the same order as the previous one. At that hour when her nephew was losing touch with everything earthly, he fervently thought about the one whom he loved like a mother, and who, for her part, loved him no less than his own son. And so, the psychic strength of the dying man manifested itself further in accordance with the character of a fourteen-year-old boy; he could really say, laughing: “Well, yes, I died!” You can deny everything, deny it from the shoulder. But what does such a denial prove? Isn't it better to be frank and admit that these are remarkable coincidences, although inexplicable given the present state of our knowledge? The hypothesis of causeless hallucination is, really, too frivolous. f) M.V. Kerkov wrote to me in February 1889: On August 25, 1874, I was in Texas, in the United States, and in the afternoon, before sunset, I was smoking my pipe in the lower dining room, overlooking the sea. To my right was a door facing northeast. I was sitting at point A. Suddenly, in the doorway I clearly see my old grandfather. I was in a detached state of complacent peace, like a person with a good stomach who had eaten a hearty lunch. When I saw my grandfather, I did not experience the slightest surprise. In essence, at that moment I lived a purely plant life and did not think about anything. However, the following thought flashed through my head: “It’s strange how the rays of the setting sun paint all objects with gold and purple, get into all the folds of clothes and into the wrinkles on my grandfather’s face.” Indeed, the sun was setting completely crimson and throwing a sheaf of rays diagonally through the dining room door. Grandfather had a good-natured expression on his face, he smiled and seemed happy. Suddenly he disappeared along with the sun, and I woke up, as if from a dream, with the conviction that a vision had appeared to me. Six weeks later, I was informed by letter that my grandfather had died on the night of August 25-26 between one and two in the morning. As you know, between Belgium, where he died, and Texas, my location, there is a difference in longitude of five and a half hours - exactly the time of sunset is about 7 hours. g) On November 10, 1890, the following letter was addressed to me from Christian: Your essay “Urania” gave me reason to tell you about an incident that I personally heard from the person to whom it happened. This is Mr. Vogler, a doctor, a Dane, living in Gudum, near Alborg (in Jutland). Vogler is a completely healthy person - in body and spirit, of a straightforward and positive character, without the slightest tendency to neurasthenia or fantasism - rather, on the contrary. As a young medical student, he traveled through Germany with Count Schimmelmann, very famous among the Holstein nobility. They were almost the same age. They decided to live for some time in one of the German university cities and rented a separate house for themselves. The Count occupied the ground floor, and Vogler settled upstairs. They had separate entrance doors to the street and the staircase: they alone used them. One night Vogler had already gone to bed, but still continued to read in bed. Suddenly he heard the entrance door downstairs open and close again; he did not pay attention to it, thinking that his friend was returning. However, a few minutes later he heard someone padding, as if tired, steps on the stairs, then someone stops at the door of his room. He saw the door open, but no one entered; the noise of footsteps, however, did not stop; he clearly heard shuffling on the floor, steps approaching his bed. But no one was visible, although the candle brightly illuminated the room. When the footsteps stopped near the bed, he heard a deep sigh and immediately recognized the sigh of his grandmother, whom he had left in Denmark completely healthy. At the same time, he recognized her gait: it was exactly the shuffling, old steps of his grandmother. Vogler noticed the exact hour of this phenomenon, because he immediately had a premonition that his grandmother had died, and he wrote it all down. Later, by letter from his father's house, he was informed of the unexpected death of his grandmother, who loved him more than all her grandchildren. Death followed just at the observed hour. Thus, the grandmother said goodbye to her grandson, who further had no idea about her illness. (candidate of rights, secretary of the department of public works in the city of Christian). So this young man was informed of his grandmother's death by the impression of footsteps and a sigh. It's hard to disagree with this. h) Madame Ferret, from Juvisy, the mother of the post office mistress, wrote me the following letter not long ago (December 1898): “The incident that I want to talk about belongs to the distant past, but I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday, because this incident struck me greatly then, and even if I live a hundred years, I will never forget it. This was during the Crimean campaign, in 1855. I lived on Rue de Tours, in Passy. One day, before breakfast, at about twelve o'clock, I went down to the cellar. A ray of sun broke through the dormer window and fell onto the earthen floor. This illuminated space suddenly seemed to me like a sea coast, and my cousin, the battalion commander, was lying dead on the sand. Frightened, I could not go further and with difficulty climbed upstairs. My relatives, noticing my paleness and upset appearance, began to pester me with questions. And when I told about my vision, they laughed at me. Two weeks later, we received the sad news of the death of Major Saudier. He died upon landing at Varna, and the date of his death corresponded to the day and hour when he appeared to me lying on the earthen floor of our cellar.” Let us take a further look at the facts. Theories and generalizations will come later. The more facts we gather, the more successful our investigation will be. i) The other day I received the following letter from a deputy-poet, well known and respected by everyone for the sincerity of his convictions and the selflessness of his entire life. “Dear teacher and friend! This incident happened to me in 1871. I was then at that age when young men admire flowers in a field, just as you observe stars in infinite space. But one day, forgetting about the flowers, I wrote an article, for which I was sent to St. Prison for several years. Petra in Marseille. Gaston Cremieux, sentenced to death, also sat there. I fell in love with him very much because we both harbored the same dreams and stumbled upon the same sad reality. In prison, while walking, he and I had incessant conversations, among other things, about God and the immortality of the soul. One day, several fellow prisoners with particular pathos proclaimed themselves atheists and materialists, and I objected to them that it was indecent to flaunt their denials in front of a person sentenced to death, moreover, in front of a person who believed in God and the immortality of the soul. The condemned man said to me, smiling: - Thank you, my friend! Now, wait, when they shoot me, I will tell you about myself. On November 30, at dawn, I was suddenly awakened by light, dull knocks hitting my desk. I turned around, the noise stopped, and I fell asleep again. A few minutes later, the same noise repeated again. Then I jumped out of the bed and, finally waking up, stood in front of the table: the noise continued. The same thing was repeated two or three times, all under the same conditions. Every morning, getting out of bed, I had the habit of going, taking advantage of the kind jailer’s indulgence, to Gaston Cremieux’s cell and drinking coffee with him. On this day, as on the previous ones, I went on our friendly date. Alas! The door was sealed. Looking out the dormer window, I was convinced that the prisoner was not there. I barely had time to ascertain this terrible truth when the kind jailer threw himself on my neck, all in tears: “Oh, they shot him this morning at dawn; but he died a hero." Great excitement gripped the prisoners. In the prison yard, where we exchanged our sad impressions, I suddenly remembered the noises I had heard: The absurd fear of meeting ridicule prevented me from telling my fellow sufferers what was happening in my cell just at the moment when Cremieux fell, struck by twelve bullets in the chest. However, I trusted one of them, François Roustan; but he suddenly wondered if I had gone crazy with grief? Here is the story that I put on paper for you. Use it as you please for your research, but do not think about my state of mind what my friend Rustan thought; grief could not drive me crazy at that moment when I had not yet received the sad news that became the cause of my grief. I was in a completely normal state, I had no further suspicion of the execution and clearly heard the sign given to me. Here is the naked, unvarnished truth. j) One famous scientist, Alphonse Berger, Doctor of Natural Sciences, laboratory assistant in physics at the Sorbonne, told me the following case: My mother was at that time a young girl, the bride of my father, who was then serving in the infantry with the rank of captain; she lived in Schlesstadt with her parents. Mother once had a childhood friend, a young girl named Amelia M. This girl, blind, was the granddaughter of an old colonel who served in the dragoons under the empire. Left an orphan, she lived with her grandparents. She was a good musician and often sang duets with my mother. At the age of eighteen, she felt an attraction to monastic life and took monastic vows in a Strasbourg monastery. At first she often corresponded with my mother; then the letters began to arrive less and less often, and finally, as often happens in such cases, she completely stopped writing to her former friend. Three years have passed since her tonsure; One day, my mother went to the attic to look for something in the old trash. Suddenly she ran back into the living room screaming loudly and fainted. They rushed to her aid, lifted her, she woke up and exclaimed, sobbing: - It's horrible! Amelia is dying, she died - I heard her singing as only a dead person can sing! And again a nervous attack, so strong that she fainted. Half an hour later, Colonel M. ran like crazy to my grandfather with a dispatch in his hands. It was from the abbess of the Strasbourg monastery and contained the following words: “Come, your granddaughter is dying.” The colonel rushes to the first train, goes to the monastery and learns that “my sister died at exactly three o’clock,” just at the very moment when my mother had a nervous attack. This incident was often told to me by my mother, grandmother, father, who were present at this scene, and also by my aunt and uncle, eyewitnesses of this incident. This case is worthy of attention... The name of the narrator serves as a guarantee of his reliability. There is nothing fantastic or romantic here. Obviously, Madame Berger's friend, dying, at the very moment of her death, thought with great warmth, love and, probably, with regret about her childhood friend, and from Strasbourg to Schlesstadt the emotional excitement of the young girl was transferred instantly and struck the brain of Madame Berger, giving him the impression of a heavenly voice singing a wondrous melody. But how? Which way? We don't know this. It would, however, be unscientific to deny a real coincidence, the relationship of cause to effect, a mental phenomenon, to deny it only because we do not know how to explain it to ourselves. j) Madame de Fonvielle told me on January 17, 1899 about the following incident, which she herself experienced and was known to all her relatives. She lived in Rotterdam. One evening, at about 11 o'clock, the whole family assembled and read the evening prayers aloud, and then everyone went to their bedrooms. Madame Fonvielle had just managed to lie down when she suddenly saw that at the foot of her bed the curtains were parting, and in front of her, with the clarity of a living person, appeared one of her childhood friends, with whom she had parted three years ago, after some indelicate act on her part. She was wearing long white clothes, her black hair was loose over her shoulders; she stared intently at her friend with her large black eyes, extended her hand and spoke in Dutch. - I'm dying. Won't you forgive me? Madame de Fonvielle rose up in bed and, in turn, extended her hand, but the vision suddenly disappeared. The room was illuminated by a night lamp, and all objects were clearly visible. Following this, the clock struck twelve. The next morning, Madame de Fonvielle was telling her niece about this strange vision, when suddenly the bell rang at the front door. A telegram was brought from The Hague, which read: “Marie died yesterday at eleven o’clock and forty-five minutes.” M. de Fonvielle, for his part, confirmed to me the fact of the vision; the coincidence is beyond doubt. As for the explanation, he is looking for it as diligently as we are. k) Baroness Stafe, the author of charming stories, told me the following fact: Madame M..., who was French by marriage and belonged to a large medical family, was the embodiment of honesty. It seems to me that she would rather die than agree to tell a lie. This is what she conveyed to me. During her teenage years she lived in England and at the age of sixteen became the bride of a young officer from the Indian army. One spring in the port city where her father lived, she stood on the balcony and naturally thought about her fiancé. Suddenly she sees him in front of her, in the garden - pale, exhausted. Nevertheless, overjoyed, she shouts: Harry! Harry! He runs down the stairs like a whirlwind and opens the doors, expecting to see his lover on the threshold. But there was no one there. She runs around the garden, rummages through the bushes, and examines the place where she saw him. Harry is nowhere to be found. Her family surrounds her, trying to calm her down, convince her that this is an illusion, but she keeps repeating: “I saw him, I saw him!” – and remains saddened and worried. Some time later, a young girl learns that her fiancé died at sea, from a sudden illness, precisely on the day and at the hour when she saw him in the garden. m) G. Binet, a tapographer in Soissons, told me about the following vision that appeared to him personally. My homeland, Mézières, was bombed for just 36 hours, but many people died. Among other things, our host’s little daughter was dangerously wounded; she was 11–12 years old, and I was only 15. I often played with Leontina, that was the girl’s name. At the beginning of March I went to visit Doncheri. Before leaving, I learned that the girl was in a hopeless condition. But, thanks to the change of place and the carelessness characteristic of my age, I had fun and forgot about the troubles I had suffered. I slept alone in a long, narrow room, the window of which looked out onto a field. Once, having gone to bed as usual at 9 o’clock, I could not fall asleep. The full moon was shining in the sky, casting quite a strong light in the room. The dream did not come, I heard the clock striking, and time dragged on endlessly. I thought, looking at the window, which was directly opposite my bed. Suddenly, at about half past one, it seemed to me that a ray of the moon was moving towards me, then took on the outline of a long white robe and stopped right next to my bed. Someone’s emaciated face smiles at me... I scream: “Leontina!” But the radiant shadow, ever sliding, disappears at the foot of the bed. A few days later, I returned to my parents and, before they could talk to me, I told about my vision: it was the very night, the very hour when the girl died. n) This is what happened to my father, a retired naval captain. He was sailing and went on watch around midnight. Walking along the bridge, he suddenly saw the figure of a child, dressed in white, flashing before his eyes and as if about to fly away. -Have you seen anything? - he asked the sailor who was with him. Then his father told him about his vision, adding: “Probably things are not going well at home.” He carefully wrote down the day and hour, and when he returned home, he learned that his little niece had died that very day. My father told me about this more than once and repeated it the other day while reading your article. o) G. Passa, who was a priest in Versailles for a long time, relayed to me the following incident: one day, while he was a student in Strasbourg, being in an awake, fully conscious state, he saw his brother, an officer of the Turkos in Africa, lying at the bottom of a deep hole with a cut, bloody head. Although this vision made a strong impression on him, he did not for a single moment allow the thought that it foreshadowed reality, and he remembered it only when he received the following fatal news by mail: on the very day that his brother appeared to him, he was attacked by one of his privates, who cut his skull and threw his corpse into a pit. A.E. Mono. 97, rue des Draco, in Marseille. o) Several years ago, the V. couple visited a sick old man they knew, a certain Saint-Aubin, a very educated and original man. In the midst of the conversation, the old man, convinced that he did not have long to live, promised Mr. B that he would inform him when his last hour came. V., for his part, made the same promise. The summer passed, and the couple no longer saw the patient. One winter evening after dinner, Mr. V. was reading a newspaper, suddenly he involuntarily raised his head and said to his wife: “St. Aubin is dead.” She didn’t believe it and asked who he learned about it from? “Nobody told me anything about Saint-Aubin,” answered V., “but now it was as if something hit me in the head, and at that very moment I involuntarily thought about the death of Saint-Aubin.” The next morning, Madame V. heard in the church the news of the death of Saint-Aubin, which had followed the previous evening. Mr. V. (my uncle), who told me about this incident, said that it was impossible to determine the properties of the light blow he received - he had never experienced such a sensation in his life. He is not at all superstitious, quite the opposite. Gussi van der Gage, in Ruler. p) My maternal grandfather, a serious, respectable, calm and stern man, was one day walking through the streets of London, immersed in thought, when suddenly one of his close childhood friends, a colonel of the Indian Army, who, judging by newspaper reports, was busy at that time pacifying a sepoy riot, was dragged through the crowd and towards him. My grandfather, beside himself with surprise, extended his hand to his friend and was about to ask him a question, but he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. Returning home, grandfather inquired if the colonel had come and, having received a negative answer from the servants, somewhat alarmed, he went to his club. No one saw the colonel there either. Several weeks passed: at that time the means of communication were still very poor. One day, while skimming through the columns of a weekly magazine published in India, grandfather was saddened to come across the name of his dear friend in the list of those killed due to the treachery of the sepoys. Having compared the dates, he became convinced that the death of this friend coincided with his appearance on the crowded streets of London, where in the old days both friends especially loved to wander, studying the characteristic street types of the capital. c) It happened around 1850 in a family I knew. Two sisters have just gone to bed when suddenly one of them screams: “My God! Father!...” The mother imagines that this is a hallucination or a dream, and tries to calm her daughter, but she replies: “I’m sure I saw dad, he then touched my hand.” You need to know that a few days ago my father left for Tours to build booths for the fair there: The next day the family received a letter informing me that my father had killed himself by falling from a building. The vision appeared to his daughter just at the moment of his death. Delanoux, landlord, 28 Castle Street, Lot. r) My brother, the overseer of the exiles in Cayenne, while on vacation in Bollen, told me about the following incident. He was very friendly with another warden, a certain Renucci. He had a daughter who became very attached to my brother and daughter-in-law. The girl got sick. One night my brother wakes up. In the depths of the room, he suddenly sees little Lydia, fixing her gaze on him. Then she disappeared. In excitement, my brother woke up his wife and told her: “Didi (Lydia) is dead, I just saw her very clearly.” Neither husband nor wife could sleep after that. The next day my brother hurried to Mr. Renucci. The girl actually died during the night; the hour of the appearance coincided with her death. Regina Jullian, head of the boarding house in Mornas (Vocause) (see the article by K. Flammarion “The Unknown” in the addendum to “New Time” for 1900, No. 8688–8722). We could increase the number of these reliable stories indefinitely. Cases of messages at a distance, either at the time of death, or during life and under normal conditions, similar to the above, are not so rare - although, of course, not particularly frequent - that each of our readers has not heard about them and then personally observed something similar, perhaps more than once. On the other hand, experiments carried out in the field of living magnetism also show that in certain psychological cases the experimenter can act on his subject at a distance of not only several fathoms, but several miles and even hundreds of miles, depending on the sensitivity of the subject and his ability to clairvoyance, and also, without a doubt, on the willpower of the magnetizer himself. Can’t two brains vibrating monotonously, in the same tone, at a distance of several miles from each other, be set in motion by the same psychic force? Can't the excitation of a certain part of the brain, like gravity, be carried through the ether and transmitted to another brain vibrating at any distance, just as a sound produced in one corner of the room makes the strings of a piano or violin tremble in another corner? Let us not forget that our brain is made up of particles that do not touch each other and constantly vibrate 29 . And why talk about the brain? Thought, will, in general the psychic power of one being, whatever its essence may be, cannot act across a distance on another being connected with the first by sympathetic and indissoluble ties of intellectual kinship. And isn’t the beat of one heart suddenly transmitted to another, beating in unison with it? Well, should we really assume that in the above cases of phenomena the spirit of the deceased really took on a bodily form and was near the observer? For most cases, there seems to be no need for such an assumption. During sleep, we are sure that we see different people, although they are not at all in front of our, however, closed, eyes. We see them as clearly as in reality, we listen to them, answer them, talk to them, obviously, we see them not with the help of the retina, not with the help of the optic nerve, just as we hear them not with our ears at all; - all this is a matter of just one brain cells. Some visions may be objective, external, material, while others are purely subjective; in the latter case, the appearing being can act through a distance on the seeing being, and such an influence on the brain of the latter can produce an inner vision, which, while remaining purely subjective and internal, could appear external, as happens in dreams, without being at the same time a mere deception of the senses. Experiments made recently regarding the phenomena of suggestion, hypnotism and somnambulism seem to point the way, if not to an explanation, then at least to a rational view of some of the facts in this area. The essence of such phenomena is that here the thought of one person acts on the thought of another. Of course, the soul is not transported across distances and does not actually take on a human form 30 ; Before the one to whom the vision appears, there is no human being in clothes sewn by a tailor or seamstress, wrapped in a cloak, in a woman's dress, in a wide or narrow coat with all the accessories of a man's or woman's clothing, with a cane or umbrella in his hands, etc. But perhaps the soul that is about to appear acts directly on the soul of another person, producing in the latter such a sensation that it seems to him that he sees, hears, and then touches the being that appears to him in the very form in which it was known to him before. Just as a thought or memory evokes images in our soul that reach great vividness and brightness, so a person acting on another can make the latter see some subjective image that for a moment seems quite real to him. Those involved in hypnotism and suggestion are now already able to arbitrarily cause such phenomena, and although such experiments have only just begun, the results obtained already deserve the greatest attention from both a psychological and physiological point of view. In all such cases, it is not the retina that is excited by external reality, but the optical layers of the brain that are directly excited by the action of psychic force. Here the thinking principle itself receives an impression directly, but how? – we don’t know that. These are the most rational 31, as it seems to us, inductive conclusions from the phenomena just considered - phenomena that are inexplicable, but known from time immemorial, because examples of them are found in the history of all peoples from ancient times, and it would be difficult to deny or suppress them. So is it really possible, they will object to us, that in our age of experimental method and positive knowledge we must admit that a dying person or a dead person can have communication with us? The earth we inhabit today is made up, by the way, of these billions of once-thinking brains, of these billions of once-living organisms. We trample underfoot our ancestors, just as they will walk on us later. Everything that lived and thought, everything now lies in this damp earth. We cannot take a single step on our planet without stepping on the ashes of the dead; we cannot take a piece of food into our mouth, swallow one sip of liquid, without introducing into ourselves what has already been eaten and drunk millions of times; We cannot breathe without taking in the breath of the dead. The constituent elements of human bodies, taken from nature, have returned again, and each of us carries within us atoms that previously belonged to other bodies. What then? Do you really think that there is nothing left of all humanity that is more noble, higher and more spiritual? Is it possible that each of us, breathing our last breath, returns to nature only these sixty or eighty kilograms of meat and bones, which will immediately decompose and turn into elements? Could it be that the soul that animates us cannot continue to exist in the same way as any particle of oxygen, nitrogen or iron? Can’t souls that once lived always live? We have no basis for asserting that man consists of material elements alone and that the ability to think is only a property of his organization. On the contrary, very important reasons force us to admit that it is the soul that constitutes the individual essence, that it is it that controls the material particles, forming from them a living human body 32 . Bright joy, as if there were a smile appearing on the face of a person who has just died, calmness spreading like a radiance of happiness after the dying sufferings, doesn’t this show us that at the solemn moment of separation from the body, the last impression of the soul is an impression of light, a consciousness of liberation? Of course, the following historical and scientific fact is indisputable. In all centuries, among all peoples, under the most diverse religious forms, the idea of ​​immortality remained unshakably in the depths of consciousness. Education gave it only a thousand different forms, but it did not invent it. This ineradicable idea exists on its own. Every human being, appearing in the world, brings with him, in a more or less vague form, this inner feeling, this desire, this hope (see book by K. Flammarion: “In Heaven,” St. Petersburg, 1896, pp. 122–153). 38. From monastic letters (from the vicar of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Archimand. Anthony to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow). What an incomprehensible connection between the living and the dead! Where are the dead who so conveniently communicate with the living and the dying again? Where are the souls who carry news from one province to another in almost a minute? There was Archimandrite Simeon in Yekaterinoslavl, who was recently (in 1843) transferred to Voronezh. He was friendly with the old father (S. M. N.) of one noble family. This father died last February 1844. Among his family was a daughter, whose fate was not to her heart, from which, in quiet suffering, she received consumption. On the sixth day of last August the whole family was still in mourning for their father. The patient communed on this day without removing her mourning; her mother noticed this to her, to which she replied, “I’ll dress up on the fifteenth.” And sure enough, on the day of the Dormition of God, the Mother of God demanded a bath, put on full wedding attire, sent for a priest, and received the Holy Mysteries. Upon receiving the shrine, she was careful that nothing touched her lips. With all the freshness of her voice and smiling face, she asked to read the funeral prayers and during the reading she treated as if to an invisible person: “Dear daddy, daddy, wait." With the last word of the prayer, her immortal soul flew away. On the same day and hour, Father Simeon in Voronezh sees S.M.N., who says to him: – You need to console the sorrowful in Ekaterinoslavl; and Lyubinka is with me, but don’t forget us either. How striking! How incomprehensible our life is! And what does it mean to live on this earth? But wherever it is, just to live the life that God has determined, no matter how difficult it may be (Monastic Letters. Moscow. Edition 2. 1898). Several years ago, Mr. M. said, after completing a course at one of the higher educational institutions, I lived in Moscow, thinking at that time to devote myself to the stage, and tried my hand at this field, participating in numerous amateur performances. It goes without saying that thanks to this way of life, I soon formed a fairly large circle of acquaintances, among whom Mrs. B.’s family was especially dear to me, where I met the warmest, kindred welcome and participation. One day, while spending an evening in this lovely family, I started a conversation with the hostess of the house about various mysterious phenomena, which, by the way, neither I nor my interlocutor believed. Half jokingly, Mrs. B. and I made a promise to each other that whichever of us died first would have to appear to the survivor to prove that there was an afterlife. “Of course, it will be you,” added Mrs. B., a blooming young woman, laughing, looking at me, at that time a frail and seemingly sickly young man. We did not attach any importance to this conversation at that time, not believing in the possibility of any posthumous manifestations of the personality of the deceased and looking at our mutual promises as a simple joke. Soon after this I had to leave Moscow and live for several months in the provinces. While corresponding with some Moscow acquaintances, I learned with surprise and sadness about the unexpected death of Mrs. B., whose flourishing health apparently promised many years of life. Having sincerely grieved for my good friend, as far as I remember, at that time I did not even remember our mutual promise, to such an extent I considered it an unrealizable thing. Several months passed, I returned to Moscow and again took up the interrupted stage activities. During this time, the impression of the loss I had suffered was completely erased from me, and, carried away by the wave of life, I rarely thought about my friend. Once I returned home quite late in the evening, and since in a few days there was a performance in which I was supposed to participate, I began to study my role, which I knew poorly, and besides, I still didn’t want to sleep. At that time I occupied a small furnished room, and opposite me, across the corridor, there was another similar room, occupied at that time by my good friend Mr. T., who that evening gathered a circle of mostly my good friends, who, sitting at green tables, diligently screwed. Since I had a poorly memorized role on my conscience, and the performance was close, I did not go to my friend, despite his invitations, and began, as I said, to hammer out my role. In my room there was a hanging lamp with a red lampshade, the light of which was so strong that I could freely read my role without tiring my eyes. Maybe an hour passed, I lay on the bed and diligently studied the role, forgetting about everything in the world. Directly opposite me, a few steps away, stood a bookcase, and on it, on the top shelf, was an office photographic portrait of Mrs. B., a gift from her personally. This portrait was framed in a frame consisting of one thick glass on a stand, such as had just appeared at that time. I remember well that, carried away by my role, I absolutely did not think about anything else, and least of all, of course, about the deceased, since everyday worries completely absorbed me at that time. While I was engaged in my role, my gaze fell several times on the above-mentioned portrait. Gradually I began to look at him more and more often, without knowing why, although nothing special was noticeable in the portrait, and he stood in his usual place. Finally, this incomprehensible feeling, similar to some kind of obsession, began to bother me to such an extent that, in order not to look at the portrait, I got out of bed and, taking the card out of the frame, wrapped it with the front side back, putting the portrait in this position back into the frame. But the incomprehensible feeling nevertheless continued, preventing me from properly concentrating on studying my role. At the same time, I began to notice on the wall, near which there was a bookcase with a portrait, some kind of wandering light, which could be compared to the reflection from a mirror, known as “bunnies.” Carefully looking around the room, I was convinced that there was nothing in the room that could cause such a light phenomenon. Believing that the light was coming from the window through a carelessly drawn curtain, I went to the window. But outside there was impenetrable darkness of a dark and damp autumn night, and there was no light in any window, since it was already well after midnight. Returning to my seat, I again began to read my role, believing that I had imagined all this, but the phenomenon continued. Gradually, the light phosphoric spot that formed on the wall began to grow, taking on the appearance of a light female figure, which finally began to separate from the wall, and I saw the deceased B in front of me. I remember well that both at this moment and in the subsequent ones, while the phenomenon lasted, I did not feel either fear or even surprise, but rather a feeling similar to some kind of numbness, something like tetanus. The ghost, detaching himself from the wall, walked up to the bookcase, took the portrait out of the frame and reinserted it in its natural position. Then the ghost opened a wooden box that was not locked with a key, took out of it Mrs. B.’s gold medallion with her portrait, which she had given me as a souvenir, and opened it. Then the vision began to fade, gradually blurring into a kind of fog, until my stupor disappeared, and such horror seized me that I rushed out of the room in fright, hastily hitting my head quite painfully on something. Like a madman, I flew into my friend’s room, where the card game was still going on, and alarmed the whole company with my appearance. For a long time I could not answer the anxious questions of my acquaintances and finally burst into a severe hysterical attack, which had never happened to me before or since, since I am not a nervous person at all and have never suffered from nervousness, much less hysteria. Finally, my friends managed to somehow calm me down, and I told everything that had happened to me. Of course, they began to assure me that I had imagined all this, that I probably fell asleep and dreamed it all. I assured them that I had not slept a minute, that I had not the slightest inclination to sleep, and that I was always busy studying the role most diligently. To convince me that all this was either a dream or a hallucination, the whole crowd went to my room, but my friends involuntarily became thoughtful when they saw that the portrait was really in the position that was given to it by the ghost, and the gold medallion was taken out of the box and opened. After spending the night somehow (one of my acquaintances, in order to calm me down, agreed to stay overnight with me), the next day I went to consult with the then famous specialist in nervous diseases, Doctor X. The doctor, for his part, calmed me down and, from his scientific point of view, explained everything that happened to me by spontaneous hypnosis. In his opinion, I spontaneously fell into hypnosis, instilled in myself a vision of the ghost B., I myself brought her photographic portrait to its original position and took it out of the box and opened its medallion, imagining that all this was being done by a ghost summoned by me in my imagination. No matter how witty the professor’s explanation seemed to me then, I am still confused by the fact that I have never, decisively, neither before this incident nor after it, suffered from the slightest nervous disorder, have never fallen into hypnosis, but, on the contrary, I have completely healthy, normal nerves. If it were self-hypnosis, then at least on that very day I should have felt at least some kind of abnormality, some kind of ailment like heaviness in the head, drowsiness or something like that, otherwise I felt absolutely nothing, but was in the most ordinary, normal state of both spirit and physical health. Where did self-hypnosis come from, because it had to develop from something, from some organic or mental reasons? And therefore, despite all the scientific explanations of the venerable doctor, I cannot be completely satisfied with them and am forced, along with many others, to think that there is much in nature that our sages did not dream of” (see “Rebus”, 1896). 40. Admonishment from a deceased mother to a disrespectful son From Yaroslavl they write in the Rybinsk Stock Exchange Leaflet that in one village, 15 versts from this city, there lived a widow, a poor peasant woman, the mother of two sons. The eldest son somehow managed to get rich, lived separately from his mother and refused her even a piece of bread; the youngest was poor, but honest and respectful to his mother. Suddenly the old woman dies, she needs to be buried, but there is not a penny of money. The deceased's daughter-in-law, the wife of her youngest son, went to her eldest daughter-in-law for help in the absence of the latter's husband and, after much begging, managed to beg her for one ruble for the funeral. When the eldest son of the deceased, returning home, found out about this, he flew into a terrible rage, scolded and beat his wife, why did she give money without him, and finally went to his brother’s hut, where his mother lay under the shrine, ready to be taken to church. Not paying attention to the mother’s body, which had not yet had time to cool down, this disrespectful and impudent son, having forgotten the fear of God and human shame, rushed with his fists at his brother’s wife, demanding back the ruble given to her. The poor woman, frightened, showed that the money was lying under the shrine. - Take them, if you want, get them yourself, but I won’t: it’s a sin! - she said. - You're a fool, that's what! – the evil son exclaimed and reached out to the goddess to take the money. At the same time, he leaned slightly towards the corpse of the deceased. At this time, the dead woman suddenly grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly, opening her eyes for a moment, after which she again fell asleep in the sleep of death. They say that the son has gone crazy from fright and is unlikely to survive” (from the Vologda Diocesan Gazette). 41. One of the employees of the Chicago Tribune newspaper quotes from an old book on spiritual vision, published in 1729, the following story about the Doctor of Theology Schcott, a man known in his time both for his scholarship and for his remarkable mind, impeccable morality and truthfulness. His testimony in favor of the mysterious incident is of considerable value. The doctor, as he tells in an ancient publication, was once sitting in his office by the fireplace, with a book in his hands, with the door closed and then locked, and, therefore, quite sure that there could be no one in the room except him. Accidentally raising his head, he saw on the other side of the fireplace an old gentleman in a long black wig of very respectable appearance, sitting in a large armchair, dressed in a black velvet camisole, looking at him affectionately and as if preparing to speak. Then, a conversation began between the doctor and his mysterious guest, which the newspaper employee does not convey in full, namely, a request that Schcott go to his former estate and find there a spiritual will, so well hidden that it could not be found, due to which his son, the legal heir, risks losing a large part of his property. “In the attic, in the pantry,” the ghost continued, “there is a warehouse of various old unnecessary things, such as broken furniture, tables, drawers, chests of drawers. In one corner, in the back, you will see an old chest with an old, broken lock and a key sticking out in it, which they tried in vain to turn or remove from the keyhole.” This ghost described the chest in great detail, both outside and inside, and pointed out exactly the place that would have to be opened with an ax, otherwise it would not be possible to get into it. Doctor Schcott promised to go to the indicated estate and kept his word. The young owner not only warmly received him, but also said that the previous night he had seen in a dream that an unfamiliar guest had come to him and found the missing will. “Perhaps you are that guest,” he concluded his speech. The doctor smiled and asked to be taken to the storage room in the attic, where old rubbish was stored. Arriving there, he directly pointed to the old chest and asked: have they searched in it? They told him that they had searched, but to no avail. He demanded that they search again. Again, nothing was found, then the doctor asked for a chisel, a hammer and began to knock on the bottom of the chest, it turned out to be double, and when it was opened, there in the dust and dirt there was found a will necessary for confirming the inheritance rights of the young owner. 42. There is a true legend that a Parisian doctor who lived at the end of the 11th century, Raymond Diocres, a learned man, but narcissistic, dreamed of himself to the point of blasphemy. In this state, caught by death, Raymond, among his brethren, who were already preparing to carry his body to the grave, suddenly stood up and said: “histo Dei judicio accusatus sum: I now stand before the judgment of God,” and died again. After some time, he again woke up from his mortal sleep and, getting up, said: “Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum: at the righteous judgment of God I am tortured,” and again fell dead on his bed. Finally he stood up and said for the last time: “Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum: I have already been condemned by the righteous judgment of God,” and no longer awakened to life. Such astonishing phenomena disposed Brun, Bishop of Herbipolna, a student of Raymond, and some of his comrades to retire to the secluded, wild desert of Chartres and found there their own society, known under the name of the Carthusian Order, with the most strict rules. We don’t know how such an event would respond to people of a rationalist tendency? At the very least, one cannot think that they are indifferent to him; Of course, it would have made a lot of noise, a lot of talk, but all this would have been settled by the fact that “the deceased was a strong person, that these unusual flashes of his dying life, energetically repeated three times, with significant timing, were the result of an excess of his internal forces.” And everyone would be happy and at peace with this. And many, so as not to seem lagging behind the progressives, would express their sympathy for them!... It must be admitted that from the garbage and soot of superstitious enlightenment, the afterlife has become as dark for many as water in the clouds of the air (“Addition to the works of the Holy Fathers”, 1855). A. Refutation of the opinion that the appearance of the souls of the dead is impossible Some learned theologians reject the possibility of the souls of the dead appearing to people still living on earth. Such is Strebel, for example. In his opinion, the appearance of departed souls is impossible; not a single soul can leave hell without at the same time destroying the gates of death; and the keys of hell and death are in the hands of the Risen One (Rev. 1:18). Delitzsch, disputing this position, says that although not a single soul can free itself from hell and the shackles of death without this key, it does not at all follow from this that all the phenomena of the dead must therefore necessarily be the phenomena of the resurrected. The saints mentioned in Matthew (Matthew 27:52–53) were resurrected, but Samuel, who appeared to Saul, was not resurrected; Moses, who talked with Jesus Christ on Tabor, was not resurrected either. That Samuel and Moses were resurrected only to appear and die again (Strebel calls them bis mortui) is, as Delitzsch rightly notes, a monstrous fiction. Further, Strebel, denying the possibility of the appearance of the souls of the dead, expresses bewilderment as to how the souls of the dead can be visible when they do not have a body? “In the same way,” Delitzsch answers him, “as angels can be visible, although they also do not have a body.” “But God does not like this,” Strebel objects, referring to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. “From this parable,” says Delitzsch, “it is only clear that the instruction regarding the will of God, which we have in the word of God, does not need to be fulfilled by the preaching of people raised from the dead for this purpose and sent to living people. But can we conclude from this that in general the dead do not return to life in order to spend some more time among the living as witnesses of divine miraculous power and, therefore, of divine revelation? The dead raised by Jesus Christ testify to the contrary. But shouldn’t we conclude from this that the souls of the dead cannot appear before the resurrection of the dead without the resurrection of their bodies? The appearances of Samuel and Moses prove the opposite.” Thus Delitzsch refutes the opinion that the appearance of souls after death is impossible. It doesn’t matter to us that, to explain the appearance of souls after death, he accepts the concept he arbitrarily composed about the “immaterial corporeality” of the soul in its transitional state; What is important for us is that this deep connoisseur of scripture acts in this case as a direct opponent of the thought of Luther, who said that “since the world has stood, the soul of a deceased person has never actually appeared,” and in “Schmalkaldic Members” he argued that “demons appear under the guise of human souls.” There are other theologians who speak more cautiously about the possibility of the appearance of the souls of dead people. Such are Splittgerber, Martensen and others. Although Splittgerber says that “the souls of the departed move in a completely closed, otherworldly sphere, which can come into contact with our earthly life only extremely rarely, as an exception - although he says that modern theology generally adheres, and not without reason, to the position that Scripture nowhere gives a positive basis for recognizing the reality of the phenomena of the dead,” - however, he recalls From his readers, who are inclined to recognize the appearance of the souls of the dead as ghosts created by excited imagination, the famous words of Hamlet: there are many things on earth and in heaven that your wise men have not dreamed of. Martensen says: “Any dogmatic affirmation or denial in this case would only mean teaching without knowing.” Thus, Martensen directly evades a categorical solution to the issue. As for the Orthodox Church, it, strictly adhering to the teachings of Scripture, recognizes the appearances of the dead. And, indeed, Scripture not only clearly speaks about the appearances of angels (Gen.18:2-22, 28-12; Joshua 5:13-14; Luke 1:11-26, 28; Matt.2:13, Acts 5:19-10, 3-12, 7) and the dead righteous (1 Samuel 28:8-20; Luke 9:30–32), but makes it clear that the souls of sinners, by the will of God of spirits and all flesh (Num. 16:22), sometimes appear to their neighbors, both in sleep and in the waking state, “although,” says one of the Orthodox writers, “these appearances of souls from hell happen very rarely, but nevertheless, it is true that they really do happen, for to reject or consider their phenomena completely impossible means to limit inexpressible love for mankind and the power of Him who has the keys of hell (Rev. 1:18), that is, has the power to open and close the gates of hell, has the power to bring out of hell and bring down into it (1 Samuel 2:6),” means to be a stubborn skeptic or to have the most limited psychological knowledge (“The Wanderer,” 1873). B. Explanation of the facts of the appearance of the dead Conveying stories about visions and phenomena proving the existence of the afterlife and “the life of the soul” after the death of the body,” St. Gregory the Great cites the visible, tactile “examples” reported in them, as evidence and facts, which for people “troubled in spirit” are more “convincing” than abstract reasoning, evidence or arguments of reason (Dial. IV, 7), although he also preliminarily examines some of these latter. So, by the way, the interlocutor of St. Gregory the Great (in the “Dialogues”), Deacon Peter, representing in his person those unconfirmed in the faith and coming out of the idea that ordinary people, as he himself experienced, do not happen to see with sensual eyes the exit of the soul from the body at the death of a person, expresses doubt - “how to believe the existence of a being that no one can see (chapter 5)?” – The question, therefore, was posed regarding the existence of the soul and the continuation of life beyond the grave, in connection with one of its most essential properties - invisibility or immateriality. Let’s suppose,” argues the St.’s interlocutor. Gregory, - we can conclude about the existence of the soul in the body from the movements performed by it - “because if there were no soul in the body, the members of the body could not move” (Chapter VI), - but is it possible to deduce from here the immortality of the soul, as is deduced through philosophical conclusions - “is it possible to infer from visible objects (the presence of the soul in bodily movements) to the existence of what I cannot see” (the life of the soul after the death of the body)? In answering the question, Gregory the Great does not enter into a detailed consideration of it from the philosophical side, but nevertheless presents it through inferences. Namely, Gregory the Great points to the existence of God as a fact beyond doubt, and from it he draws a conclusion to the existence of the immortal soul of man. Just as the soul is the life-giving principle in the body, so is the power or presence of God in the world - the power that creates everything, life-giving and governs everyone - “and since,” he says, “you have no doubt that there is a God who creates and rules, who fills and embraces everything, who exceeds and supports everything, indescribable and invisible, you should also not doubt that He has invisible servants. Those who serve must be like those whom they serve, so that there can be no doubt that there are invisible servants of the invisible. But who are these invisible servants, in whose existence we believe, if not holy angels and the souls of the righteous?... And just as, seeing the movement of the body, you assume the life of the soul residing in the body, so you must think from small and high about the life of the soul emanating from the body, that the soul can live invisibly, which must abide in the service of the invisible Creator” (Chapter V). This is the first of the proofs against the objection regarding the life of the soul invisibly emanating from the body and invisibly continuing to live beyond the grave. Some originality in its construction involuntarily attracts attention: if God exists and invisibly controls everything in the world, then there must be those who serve Him and be, in His likeness, also invisible. It would seem that the argument put forward by Cassiodorus (as well as many other church fathers regarding the immortality of the soul) answered the thought more closely and directly: “God created man in the image and likeness. His own, and He is an invisible and eternally living spirit, therefore the human soul, as His likeness, can also be invisible and live forever - otherwise, what would be the likeness of its nature to the Creator? doubt that Gregory Vel. did not have in mind the following passage from Blessed Augustine. Pointing to the miracles performed by the bodies of the martyrs as evidence of immortality, and in particular the future resurrection of bodies, Blessed. Augustine (in Book XXII, Chapter 9) writes that all of God’s providence for the world serves as living evidence of immortality and eternal life. “Does God himself, in a miraculous way, being eternal, create temporary things, or does he also do things through the souls of martyrs as well as through people still living in the body, or does he do all this through angels, whom he invisibly, unchangeably and immaterially commands, so that the miracles that are said to be performed by martyrs happen only through their mediation and prayers, and not through their action - or, finally, in some cases by one, in others by another “The power of God acts and manifests itself in the world in a way incomprehensible to man, but everything it does serves as evidence of that faith in which the resurrection of the flesh is preached for eternal life.” Gregory the Great, in the above proof, comes up with the same thoughts, only taken with some limitation in accordance with the special formulation of the question. In addition, in support of his evidence, he refers as bl. Augustine in the indicated chapter, - on the testimony of the martyrs, who sealed the faith in the afterlife with martyrdom, and on the miracles that happened at their relics: “Is it really St. the apostles and martyrs of Christ, he says, would have despised real life and given themselves up to death, if they had not been firmly convinced that life of the soul would follow?... Perjurers come to their dead bodies and demons take possession of them; those possessed by demons come and are freed” (from demons), etc. A bl. Augustine, having talked (in Chapter 2) about a whole series of miraculous healings at the relics of the martyrs, writes (in Chapter 9, Book 22): “What kind of faith do these miracles testify to, if not the one in which Christ is preached risen in the flesh and ascended to heaven? For the very martyrs of this faith were martyrs, that is, they were witnesses, giving testimony to this faith, they endured the enmity and cruelty of the world, and they conquered the world, not using weapons against it, but they conquered by dying ... " And the second of the evidence cited by Gregory the Great against the objection raised is also found in Bl. Augustine, moreover, in the same 22 books. “About the City of God” (chapter 29), although in a somewhat special setting. Having defined faith in the words of the Apostle as “the revelation of things hoped for, the revelation of things unseen,” Gregory the Great says that “one must believe what cannot be seen. To destroy doubt, I will say that nothing visible can be seen without the invisible,” just as “nothing in this visible world can be arranged without the mediation of the invisible,” that is, without the participation of the soul-spirit, which invisibly manifests itself in the external actions of man and says in conclusion: just as Almighty God, with His breath and penetration of life, opens and moves invisible beings, so invisible beings, through penetration, move and give life to visible bodies.” It is obvious, however, that from this generalization it does not yet follow that “the invisible or the soul that dwells in the body must necessarily exist even after the death of the body”: at least for the “imperfect”, “hesitating” or “unconfirmed” in the faith, more precisely, for people who simply do not believe in the existence of the soul beyond the grave, on whose behalf the question was posed (see the end of Chapters IV and VI) - For them the question remained far unresolved. In one of the conversations on the gospel (dem. II) Gregory the Great, apparently, more clearly sets out the objection and the answer to it, although in almost the same words as in the “Conversations”: “how,” he asks on behalf of unbelievers (“people of the world and the flesh”), “can I seek, desire or strive for the spiritual light (for the future blessed life, to which the direct path is faith), which we cannot see? How do I know that there is such a light that does not shine for the eyes of the body? – Everyone can answer such a thought briefly: and everything that he feels with his body, he feels not with his body, but with his soul. No one sees his soul, but he has no doubt that he has a soul that he does not see. Invisibly the soul controls the visible body. If the invisible (soul) is separated, it immediately falls to dust and the visible is destroyed, which apparently stood...” Doesn’t this mean that the “invisible” continues to exist even after such an act: “it is contained in the body, in it and through it it lives and acts, although invisible to us, the body collapses - and it ceases to live?” This is what the materialist skeptics who raised the objection could say. However, Gregory the Great nevertheless finds it possible to consider the analogy he took (from the present to the afterlife, from the visible to the invisible) sufficient for the final conclusion: “So,” he concludes, “if in this visible life the human being is animated (lives) by the invisible, then is it possible to doubt the existence of invisible life?...” For people who follow the path of faith in life, of course, there cannot be doubt here, but from such it cannot follow objections to the existence of the soul in the invisible, spiritual world. Consequently, both in these words and in those quoted above from the “Conversations”, the analogy taken to prove the immortality of the soul is not sufficiently clearly and convincingly carried to the final conclusion. Bl. Augustine uses the same analogy for proof as Gregory the Great, but his question is taken more broadly, and the analogy follows more directly from his formulation. He asks: “What will the saints do in immortal and spiritual bodies, when they will live not only spiritually, as they still live now (after death), but also physically” (after the resurrection)? - And he answers: “About their actions, or, better, what their peace and tranquility will be, to be fair, I don’t know, because I have never seen it with my sensory eyes, and with my mind or mentally I also cannot sufficiently understand everything, because that peace - the peace of God, according to the word of the Apostle, surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7), not only human, but also angelic...” Therefore, if it is possible to talk about it, then by faith: “with the same words of faith” (Ps. 116:1). And so, on the one hand, guided by the teaching of the word of God and on the basis of some miraculous phenomena, also attested by the word of God, and on the other hand, from the essential properties of the real, earthly nature of man and the relationship in it between soul and body, - Blessed. Augustine tries, by comparison and analogy, as far as possible, to show and explain not only the existence of the soul in the world of God, enjoying the blissful contemplation of God, the existence (after the resurrection) of body and spirit, but also the properties of this existence: the analogy with the earthly properties of human nature was inevitable, because otherwise thought is not able to further imagine what the human being can be in that new and enlightened existence. Yes, and the teaching of the word of God provides a basis for such an analogy, when it teaches us that even now we partly understand, “we prophesy in part” (1 Cor. 13:9-10) - that we see now “as with a mirror in fortune telling, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12) - and this shows that between our knowledge, in its basic properties (and, consequently, the nature of man in general), a connection is allowed between “now” and “then”, in the future life, when life will begin not “in part”, but “face to face” in the light of the knowable. Hence, explanation by analogy is as natural and inevitable as it is justified by faith, which is the only way to penetrate into the secrets of that world. But there was also a special kind of philosophical reasoning, which rejected the very possibility of seeing (cognizing) the sensory, the bodily spiritually or with the mind, and vice versa - the spiritual through the sensory or external organs, reasoning that contradicts, according to Bl. Augustine, and common sense, and the prophetic word. Therefore, pointing to the prophet Elisha, who, being in this corruptible and weak body of our earthly existence, could see with spiritual eyes, and not with his body, how his servant accepted gifts from Naaman the Syrian healed by him (the prophet), although he was away from him - as an example showing what power of spiritual vision the saints can have further and now, in earthly life, that not only with the body, but also with the spirit one can cognize and see the physical, - bl. Augustine turns to our present knowledge and draws an analogy between it and the future renewed state of spirit and body; “So, if it has been proven that the bodily can be seen by the spirit, then why not admit that the power of spiritual life (after the resurrection of the body) will be so great that the spirit can be seen with the body? For God is spirit. Yes, and we know our own life, which everyone lives in this body and which gives life to our spiritual members, only with an inner feeling, and not with bodily eyes, while the life of others, although it is invisible, we see through the body. And how can we otherwise distinguish living bodies from non-living ones if we do not see their life along with the bodies, which can only be seen through the body? We do not see life without bodies with our bodily eyes...” So, on the basis of these data, we can to some extent judge the state or properties of the human body and spirit when the kingdom of glory comes, after the general resurrection, that the bl. Augustine then shows in further reasoning, strongly warning that it is now extremely difficult to reason about this and one can only conclude guesswork, since “he cannot confirm his reasoning with any examples or evidence from Holy Scripture,” meanwhile, St. The apostle inspires: “Do not judge in any way before the time, until the Lord comes, who will illuminate what is hidden in darkness and reveal the intentions of the heart, and then everyone will have praise from God” (1 Cor. 4:5). Gregory the Great, thus, in the above evidence proves more that the afterlife, invisible world of the soul can and should exist, than that it is accessible to internal or external vision or knowledge, that such knowledge is possible from a rational point of view. Regarding the “accessibility” of it to the knowledge of man, he points mainly to the necessity of faith - a condition under which objections from the “non-believers” undoubtedly already fell by themselves (see book by A. Ponomarev; “Interviews of St. Gregory the Great about the afterlife”). Q. In what bodies did the souls of the dead appear? As for the question in which bodies the departed souls appeared, about this, as well as in general and the properties of the bodies in which purely spiritual beings appeared, we are not given any definite instructions either by the word of God, or by experience, and especially by our reason, which in itself, regardless of the word of God and history, cannot say anything. Some church teachers were of the opinion that souls, even when separated from the body, have some kind of material shell. So St. Irenaeus believed that the soul, even after separation from the body, retains its image. Tertullian ascribes extension to the soul and asserts that it is something corporeal. Origen considers the soul to be something material and having an image; he agrees with Plato in this opinion and probably borrowed it from him. Lactantius and St. were of a similar opinion. Hilary and many other teachers of the church. St. Irtney considered it an undoubted truth that the soul, after the death of the body, takes on some other body, which has the image of the previous one and thereby reminds it of all the deeds and actions that it has done in its life. But we cannot agree with this opinion, that our soul, even after separation from the body, is not alien to some materiality, because it has no basis in Holy Scripture and contradicts the very nature of our soul, as purely spiritual. We believe that, by God's permission, departed souls can appear, but what kind of bodies they appear in, we cannot have any decisive judgment about this due to lack of grounds and data. The main purpose for which departed souls come to earth. - this is, as St. says. Gregory the Great, then, to ask for a bloodless sacrifice and prayers to be performed for them, for their reassurance. Experience shows that Christian souls always come precisely to ask for prayers for themselves, or giving alms, or traveling to St. places, or paying off their unpaid debts, or in order to encourage the living to virtue, to correct their lives and, in general, to lead a godly life. Often, when they appear, they report the state in which the dead are in another life, and at the same time they ask for help and warn those living on earth about the misfortunes that await sinners in the afterlife. They talk about hell, about good and evil angels, about the severity of God's judgment towards sinners and God's mercy towards the righteous. It is impossible not to notice, however, that the appearance of the souls of those who have departed alive occurs mainly during sleep. Communicating with living people, by the will of God, they primarily appear to their spiritual eye, without the mediation of a bodily image. The facts of the appearance of the dead also include, of course, the facts of the resurrection of the dead. And the Holy Scriptures and the history of the church present enough facts of this latter kind. The most undoubted, most important and most striking fact of this kind is the resurrection of our Savior. The reality of his resurrection is beyond any doubt. That he was really dying, that his death was real and not imaginary, was testified not only by his disciples, but also by his and their enemies themselves. The soldiers who came to the crucified Jesus to break his legs found him already dead and therefore did not break them; and one of the soldiers, to further confirm his death, pierced his rib with a spear, and no signs of life were found in him, but only blood and water flowed from the perforated rib. From this one such strong blow, the weak life of the Divine Sufferer would, without a doubt, be interrupted, if he were still alive at that time. The enemies of Christ themselves, both during his death and after, never doubted its reality, while they tried with all their might and means to arouse disbelief among the people in the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Consequently, for them to raise doubt about the reality of the Savior’s death itself would be very important, and therefore, if there were any circumstances on which this final doubt could be based, they, of course, would not fail to divulge these circumstances, but they do not indicate any such circumstances; This alone proves that such circumstances did not exist at all. The reality of the Savior's death was too certain to be questioned. Consequently, if the Savior really rose after His death, then his resurrection was a real resurrection, the resurrection of someone who really died, and his very death was real, and not some kind of imaginary one. But that he actually rose after death was testified by eyewitnesses in such numbers and with such clarity that one could not wish for more in order to recognize his resurrection as an undoubted fact. The Savior raised Lazarus. This is also an undoubted fact of the actual resurrection from the dead; Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus Christ four days after his death, when his body had already begun to decay, therefore, he was resurrected after actual death. All other facts of the resurrection from the dead conveyed by the books of the Old and New Testaments are also undoubted; such as, for example, the resurrection of the son of a Samonite widow accomplished by the prophet Elisha, the resurrection of the dead through touching the bones of the same prophet, etc. The history of the Christian church also presents many facts of the resurrection of the dead. Here is an example from the life of Rev. Macarius of Egypt: “In one village a murder occurred, in which, on false suspicions, a completely innocent person was accused. It so happened that the accused, fleeing from persecution, was captured near the cell of the Rev. Macaria. The unfortunate man began to swear his innocence, but the people who came running unanimously recognized him as a murderer. Hearing a loud noise, Macarius went out to the people and, having learned what was the matter, asked where the murdered man was buried. Together with the people he went to his grave, and here, kneeling down and offering a fiery prayer to God, the righteous man said to those around him: “Today the Lord will reveal whether this man committed murder.” Then in a loud voice he called the murdered man by name and said to him: “By the faith of Jesus Christ I command you, open it, was it not this one whom the people accused who killed you?” The dead man answered loudly from underground: “He is not my murderer.” The people fell to the ground in amazement and horror. Then everyone, throwing themselves at the feet of the righteous man, began to beg him to command him to reveal his murderer to the dead man, but St. Macarius answered: “I cannot accept this; It’s enough for me to save an innocent person from punishment, but it’s not my business to bring a guilty person to justice.” D. Refutation of objections to the facts of the appearance of the dead. Since pure spirit, by its very nature and according to its laws, is significantly different from the nature and laws of the earthly world, and since departed souls are purely spiritual beings, it is clear that both the life and activity of these beings in general, and in particular their phenomena in the earthly world, must represent much that is incomprehensible and inexplicable according to the laws of this world. Hence, people who recognize as an immutable law of reason the proposition that only that and to the extent that can be understood and explained according to the laws of this world can and should be recognized as possible and valid, reject the possibility and reality of these phenomena. 1. Pointing out the inexplicability of these phenomena according to the laws of the earthly world constitutes the main objection to the possibility and reality of the former. If we look into the matter more closely, this objection turns out to be extremely untenable, extremely false and furthermore positively absurd. Firstly, this objection expresses a complete misunderstanding of the laws of sound historical criticism. The reality of known facts and the method and laws of their occurrence are not at all the same thing, but two completely different things. In order for known phenomena to be recognized beyond doubt, there is absolutely no need to understand the very method and laws of their occurrence. For this, it is completely enough to already be able to provide sufficient evidence of their reality: the method of accomplishing them may not be understood, this seems to be too clear. It is absolutely possible and the most ordinary thing to have undoubted evidence in favor of the actual existence of known objects and at the same time completely not understand how, for what reasons and according to what laws these objects exist. Most people, for example, to this day have no idea what celestial bodies, the sun, the month, the stars are, about their actual form and structure, about their laws; however, the existence of celestial bodies is obvious to everyone, because they are subject to direct observation by everyone. Further, in the area of ​​objects closest to us, we can point out many such things, the reality of which is beyond any doubt, but the image and laws of whose existence we do not understand. In any case, it is absolutely impossible and completely illegal to reject the reality of facts on the sole basis that the laws of their occurrence are incomprehensible to us. The first necessary and sufficient condition for us to be able and obliged to recognize a known fact as valid is either our own direct observation of it, or the direct observation of it correctly conveyed to us by other people. If this condition is met, if a known object is either subject to our own observation, or we have undoubted evidence of the direct observation of it by others, then we not only have the absolute right, but also necessarily must, are obliged to recognize this object as undoubtedly valid, regardless of whether we understand the laws of the existence of this object or do not understand them; at least misunderstanding of these laws should not at all be an obstacle to this recognition. Thus, in order for us to have the right and the obligation to recognize as valid the phenomena of spirits transmitted to us by the Holy Scriptures and the Church, it is necessary and sufficient that the evidence of these phenomena be undoubtedly true. If these testimonies are undoubtedly true, then for this reason alone we must necessarily recognize these phenomena as undoubtedly valid, even if we do not understand the manner and laws of their occurrence. Lack of understanding of these phenomena should not be an obstacle to this recognition. And, therefore, to reject the reality of these phenomena on the basis of their incomprehensibility alone, their inexplicability alone according to some laws, means to reject their reality without any satisfactory grounds. And this means that an objection to their reality, based solely on their incomprehensibility alone, is not its own objection, because any objection worthy of attention to this reality must consist in indicating some real obstacle to its recognition, and this objection points to something that does not constitute such an obstacle at all. And that the evidence of this reality is undoubtedly true is beyond all doubt; but the objection under consideration does not concern these evidence at all, and therefore, to refute it, there is no need to prove their truth; it is completely refuted and regardless of their truth. Further, this objection is based on the truly undoubted truth that everything that really exists must necessarily be in accordance with the laws of existence, and that, therefore, only that can be recognized as possible and valid that is in accordance with these laws; but they are founded completely illegally. If we judge from the point of view of this truth, then again this objection turns out to be completely untenable and furthermore positively absurd. This truth not only does not contain any basis or justification for this objection, but, on the contrary, serves as a refutation of it. Everything that actually exists is subject to the same laws; and everything that exists in this regard is divided into several separate areas, in each of which, in addition to the laws common to all of them, there are many laws peculiar only to it alone and completely alien to all others. There is a physical world and a moral world. There are laws common to both worlds; such, for example, is the law of causality, the law that every phenomenon necessarily has its own cause. But at the same time, there are many laws that are characteristic only of one of these worlds and are completely unusual for the other. For example, the spiritual world is characterized by: the law of freedom, the laws of thinking, but these laws are completely unusual for purely physical phenomena; on the other hand, these latter phenomena, in turn, obviously have many laws to which the free activity of the spirit is not at all subject; such are, for example, purely mechanical and chemical laws. Each of these worlds, in turn, is divided into several separate regions, which again, with laws common to all of them, each has its own special laws, belonging only to it alone and completely not belonging to all others. There are laws that are characteristic of thought, but which are completely alien to feeling; there are laws to which feeling obeys, but to which thought does not. There are laws to which organic life, for example, plant life, is subject, and to which purely mechanical phenomena are not at all subject. There are laws by which a plant lives and to which a stone does not at all obey. This means that everything exists according to laws, but not everything exists according to the same laws. Consequently, the truth that everything that really exists necessarily obeys the laws of being must necessarily have such a limitation that every really existing object is subject not to all existing laws of existence and not to any of them, but only to some and known specific laws, precisely to those laws that are subject to that region of existence, that region of objects to which it itself belongs. A plant, for example, does not obey all existing laws and not any, namely the laws of plant life. A stone in its fall obeys the laws of mechanical movement, and not any other laws, for example, chemical or physiological. And, therefore, if we judge possibility and reality on the basis of agreement with laws, then in order for we could and should recognize certain objects as possible and actual, it is necessary that these objects agree not with all laws in general, this is not at all necessary and it is completely impossible, and not with any, but only with those laws that are characteristic of the region of existence to which these objects belong by nature. So, for example, with such a basis, in the field of plant life, everything can and should be recognized as possible and valid, and only that which is in accordance with the laws of plant life, and not with any other laws, not with the laws, for example, of purely mechanical and mathematical relations of things, or with the laws of spiritual life. In order for us to have the right to recognize known phenomena as possible and valid in this area, there is no need for these phenomena to obey the laws of purely spiritual life, and their disagreement with these laws, of course, does not give any right to reject their possibility and reality in the area of ​​plant life. From the fact that a stone does not obey the laws of plant life, it does not follow that it does not exist and is impossible. From the fact that moral life does not obey mathematical laws, it does not follow that it is impossible and does not exist. All quantities must be measured only by homogeneous, and not dissimilar units or measures. Heaviness must be measured in pounds, pounds, etc., and not in arshins, and spaces must be measured in versts and arshins, and not in pounds and pounds. Likewise, the reality and possibility of known objects must be judged by those laws that are peculiar to these objects, and not by those laws that are completely alien to them, that belong to some other phenomena completely different from them. Apparently, all this is such a simple and clear truth that it is strange to talk about it further; and yet, perhaps due to the very fact that it is too simple and clear, how often it is not understood and is actually violated! Others imagine that only that which is subject to the laws of the material world is possible and valid, that everything that cannot be explained by these laws alone is impossible and does not exist, and therefore they reject the existence of the spirit, since it is incomprehensible and inexplicable by the material laws alone. To act in this way does not mean the same thing as measuring weights by arshins, or rejecting the existence of stones on the grounds that they do not obey the laws of plant life? Exactly the same. Spirit by its very nature is essentially different from matter; Consequently, one must judge the possibility and reality of the spiritual according to the laws inherent to the spirit, and not according to purely material laws that are completely alien to it. If it is lawful to reject the existence of the spirit on the one ground that its existence and activity are inexplicable according to the laws of material phenomena alone, then with exactly the same right one must already reject the possibility and reality of everything that exists; because just as the spirit does not agree with the laws of the material world, just as every other object does not agree with the laws of some other objects, for example, a stone does not agree with the laws of plants, etc. Purely spiritual beings, departed souls, of course, also obey a certain kind of laws; but since by their very nature, as purely spiritual, they differ significantly from the objects of the earthly world, they necessarily and significantly differ from these objects in their laws. There are laws common to these creatures with all these objects, such as, for example, again the law of causality. But at the same time, by the very essence of the matter, there must be many laws that would be characteristic of these objects, but completely alien to these beings, as well as those that would belong exclusively to these beings and were completely alien to these objects. This is indeed how it actually is, and therefore these beings in their nature, in their life and activity and in their phenomena must necessarily represent many things that cannot be explained by the laws of the earthly world alone, just as surely as any other objects necessarily represent something that cannot be explained by the laws of some other objects. Consequently, if we accept the basis for recognizing the possibility and reality of phenomena in their agreement with the laws of existence, then the measure for determining the possible and actual in the realm of purely spiritual beings and their phenomena and actions should not be their agreement with the laws of the earthly world that are alien to this region, but their agreement with the laws peculiar to this particular region. To recognize here as a measure agreement with the laws of the earthly world alone is as illegal as it is generally illegal to judge objects according to laws completely alien to them, as it is illegal to measure spaces with measures of gravity. And to reject the possibility and reality of phenomena and actions of spirits on the sole basis that they are inexplicable according to the laws of the earthly world is just as completely illegal as it would be illegal to reject the possibility and reality of any other objects on the basis that they represent much that is inexplicable according to the laws of some other objects, just as it would be illegal, for example, to reject the possibility and reality of physiological phenomena on the basis that they are inexplicable according to the laws of purely mechanical phenomena alone. Thus, the objection being examined against the reality of the phenomena of spirits in the very truth on which it bases itself, i.e. in the truth that everything possible and actually existing must necessarily be in accordance with the laws of being, in fact has not a basis for itself, but a refutation. Because, as we have seen, this truth can and should be recognized as truth only with the limitation that every real object must necessarily agree not with all laws, but only with the laws of that one area of ​​​​objects to which it itself belongs by nature. And in this form, this truth, as we have seen, completely refutes this objection. So, the first and main objection to the possibility and reality of the facts of the appearance of spirits presented to us by Holy Scripture and the Church is completely unfounded. The incomprehensibility of these phenomena does not and cannot serve as a basis for rejecting their possibility and reality. Likewise, the disagreement of these phenomena with the laws of the earthly world does not and cannot serve as a basis for this. It can be said that this incomprehensibility and this disagreement constitute the main thing on which the rejection of the reality of these phenomena is based; they already contain, if not the basis, then at least the motivation for all others to object to this reality. 2. Of the other objections, the most well-known are the following: firstly, say the saints transmitted to us. According to Scripture and the Church, the manifestations of spirits were nothing more than a purely subjective action of the own imagination of those people who allegedly saw these phenomena. What is this opinion based on? The very news about these phenomena does not contain any basis for him, because they clearly and definitely say that these were real phenomena of spiritual beings, and not something just imaginary, imaginary. Moreover, the very nature of these phenomena does not allow the thought of their illusory nature. They have such clarity and certainty, they present such details and circumstances that are possible only in actual incidents and are completely impossible with ghostly visions alone. Take, for example, the appearance of angels to Abraham; being in a completely healthy, sober state of mind, free from any painful excitement of the imagination, he receives angels in the form of wanderers, treats them, conducts a conversation with them, all this continues for quite a long time and has the clarity and certainty characteristic only of reality; and both during all this and after it never occurred to Abraham that all this was only the action of his own imagination. It is absolutely impossible to admit that such phenomena could be the result of imagination alone, at least on the part of completely sane people. Obviously, this opinion has as its main basis the view that we have already refuted that these phenomena are impossible. It is only a necessary logical consequence of this view. If these phenomena, as real phenomena of spirits, were impossible, then, of course, it would remain to look at them only as subjective works of human imagination. And people who share this view must inevitably look at them in no other way than that. Having rejected the possibility and reality of these phenomena as real phenomena of spiritual beings, it is necessary to give some positive view of them; and with such a rejection, no other view is possible on them than that they are subjective works of human imagination. And since this rejection is completely unfounded, completely incorrect, as we have already seen, it means that this view remains without any basis, because there is no other basis for it besides this view. Since these phenomena are completely possible, and since we have undoubted historical evidence that they really happened, then, obviously, there is no right, no reason to recognize them as purely subjective works of the human spirit. 3. They say, finally, in refutation of the truth we are defending, it is so well known that there are countless such stories about the appearances of spirits, as well as about other miraculous incidents, regarding which it has already been proven beyond doubt that they are pure fiction, generated by popular ignorance, superstition and prejudices; this gives reason to think that those stories about the appearance of spirits that are transmitted by Holy Scripture and the church also belong to the same category of stories. The conclusion is completely arbitrary. That there are countless stories about the appearance of fictitious, false spirits, this is absolutely true. But does this fact in itself give any right to recognize as fictional the stories told to us by Holy Scripture and the Church? Of course, it does not give any right. From the fact that there can and are false stories about certain types of objects, one cannot at all conclude that all information about these objects is false. This seems too clear to require further proof. There are hardly any objects in the whole world about which sometime and somewhere there would not exist some false concepts, fictions, lies; This means that if we judge by the logic by which the indicated conclusion is made, then it would be necessary to reject the correctness of all information about all objects. As for the question of what kind of bodies were in which the departed souls appeared, whether they were real bodies, or only ghostly, imaginary ones, then, as we have already said, we do not have sufficient grounds for a final solution to this question. But the incomprehensibility of this question, obviously, does not give any reason to doubt the very reality of the phenomena of these beings, just as the general incomprehensibility of the way a fact occurs does not give any right to reject its very reality. This question does not concern the reality of these phenomena, but only the method of their occurrence, therefore, its intractability does not say anything against their reality. So, the reality of the facts of the appearances of departed souls conveyed to us by Holy Scripture and the Church is as undoubted as the sources reporting them are undoubtedly true. And, therefore, in these facts alone we have irrefutable proof of the actual existence of the spiritual world and a complete refutation of the currently widespread denial of this existence (see the book: “On the Manifestation of Spirits.” “Secrets of the Underworld.” A. Kalmeta, translated from German, 1877). Under the above title in the May 1888 book of the world-wide magazine “Revue des. deux Mondes”, in which, as is known, the best progressive minds of France collaborate, an article appeared interpreting the work of Myers, Gurney and Podmore, already known to our readers, about “Ghosts” (Phantasmes). How long ago was the time when not only for a scientist, but for any even educated person, it was considered completely impermissible and unthinkable to talk seriously about such subjects as sympathy, prophetic dreams, the action of thought at a distance, and even more so “ghosts”. Meanwhile, we see how a reputable European journal now treats the same subjects. “Fortunately,” says the author of the article, “there are brave researchers who are not afraid of either contradictions or sarcasm, and who dare to get out of the beaten rut, which, according to Charles Richet, is an essential sign of a true scientist. In this respect, the authors of Phantasmes are truly true scientists. They were not afraid to appear funny, they did not retreat from the difficulties of the question, and their curiosity led them to one of the greatest mysteries of human life. Are there higher, or, better said, beings different from us around us? Since our childhood, we have become so familiar with the meaning of such words as ghost, apparition, person from the other world that any further explanation of these words is unnecessary. A ghost or apparition is an image that does not have a body, and which, however, speaks, moves and acts like a living person. We were lulled to sleep with similar stories in our cradle. If old nannies believe in people from the other world, then scientists have long ceased to believe in them, and one cannot help but admit that at first glance the juxtaposition of the words “ghost” and “science” and the subordination of the ghost to scientific research sounds very strange. But, however, why not subject the phenomenon of ghosts to scientific research? Who can limit the paths for truth and, on the basis of narrow, so-called “common sense,” decide that such and such a thing is possible and that is impossible? As for us, we are very grateful to Messrs. Myers, Garney and Podmore for their fearlessness.” Wanting to better acquaint the reader with the meaning given by the authors to the word ghost, “Revue des deux Mondes” cites several facts borrowed from the book “Phantasmes”. “March 25, 1880,” says one Mr. Wingfield, I was getting ready to go to bed. I read the book for quite a long time, lying on the sofa and was already finishing my reading, when suddenly I very clearly saw my brother Richard sitting on a chair opposite me. It seemed to me that I was telling him something, and he answered me by tilting his head. Finally, he stood up and left the room. When I fully came to my senses, I saw myself with one foot on the sofa, the other on the floor, unconsciously repeating the name of my brother. The impression was so strong and so vivid that I left the bedroom and began looking for my brother in the hall. I examined the chair on which he was sitting, and, finding nothing, went to bed, but could not sleep until the morning. When I finally woke up, the impression of my vision was still very strong. I wrote down this incident in my notebook. Three days later I received news that my brother Richard died at eight o'clock in the evening of March 25th, as a result of a fall from a horse while hunting." “Messrs. S. and L., serving in the administration, have been connected by the closest ties of friendship for the past eight years. On Monday, March 19, 1883, Mr. L., going to work, felt unwell; he went to a pharmacy where he was given medicine, explaining that he had liver disease. He was still feeling unwell on Wednesday. He didn't show up for work on Saturday. Mr. S. learned from the doctor that his friend was not entirely healthy, and the doctor explained that there was nothing serious. On Saturday evening, Mr. S., suffering from a headache, told his wife that he felt a slight fever. After that, he lay down and a minute later saw his friend L. standing in front of him, dressed in his usual suit. He further noticed such small details as the black crepe on his hat, the color of his vest, and the cane in his hand. L. looked intently at S. and left. The latter called his wife and asked: “What time is it?” She answered: “Ten minutes to nine.” “I’m asking this because L. died, I saw him just now.” His wife tried to dissuade him, explaining everything as a hallucination, but S. declared that no amount of reasoning would make him change his mind.” This is the story of Mr. S. himself, who learned about the death of his friend only the next day, at three o’clock in the afternoon. L. actually died on Saturday at about 9 o'clock, because his brother sat with him until eight o'clock and forty minutes, and when at ten o'clock his wife entered the room, she found him already dead, from a ruptured aorta, according to the doctor. Let us add to this that the truthfulness of Mr. S. is well known to all his acquaintances and that he has never experienced any hallucinations in his entire life. Let us skip what the author says regarding the application of scientific criticism and the theory of probability to similar, well-attested facts, of which there are many hundreds. Let us only say that the probability theory applied in this case gives an infinitesimal probability, almost equal to zero, for explaining such facts by chance alone. We present only the final conclusion of the author of the article in the Revue des deux Mondes. “So, let’s leave the explanation to chance. There can be no accident under such conditions. If anyone wanted to insist on this accident, we could, by way of objection, give him an ancient example of a typeface; letters thrown up, falling to the ground, could accidentally arrange themselves in such a way as to make up the whole “Illiad”. So, neither the dishonesty of the narrators nor a random coincidence can explain these facts. No matter how incredible and amazing these facts are, they exist. They have become firmly established on the basis of science and will remain on it, no matter how inconvenient it may seem to anyone.” “What convinces us even more that Messrs. Myres, Gurney and Podmore have indeed established a new scientific fact is that if you take a good look around you, then everyone can easily find several facts similar to those that English scientists talk about, which happened, if not to him personally, then to someone close to him or known to him. Often they do not dare to talk about them publicly for fear of seeming funny. But let's be honest with ourselves. Who among us does not know or has not heard of such facts? I am at least convinced that most readers will agree with me. So, I can say with full conviction to the readers of the Revue: try to do a series of studies around you, and you will be surprised at the number of facts of the same kind: true hallucinations, sympathies manifested at a distance, justified dreams concerning someone's death, fires, falls, etc. important cases. “If all this were a figment of the imagination, then, without a doubt, there would not be so many completely similar stories about similar facts among all peoples, despite the differences in countries, times, moral and mental make-up.” Let us conclude our extracts with the following appeal from the author of the article to science: “As for our opinion, we believe that the new path paved by the authors of Phantasmes is extremely fruitful for science, although dangerous, so here we are entering a deeply mysterious and mysterious area. But who should enter this area if not science? Woe to that science which is completely satisfied with what it has already acquired, which is confined within certain limits from which it cannot and does not want to leave, and which believes that nature has already spoken its last word to it. Woe to science that is not constantly reborn, otherwise it will soon fall into impotence. If our science refuses to delve into a new area that has hitherto been inaccessible to it, it risks in a hundred or two years becoming as fruitless as the scholasticism of Abelard and the mysticism of Paracelsus.” Fully joining this last conclusion of the author, we cannot help but recall on this occasion our late scientist Butlerov, who so eloquently called on science to study the mysterious phenomena of human nature, who, as it were, predetermined the path, those stages along the path of science by which it would have to approach the full recognition of the reality of phenomena related to the field of mediumship. His prediction is being justified step by step before our eyes in these recent years. How long ago was the time when scientists questioned such currently undoubted things as hypnotism and its phenomena? The most incredible facts of hypnotic suggestion are now finally recognized and are actively being studied by science, having become a fashionable question in it. After hypnotism and its phenomena, the turn has come for phenomena that prove the action and influence of human thought at a distance. Recent studies by such scientists as S. Richet, Ochorovic, P. Janet, Guéricourt and many others who openly declare the reality of this deeply mysterious action of thought at a distance and support their views on the pages of such a serious scientific and philosophical organ as the Revue Philosophique (ed. Ribot) - all this proves that the fact of the action of thought at a distance has become almost recognized. Now it is the turn for such even more mysterious and mysterious phenomena at first glance, such as ghosts of dying people, phenomena of sympathy, prophetic dreams, etc. Thanks to the hard work of Myers, Gurney and Podmore, who collected and critically verified a huge mass of facts of this kind, these facts are already becoming the property of science. She no longer feels able to resist the pressure of such a mass of testimonies from the most respectable people who deserve complete respect and trust in their testimony. Among the collected and verified evidence of the appearance of ghosts of dying people, there are those where the appearance of these ghosts took place long after the death of these persons. If the appearance of ghosts of dying people is explained by telepathy, that is, spiritual interaction between a dying person and the person to whom the ghost appears, then in cases of the appearance of posthumous ghosts we logically come to the great question of existence in another world. Thus, before our eyes, a great revolution is taking place in science, an expansion of its sphere, and it is embarking on the path that people like Butlerov, Crookes, Wallace, and other champions of truth so eloquently and convincingly called for it (see “Rebus” 1888, No. 23). E. Science and the Afterlife (Speech delivered by Gerber Burrose) The highest and best part of modern science shows a strong inclination towards “occultism” in the broad sense of the word: not only towards spiritualism, but towards all the psychic forces of nature, which of late have gradually begun to break into modern life more and more persistently. “No matter how meager ideas I have about spiritualism, I would give it a general definition: spiritualism is the belief in the individual and conscious existence of the “spirits” of dead people in another sphere of existence, and these “spirits” can - perhaps very often - communicate with those living in the physical sphere. What is meant by the word “science” is somewhat more difficult to define. This concept can be expressed as a strict study through experience, induction, deduction, verification of fact by theory and theory by fact, of one particular branch or all branches of what is meant by the word “nature”; and so, when such research has been carried out for quite a long time, its conclusions are accepted by thinking and reasonable people as the conclusions of “science”. I will now try to consider what attitude exists towards so-called spiritualism and its basic position on the part of men of science in England and other civilized countries. A very striking and conspicuous fact is that, despite the efforts of such minds as Crookes and Wallace, despite all their works, so-called science and so-called spiritualism (or occultism) are, in general, quite antagonistic to one another. I think that both sides are equally guilty here.” For thirty years Mr. Burrose worked diligently in the field covered by the term Spiritualism; he read a lot, studied “psychic power” a lot and came to the following conclusion: it’s time for spiritualism to finally stop being content with “John Kings”, “Lions” and similar table-turning amusements, which, by the way, have brought spiritualism down a lot in the eyes of scientific and serious people. For 30 years the lecturer followed the literature of spiritualism, for 30 years he read messages received through mediums, heard many considerations on the topic of what the life of “spirits” should be like and - positively saw no progress! He met many ignorant, uneducated people, gifted with mediumistic abilities by their nervous organization, in spiritualist circles, knew them for years and years in this role and did not notice the slightest progress in mental or moral relations. “Isn’t it time,” he thinks, “to develop something definite, complete, some kind of spiritualistic philosophy? After all, any life - individual, social, national - will turn out to be untenable if it is not based on some specific idea: scientific, philosophical or religious - something harmonious, capable of declaring itself to the world. And the more definite this or that form into which this idea will pour out, the more complete and complete it will appear.” “On the other hand, a man of science (please note that here I am not talking about scientists of later times who devote a lot of time to the occult - I am talking about those materialists who are usually called people of science) from the height of his exact sciences will immediately refer to the integrity and harmony of his views in some spiritualistic data. He will therefore immediately reject them. It should be noted that, no matter how great the mistakes on the part of the spiritualists, they are insignificant in comparison with the mistakes of the materialists. Spiritualists have repeatedly sought to subject their observations to strict criticism of scientific research and have invariably received the answer that since they invite a researcher, the latter has every right to choose the methods of research. The spiritualists, knowing the nature of the phenomena they observed, refused this, and the materialists recognized the study as impossible on the grounds that for this purpose they did not use the very test tubes and instruments - the material, in a word, with which they were accustomed to study matter.” “Taking into account, on the one hand, this circumstance, and on the other, a very large group of spiritualistic phenomena, the study of which is impossible in this way, you naturally come to the conviction that between scientific materialism and spiritualism lies a deep abyss. There is no common ground - this is obvious, however, it would be possible to give each other a hand in the study of at least an insignificant part of the phenomena that allow the use of conventional methods and tools. Scientific materialists refer to Newton’s dictum that the less often any phenomenon occurs, the more evidence it requires for recognition, and they are right, but, of course, this good rule should not be taken to extreme limits, and it would not be necessary, as we see all too often, to stun, like a hammer to the head, any modest and timid researcher from his very first steps with the exclamation: “This is absurdity! This is degeneration, stupidity, madness! only because this fact does not fit with their preconceived idea about this subject. Imagine that Galvani, when his wife came to tell him that the frog’s legs were moving, instead of going and looking, would have limited himself to exclaiming: “This is absurd!” Or would Franklin and many other inventors have acted in a similar way and, instead of carefully understanding the unfamiliar fact that they unexpectedly encountered, would they have gotten away with only neglect and shouting? There is no doubt that under such conditions many useful discoveries would have been delayed for many years, and some would never have seen the light of day. It is very unwise to assert something without evidence, but it is no less unreasonable to reject everything simply out of ignorance, only due to lack of experience. This consideration should have been the thesis of science, because one fact, confirmed by experience, is worth more than a million theories and hypotheses, confirmed on faith or trust, which is the same thing. As has already been said, science has long taken a purely materialistic direction, and I think that it will be interesting to trace the reason for this trend. To do this, it is necessary to compare the science of the times before the Reformation with modern science. As you know, the science of that time was, in fact, theology plus science and was concentrated in the hands of the Catholic Church, and it was far from safe to touch on its cosmology, otherwise one could be persecuted and then burned at the stake. And so, physical scientific research has served a great service: they freed humanity from the yoke of medieval prejudices and, as always happens, went to the other extreme. Science before the reformation looked at man as the center of the entire universe: the sun, moon, stars were created only for his use, and the entire scientific worldview of that time was based on noble humanity. But astrology gave new knowledge, expanded this worldview, and then a curious transformation took place: not only did the concept of man as the center of the universe disappear, but man himself, with all his highest, noblest properties, was further excluded from the boundaries of the scheme of nature - he was placed lower than the microcosm in the macrocosm. Little by little, all the highest qualities innate to him were taken away from man, he was relegated to the level of a heap of protoplasm, to the level of a plaything of the blind forces of nature with the prospect of, finally, complete destruction - death.” “At present, the prevailing view of man from the side of materialistic science is that his life and consciousness are completely dependent on the electrical, chemical and molecular activity of the brain, and with the destruction of this organ, life, consciousness, and thinking cease. In all historical times there have been two schools of thinkers: the naturalistic or materialistic school and the speculative or spiritualistic school, which asserts that man is a spiritual being, in close connection with the spiritual side of nature. It is very erroneous to suppose (as many do) that only an insignificant handful of people share the views of the spiritualistic school. On the contrary, contrary to all the arguments of the materialist school, the vast majority of people are inclined towards the recognition of the spirit, proof of which is the vitality of Christianity, Buddhism, and, in general, the place that religion occupies in the history and culture of peoples. Apparently, the struggle between these two schools of teaching will soon come down to the solution of three or four questions, and the most important of them will be: to recognize or not to recognize the doctrine of conscious existence after death? The scientific materialist is based on a negative hypothesis, which is completely legitimate if we first assume that life, mental abilities and consciousness are completely dependent on chemical, electrical and molecular changes occurring in the brain. Of course, if all this is allowed, then with the destruction of the brain, life, thought, and consciousness must inevitably disappear. It cannot be denied that many facts of everyday life seem to confirm the legitimacy of this particular hypothesis. Imagine if now, this very minute, one of those present here died: the materialist would have a lot to say in defense of his hypothesis. He could say: “Look, a minute ago this was a man full of life and thought, and now this is a lifeless, emotionless corpse, without thought and consciousness! If you are an occultist, a spiritualist, or a theosophist, and you claim that this life, this consciousness, continues to exist, then it is your responsibility to prove it.” - The situation will be quite difficult. In order to answer and contrast the negative hypothesis with a positive hypothesis, no less scientifically substantiated, I will try for a while to abandon any idea about psychic phenomena. Not all people of science, however, agree with the above materialistic hypothesis: for example, prof. John Fiske in his essay “Excursions of an Evolutionist”, considering the position about “mental matter” of Prof. Cliford says: “This wonderful method of presentation immediately illuminated many philosophical truths, and crude materialistic concepts became impossible; for example, the position that became current and entered everyday language - namely, that changes in consciousness depend on physiological changes in the body. Materialists claim that thoughts are generated by the brain, and the public is usually so imbued with this idea that when you try to explain the remarkably well-founded relationship between mental phenomena and brain activity, discovered by modern psychologists, they immediately hide in fear and begin to think whether you have completely abolished the mind? The public imagines that in order to overthrow materialism it is necessary to reject the fact that ideas appear simultaneously with the passage of molecular movement through the cells of the gray matter of the brain. A wave of molecular motion in the brain cannot produce a feeling or a state of consciousness: this wave cannot produce anything except the stimulation of other molecular waves in the gray matter of the ganglion or in the white matter of the nerves. In any case, every physical force in the body can only be expressed by physical force, and every phase and every manifestation in which this force manifests itself must inevitably be expressed within the boundaries of physical force, otherwise the law of conservation of energy will be violated. To introduce consciousness or feeling somewhere into the cycle of producing or non-producing actions in the brain or nerves means, as Cliford would say, “not only to assert a lie, but then simply to talk nonsense.” “Then, in another of his books: “The Purpose of Man from the Point of View of His Nature,” the same author says: “Nothing could be more crude and unscientific than Cabanis’s famous conclusion that the brain secretes thoughts the same way the liver secretes bile. It would be further incorrect to say that a thought passes through the brain. In the brain there passes only an astonishing complex of entire series of molecular motion, with which thought and feeling are in a certain way related, but not as the result of this movement or the cause of it, but only as coexisting with it. That's all we know; but cerebral physiology says nothing about another life. Yes, after all, this doesn’t concern her. Of course, I would never turn to cerebral physiology for information about the state of things in which thought and feeling could exist in the absence of a brain, because this is not its business at all. But the materialist conviction that such a state of affairs cannot exist, and that the life of the spirit ceases along with the life of the body, is, perhaps, the most colossal example of an unfounded conviction in the entire history of philosophy known to this day. There is no evidence to support this belief, except for the fact that we know the spirit only in its connection with the body, and until now we have not been able to establish the existence of the spirit outside the body. Indeed, one cannot come to a negative conclusion only because we cannot obtain evidence to the contrary through experience.” “Of course, I do not agree with prof. Fiske regarding the lack of positive data in the field of spiritualism, but I will leave this side of the matter and try, without touching on the psychological and occult areas, to build a bridge across the abyss separating materialism and spiritualism. “In the previous pre-Reformation time, the concept of every force of nature known to people then - heat, light, movement, magnetism - was as something independent and independent of each other. Modern science, with its discoveries, has proven the unity of these forces, and therefore the unity of the entire universe. It was recognized that all these forces are manifestations of one common force; it was found that these forces can be converted into one another: heat into movement and vice versa, electricity into light, light into movement, etc. Then the great idea of ​​conservation of energy arose: nothing is lost, no force is wasted without exciting a corresponding reaction. Thus, three great principles appeared: the unity of the universe, the unity of forces, the conservation of energy." “Then it was proved that the hypothesis of the ether lies at the basis of physical science. In earlier times, matter was known only in one or two forms, but now it is beginning to be recognized that matter is something complex: it can be solid, liquid, gaseous and vaporous. It turned out to be impossible to study the ether in the same way as other substances were studied - such a subtle instrument has not yet been invented. Meanwhile, without the ether, the entire structure of physical science will be untenable and will have no foundation. And thus, every occultist, accused by a materialist that his faith is based only on a hypothesis, has every right to answer: “Your teaching is also based on a hypothesis - on the hypothesis of the ether.” But why is this hypothesis accepted by materialism? Because it alone provides a sufficient explanation of all the phenomena with which he deals; in the absence of this hypothesis, many problems relating to physical life will turn out to be absolutely insoluble. In the same way, occultism only with the help of its hypothesis explains the phenomena with which it deals, and they receive a natural and harmonious explanation. Occultism also tests theories by experience and vice versa - experience explains theories. Let's take three principles: the unity of the universe, the unity of forces and the conservation of energy - the three bases on which modern science is based. "Ridiculousness!" - an ancient scientist would have said if he had heard that the sun and stars consist of the same elements as the earth, and yet the truth of this position has been proven, as is the truth of the existence of the other two principles - by the way, and the conservation of energy. Now let us take life, thought, consciousness in their simplest form, as a force contained in individuals; as forces, they must inevitably continue to exist one way or another even after the destruction of the organism containing them. Prof. Cliford recognized this, but could not accept the idea of ​​​​the continuation of individual existence and found it more convenient for himself the idea of ​​​​mental matter - the finest force material that dissipates in space after the death of the individual who contained it.” “Modern science now seeks to prove the existence of forces in nature that are inaccessible to the study of the naked five senses. Every scientist in our time knows that, in addition to the world accessible to the perception of these senses, there is a world completely unknown to us, but perhaps even more vast and beautiful. Prof. Huxley in his work, by the way, speaks of plant cells: if our ear could perceive the noise from the movement of these living cells, then the majestic silence of the tropical forest would turn into a noise stronger than the noise of a large crowded city. Our ear is capable of perceiving only a certain number of vibrations per second; the eye also perceives only a certain number of vibrations. Professor Stokey discovered ultraviolet rays in the spectrum and proved to the scientific world the quality of color known as fluorescence. Why were these ultraviolet rays hidden from view? Because vibrations of light beyond the number of 789 billion vibrations per second are inaccessible to him. These facts fully prove to us what a world of forces, forms, beauty, light and harmony exists, although it is unknown to us.” “Here are the provisions of a scientific materialist: the universe is one, subject to one general law. Force is also one, constant, unchangeable in its overall composition, although it can change direction. Is the five-sensory world part of a great whole, matter is only the cause of a certain state of consciousness, consciousness after the death of an individual is individual. And then - the abyss of denial. Spiritualism must bridge this gap and give a definite and decisive answer to this question.” “When the late Tyndall proved that matter contains all earthly life in potency, he very much avoided the expression “dead matter.” The man of science knows well that such a thing does not exist; in fact, the basis of the entire universe is life, and every atom of matter is a manifestation of this life in one form or another. But no one knows what life is, and at different historical times it was given different names. In this way it is possible to bridge the gap: one can accept all the conclusions of physical science, which penetrates little by little, step by step, into the invisible world, and by strictly scientific means create a positive hypothesis together with a negative one. Imagine a person in a state so similar to that of death that the physiologist is unable to distinguish between them: the body of this person is insensitive, cold, motionless, the blood circulation seems to have completely stopped, and the electrical and chemical activities are changed accordingly. And despite everything, this life, thought, consciousness can not only be as active as in any living person, but even more active, more intense, since in this case a person can see and perceive what is happening hundreds of miles away from him. If such a fact can be proven, then it will deal a decisive blow to the materialist doctrine, which claims that brain activity is consciousness, thought, and life. Meanwhile, the state of “high clairvoyance” is expressed precisely in the manner described above. Probably most people know the existence of such a fact; many, perhaps, have further convinced themselves of its existence through experience. Consequently, this fact completely proves that life, thought, consciousness do not depend entirely on the activity of the brain and, therefore, although the further existence of thought and consciousness after the decomposition of the brain has not been proven, it is quite acceptable. In addition, spiritualism has many facts and phenomena that can be the basis of a positive hypothesis, while materialism has absolutely not a single fact that affirms a negative hypothesis. In any case, the materialist must carry through to the end the conclusions of physical science; It would be very inconsistent to take into account only one side and lose sight of the other - regarding the ultimate fate of mankind. There are two scientific theories on this issue: according to one, our planet should cool and finally freeze, according to the other, it will be sucked in and burned by the sun. There is no doubt that the earth is approaching the sun, although so slowly that it is very possible that the earth will first freeze, then be populated again by people and there will be a whole era before the time when it is swallowed up by the sun. Whatever it is, these two theories, although completely different, are essentially identical: the destruction and death of humanity is inevitable. There is no other outcome - this is the logical conclusion of physical philosophy. This conclusion is very pessimistic and not particularly pleasant to the human imagination, and therefore people of science, with courage worthy of better use, accepting this conclusion, look with contempt at the spiritualist or occultist and accuse them of believing in immortality only because they desire immortality, and such a desire is a sure sign of mental weakness, then simply idiocy. But it’s strange to me, very strange, that the thirst to live, the view of life as something desirable, is recognized by scientists as an unworthy view and desire. If in this case the accusation of dementia and idiocy is possible, then it undoubtedly falls on the heads of those who do not see and do not understand all the charm of life with its affections, endless beauty, endless, limitless progress and improvement. Indeed, one must be very mentally limited not to understand life, and therefore not to gravitate towards it. I personally cannot imagine anything more sublime, nobler than this inherent human desire forward to eternal progress and beyond the limits of physical existence, on the contrary, I think that the sign of a great soul is this desire to develop the best abilities of man and others through the belief in the existence of other forms of consciousness, the belief in the improvement of not only the body, but also the soul. In essence, spiritualists and occultists are fighting to restore to man the lost inheritance. Man combines all the forces in himself, all the properties of the universe; it is all reflected in him, as if in a focus; if there is a law of the universe, if it is one, then man is part of this law and this unity. The philosophy of existence, which recognizes man as only a physical being, degrades him mentally, morally and spiritually, and the true purpose of physical science should be to create a ladder with the help of which man will reach the very windows of the universe and through them he will catch the light, the true light, which shines in the darkness and is not embraced by the darkness! (see “Rebus” 1898, M., No. 51–52). The surname of the sisters who apparently founded the monastery. So about the city of Ciechanowiec in Poland. This is what they say about the complex of objects of the monastery of the Sharytok sisters and the hospital. And also that from the previous complex only the entrance gate with the date 1737–1925, a fragment of the walls of the former monastery and a fairly well-preserved stone fence surrounding the former estate of the Sharytok sisters have been preserved. It should be noted that the day before G. came from the photographer, announcing that according to the books, Y. was listed at four rubles. Misha is also a singer, a boy who lived in the same room with Ya. And died four years before. At that time I myself doubted the afterlife. Recognizing the existence of the soul as an independent spiritual entity, created in the image of God, endowed with wondrous abilities, as we showed in the previous presentation, we cannot fully agree here with the terminology of K. Flammarion, who believes that without brain vibration it is impossible to explain the influence of one soul on another. Below, as the reader sees, he himself allows for the possibility of other explanations. Prot. G. D-ko. We have no reasonable grounds to categorically deny this possibility. Prot. G. D-ko. This can hardly be said in relation to all conclusions: rather, they can only satisfy people who are at the crossroads between materialistic and spiritualistic views. Prot. G. D-ko. The entire preceding presentation of this book, as well as everything that follows, has the goal of proving the existence of a god-like human soul, outliving its earthly body and destined for an immortal and blissful life in endless eternity. Prot. G. D-ko. You might be interested in: