X. Chapter 3. Missions and Destinies (cont.)

When describing – to the best of my ability – the nature of the connection between humankind and the sakwala of Daemons in the chapter on the middle planes of Shadanakar, I mentioned the race of metaprototypes that abide close to daemons and are essential for understanding certain works of art in Enrof.

Leo Tolstoy is the father of Andrei Bolkonsky (a fictional character in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, translator’s note) – not in the same sense, of course, as fathering Sergey Lvovich and Tatyana Lvovna (biological children of Tolstoy, t/n). The genius artist synthesized the image of Andrei out of certain psychological and physical traits of different people. Through this amalgam as an etheric focusing point of sorts, he intuited a similar yet even more significant image of a being from Zheram – a layer in the sakwala of Daemons that plays the same role for them as Enrof does for us. This being belonged to the race of metaprototypes, which lagged in development behind the daemons, and the race under their wardship. I have already mentioned that they are strikingly similar to humans in their appearance and psyche. The image of Andrei Bolkonsky was apprehended and creatively empathized by millions of people that read the Tolstoy’s epic (“The War and Peace”, t/n). Psychic radiations of these human multitudes immensely magnified this objectively existing image of Andrei created by Tolstoy. It became a material clothing for the metaprototype connected to it, its etheric body of sorts – something that was necessary for or, rather, facilitated and expedited its further development, filled its being with new seething energies and richness of life. I cannot analyze this process any further. Perhaps, in the next eon the transformed humanity will proceed to redeeming those fallen into the magmas and the core of Shadanakar. The one known as Andrei Bolkonsky, currently abiding in Magirna, would then incarnate in Enrof and join in our magnificent creative work. As for the current eon, each metaprototype that has received etheric clothing from the artists of Enrof not only absorbs our psychic emanations, which it elicits but also influences back upon multitudes of concrete human psyches: it either stimulates or hinders their development, depending on what the artist had imported into his or her creation in the first place. That is why great artists are not bound with the universal human duty of parenthood: it becomes replaced with a parenthood of a different sort. Dante, Leonardo, Rafael, Michelangelo, Cervantes, Shiller, Mozart, Beethoven, Lermontov, Gogol, Chekhov, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and a great many of other artistic geniuses and messengers did not have children. Yet, our moral instinct does not put them to blame for this, precisely because we unconsciously know that, however extraordinarily, they have fulfilled their parental duty.

It would be a gross simplification to assume that metaprototypes from the daemon world stand behind all human images in general fiction and art. Quite the contrary: they make up just a tiny fraction of this infinite gallery of images and are normally associated with bright and great personalities. Yet, when such human images with metaprototypes behind them do transpire, the purpose behind their creation is bilateral. Firstly, a powerful influence upon human beings of our plane is being exerted through them. Secondly, just to repeat: a subtle material coating is created, which invigorates the metaprototype and shortens its path to the sakwala of Daemons.

It is clear, however, that the artist cannot be free from the karmic connection with prototypes which were reflected through him or her and the karmic responsibility for their fate – just as a parent is responsible for the fate of the children he or she gives life to and rears. It took Gogol immense effort and a truly titanic work to help those he had named Sobakevich, Chichikov, and Plyushkin (fictional characters in Gogol’s novel “Dead Souls”, t/n) ascend. Whether he presaged this while alive or not, it is a well-known fact that he attempted a literary ‘conversion’ of “Dead Souls” characters for them to enter the path of ascension. Again, what is left unaccomplished by the living artist is brought to a close in his or her afterlife.

The greater the human image created by the artist, the more opportunities open up for the metaprototype. The one portrayed by Goethe as Faust would soon enter into the Synclite of the World – Don Quixote had already stayed there awhile – only to become a magnificent individual amid the transformed humanity in the second eon.

For someone with unsealed spiritual hearing and sight, encountering the one who has been known and loved as Andrei Bolkonsky is as achievable and absolutely real as meeting the great human spirit that used to be Leo Tolstoy. It is all about the state of the organs of perception, as well as using them to penetrate into such and such plane of Shadanakar.

However far-fetched and outlandish all I am talking about may appear, and whatever scoffs would target the confident tone of my statements, I am totally prepared for them and will take back none of the thoughts I am laying down here.

After what has been already put forth, the following would hardly seem at all strange: in terms of the method of influence, the role of the winged daemon with respect to the human bearer of the gift, first of all, is in uncorking the impulse of creativity within the messenger or any human being overall. This helps impregnate the creative womb of the artist with an in-streaming of life impressions, which would morph into one or another image, often – into that of a human. The daemon’s further work over the messenger’s astral body is aimed at loosening the rigidity of etheric-physical barriers, which separate the human consciousness from the highest capacities of the astral body. Depending on the artistic endowment and personality of the given artist, as well as the nature of his or her mission, the daemon’s efforts can be focused on opening up one of these capacities: spiritual sight or hearing; deep memory; the ability to contemplate cosmic panoramas and perspectives; the ability to comprehend other human souls from the highest vantage point – it can be called the ability for spiritual analysis; and, finally, the aptitude for Love in its highest sense. In certain cases, the daemon is focused entirely on opening up only one capacity which would facilitate and expedite his or her work over other capacities in later periods of the messenger’s earthly life.

Something similar to that, for example, happened with Chekhov. His mission was to steep the art of writing with the love for people to the extent that only Dickens and Dostoevsky had approached. Chekhov stood on an absolutely straight path. Although his spiritual sight and hearing, as well as his ability to contemplate cosmic panoramas were sealed, this was only temporary, for the daemon hurled all effort into developing Chekhov’s gift for the highest love. When this phase of work came to a close, other capacities would have opened up quite rapidly. By seventy, Chekhov would have exemplified a mix of genius and sainthood. Only his death at forty-four prevented this from happening, only his death.

There exists a certain law of scales: the deeper a monad sinks down and suffers in the course of its development, the more magnificent it becomes. The monad emanates from the Father’s bosom into matter not simply to skim through one of the planes of the planetary cosmos, but to slice through it, to apprehend it inside out, to transform it in all its entirety, and, rising from grandeur to grandeur, to become a guide for stars, creator of galaxies, and, ultimately, companion of the Father in creating new monads and universes.

Thence comes our feeling of awe and adoration not only before the category of beauty and sublimity, but also before that of greatness.

Thence – the emergence of this feeling in our soul, when we come in touch with such images as Oedipus, Prometheus, Faust, Don Juan, or Brandt.

Precisely these vast scales of potentialities in their souls distinguish “the children of Dostoevsky”.

After all, what would justify infinitely varying – from novel to novel, from character to character – “infernal” descents of these figures? What good can come from our wanderings together with them across the labyrinths of these passions, these murders and suicides, this bodily and spiritual depravity, across the darkest nooks and crannies of the world of psyche? Aren’t these wanderings, on the contrary, fraught with perils – to yield to a temptation, to proceed to imitating and committing the very unpardonable, even criminal acts?

Those who love Dostoevsky often justify this to the effect that the great writer teaches one to discern “the sparkle of God” even in the most fallen soul, that he inculcates compassion to the wretched, etc. Inculcate compassion he does, and great compassion at that. Yet, does this happen all the time? Is compassion the main component in our stance toward Stavrogin, Petr Verkhovensky, or Svidrigailov? Besides, discovering “the sparkle of God” in Verkhovensky or Smerdyakov would come as a lame consolation, for this does not justify or mitigate their criminal deeds. The essence of the matter is something else: rather than justifying them, it is their stature, which we irrationally feel, that makes us believe in their highest potentialities. By no means does this relieve them of their responsibility for the committed acts. Rather, we or, at least, those of us having a metahistorical disposition, grow confident that the deeper these souls sank into temptation, the lower their [infernal] rings of experience became, the higher their ascension, the more grandiose their experience, the broader their future personalities, and the more magnificent their faraway other-worldly destiny would turn out to be.

As an artist-ethicist that arouses our compassion toward the wretched and the fallen, Dostoevsky is great – so great that this alone would suffice to permanently stake out for him one of the top spots in the pantheon of world literature. Perhaps, he is no less great as an artist-messenger of the Eternal Femininity. Yet, one is to search for a whiffing of this Principle not in the muddied, psychologically crippled, spiritually disoriented, and hysterical, hence debased images of Nastasya Filippovna and Katerina Ivanovna, but in that universal human theme personified as Margarita and Solveig in the West, which was created precisely by our Dostoevsky. The story of Sonya Marmeladova and Raskolnikov is a staggering testimony of “das Ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan.”(*1)

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1 The Eternal Feminine lures us heavenward (“Faust”, Goethe)
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The greatness of Dostoevsky is revealed even more as he guides us, just as Virgil guides Dante, through the darkest, utmost sinful, most unenlightened, and faulted scarps, leaving no stone unturned, no devil holed up. This was the main specialty of his mission: enlightening the darkest and most macabre layers of psyche by way of spiritual analysis. In this respect, he is, perhaps, the greatest writer of all time. Then he proceeded with something quite the opposite: using this very analysis to penetrate into the light-filled layers. Yet, he had barely enough time to make even a few steps in that direction.

In any event, if the ultimate goal of the demiurge, which I touched upon in the previous chapter, presupposes the broadening boundaries of personality, for it to include the most dismal infraphysical layers (for as long as they remain unexplored, they cannot be enlightened), none other than Dostoevsky accomplished this exceedingly well.

It is not by chance that I have mentioned Dante. Yet, in order to understand this connection, one is to be well aware of the different planes, different forms and stages of this descent into the infraphysical abyss.

The work of the daemon over Dostoevsky mainly focused upon his penetration into other human souls; his other spiritual organs were only slightly activated. For this reason, he does not describe variomaterial images as directly and explicitly as Dante, but, rather, their role in the human psyche, human deeds and destinies. Those having a clearer memory of such descents would be capable of discerning the functions of the lower layers in the psyche and thus the doings of many of Dostoevsky’s characters: Duggur or Shim-big and the Pit in the soul of Stavrogin and Svidrigailov; Drukkarg and Gashsharva – in the psyche of Petr Verkhovensky; Gashsharva and Tsebrumr – the layer of the coming antichurch of Antichrist – in the Great Inquisitor. Ivan Karamazov’s personality would reveal functions of a host of worlds, of both ascending and descending range. The chapter “Cana of Galilee” is a clear reminiscence of Heavenly Russia, perhaps, even of the Blue Pyramid’s glimmer – the Transmyth of Christianity. The psyche of Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov, and, especially, Elder Zosima features traces of half-forgotten journeys across very high planes. The image, even the words of Gimpy testify to the memory of a great elemental – Mother Earth.

The gallery of human images created by Dostoevsky is unrivaled, not only within the bounds of Russian literature at that. It is no coincidence that no other Russian writer, save Tolstoy, enjoys such an unwavering international repute. It is a widely known fact that philosophical, moral, psychological, social-historical, and cultural ideas put forth by Dostoevsky are truly countless. I will limit myself to highlighting only two of them, those having a particular significance from the metahistorical standpoint.

The first is an interpretation of the then revolutionary movement, for which Dostoevsky was dubbed “a prophet of the Russian Revolution”. In “Devils” Dostoevsky laid down a plethora of details accurately characterizing narodovoltsy (members of the political terrorist organization “Narodnaya Volya” or “People’s Will”, t/n) which, nonetheless, did not pass down onto their historical successors (Bolsheviks, t/n). Precisely for this reason, the latter would deny any relation to the characters in the famous novel and considered it a defamation of the revolution. Yet, if one peers through the blindingly bright details, a certain substance, a certain “root of things”, as common for Verkhovensky and his cohorts, so also their historical successors, would reveal. Both of these parties hungered after the collapse of the then existing order, so as to “build things in their own fashion”. Both parties tried to achieve this by shaking the social norms and, finally, through a violent coup. Both of them not only showed no mercy and were bereft of the slightest trace of pity, gratitude, or condescendence, but also hated any obstacles on their path with a burning, vengeful, and uncontainable hatred. The former foresaw while the latter carried out, each in his own way, the spreading of the legend of “Ivan the Prince”, a wonderworking leader. The former dreamed about, whereas the latter carried out “an all-out convulsion every several years”, which claimed multitudes of lives. The former dreamed about, whereas the latter nurtured new generations with illusionary freedom and stripped them of their soul. Both of them are two consecutive stages in the development of the same tendency, despite the fact that the metahistorical forces standing behind each stage were – I will try to demonstrate this later – if not identical, then rather, kindred.

Another idea of Dostoevsky is no less directly related to the ultimate goal of the demiurge and the future of humanity overall. This idea is laid down in the famous conversation of Ivan Karamazov with monks in a monastery (the chapter “So Be It! So Be It!”). The idea comes down to the anticipation of something quite the opposite to the Catholic idea of transformation of church into state (at least, this is Dostoevsky’s understanding of the idea), that is, transformation of state into church. Seventy-five years back, such an idea would appear as a utopian anachronism; twenty-five years back – the delirium of a mystic; now, it makes one ponder; in ten or twenty years, it will begin its triumphant march across humanity. It is only natural that Dostoevsky saw the realization of this task not by way of the Rose of the World – even he could not foresee it in the nineteenth century – but by way of Orthodoxy.

The destiny of Dostoevsky himself is marked with the clear signs of providentialism. No doubt, suffering is always suffering, and our heart may be wrung with pity and compassion, when we read about the endless tribulations and ordeals, which his life was woven of on the outside. Yet, however horrible were these events from the humanistic standpoint, they were absolutely necessary to mold this man and artist into the giant that he became. Hence his epilepsy, anomalies in his sexual sphere, his unrestrained and passionate nature, the minutes spent on the scaffold (Dostoevsky was nearly executed – the pardon was read out to him when the rifles were already cocked, t/n), his penal servitude and, apparently, his poverty.

And yet, almost none of the literary sources talk about the following exceptionally important fact: in the last years of his life, Dostoevsky rid himself, one by one, of these passions, which were to be overcome and rooted out – there came the time for purification. A great heart, the one capable of containing so many human tragedies, of agonizing over the destinies of so many children of his own artistic genius, grew more and more transparent, pure, and receptive to the powers of love. When going through certain pages of “The Karamazov Brothers”, for example, in the chapter about captain Snegirev, or in reading the paragraphs about Dimitry, one is gripped with an unequivocal feeling: to be able to love, embrace with compassion, and forgive this way, one must be verging on righteousness.

In his afterlife, Dostoevsky did become capable of saving and raising his metaprototypes in ways we cannot fathom. Partially, at least, for a certain period, this made up his afterlife creativity. Soon, another work commenced: to be a Virgil for those sleeping throughout the infraphysical rings.

While it is still within our powers to imagine this, his further leaps of creativity would lead us into such heights, and assume such a scale, that apprehending them would require spiritual vision from those living, or entering into the Zatomis of our metaculture after one’s death.

Speaking of the historical and psychological prerequisites of the Rose of the World, I have already taken notice of a major one: relieving the long-standing confrontation between the ascetic-spiritual and the so-called “heathen” principles. The self-contained ascetic principle was justified by the metahistorical dialectics in the early stages of many metacultures. In Christian metacultures – as was already said – it resulted by way of interruption, in the non-accomplishment of the mission of Christ. One must be stuck at this stage to believe in earnest that the ultimate goal of the whole development of the world, is saving just a few hundred thousands of saints. This thought resonated well with the early Christians: the formation of historical Christianity had been grounded precisely in such an outlook. Other religions, which had formed a thousand and a half or two thousand years earlier, did not and could not feature this particular broadness. The only half-successful attempt to somewhat change the ossified dogmas was the Reformation.

Yet, the Renaissance and the Reformation exemplify extremely entangled metahistorical knots. The transphysical monster that stood behind the Inquisition had begun its activities long before the emergence of the Inquisition on the historical arena and caused a rift among the forces of Light. One faction strived for the purification of Christianity, but had no inner unity: two movements shaped up in it. One reflected, however muddily, on the Reformation; the other – on the desire, however weak, of Catholicism to purge the church of the abominable sins of the previous stage.

The other faction of the forces of Light felt compelled to depart altogether, for the time being, from the historically established forms of Christianity. They hoped that the development of secular, civilian humanism in Europe, would gradually see a re-evaluation of Christian ideals. Therefore, the Renaissance and the Reformation turned into habitation for two opposing principles: the just described forces of Light, which had no unity or common orientation, and the demonic forces.

It is only natural that as soon as the religious coercion was lessened, the unprepared soul was flooded with the outpouring from various dark worlds: Mudgabr, Yunukamn, and Duggur. The influence of karossas intensified. Urparp himself put in quite an effort: the widening of the rift between science and ethics was, undoubtedly, inspired by him, so as to divorce science from morality, religion, or any spirituality whatsoever. Special beings, dark daemons of sorts, were instrumental in achieving this task. They meddled in and manipulated even the activities of people with totally enlightened will. Even Copernicus, Galilei, and Descartes were not spared of their influence. Such a daemon stood behind Leonardo’s back all his life, though Light, ultimately, suppressed its involtation. Many great artists of the Renaissance were, so to speak, in the purview of demonic forces, for example, Titian. Yet, the artist’s impulsivity and the extreme blurring of his consciousness precluded Urparp from making a profane seducer out of him the way he would have wanted. Even Rafael’s creativity was not totally pure. The “Enrofization” of Shadanakar’s highest worlds – such a definition would be too trite and plain. Yet, the creativity of Rafael, as well as the Renaissance in its entirety, stood under the sign of precisely this process. Despite all the artistic achievements, it was a step backwards of sorts, albeit logical and unavoidable if one keeps in mind – this is always to be remembered! – the tragic consequences of the incomplete mission of Christ.

Leaders of Protestantism did not make a turn toward enriching the world of religious ideas, epiphanies, and feelings. Rather, they took to its emasculation, at the cost of ejecting mysterial and magical elements, as well as weakening the religio-esthetical component. In the heat of the struggle with Rome, any hopes for the spiritual guidance of state on the part of the religio-ethical bodies, if rather a dream of a faraway possibility, were dashed. This lameness of Protestantism could not even be compensated with a partial justification of secular principle, for, instead of simply limiting the superfluous demands of ascetic spirituality, it dismissed them altogether. So too, the secular principle was deprived of the opportunity of transformation and enlightenment. Luther distorted his obligement and appropriated the mission, in an imposter kind of way. He could have become a pope; he could have been given power for purificatory reforms. Instead, he did what he did: he turned out to be culpable in the fragmentation of the Western Church and the spiritual withering of its breakaway half. It should come as no surprise that he was to experience the descending range in the afterlife and rose to the Synclite of Germany only recently.

The further current of cultural-historical processes in the West showed that Protestantism essentially proved to be yet another step in the overall – as started from the early Renaissance and later spilled over into humanism – a movement of the “dereligiozation” of life (I beg my pardon for this awkward word, I will try to not repeat it again). Of course, leaders of the Reformation could neither know nor understand this. Yet, their objective activities, however differently interpreted by them, precisely showed this orientation. This was the Red Horseman of the Apocalypse galloping over the Christian humanity – the one whose road ends in our generation. After the Reformation, the next step in this process was the empirical philosophy in England, the development of the sciences that emancipated themselves from religion and ethics. This was succeeded by the “encyclopedians” with their half-deistic, half-materialistic philosophy, which had already made an attempt, however pathetic and feeble, to turn into a cult under Robespierre. The stage of scientific-philosophic materialism was next. Of all its varieties in the twentieth century, materialism would culminate into a mandatory, dogma-like state ideology.

This would happen not in the West, but in a country that had not passed the stage of Protestantism and had barely touched upon philosophical deism – it directly borrowed the ideas of the much later stage from outside. The soil that enabled the historical ground of Russia for such borrowing to take place was nothing but the lagging behind of the historical Christianity – now, in its Orthodox variety – when it came to the objective broadening of the cultural outlook and the rapid shifts in psychology. This was the revenge of secular “heathenry” for its agelong oppression. New forms, which this cultural movement morphed into in the nineteenth century, may and must be considered as Western intellectual forms for the intrinsically Russian or, rather, “Rossian” content. These forms were: social doctrines borrowed from the West, such as Fourierism, socialism, and anarchism; fiction genres – novel, novella, tragedy, and comedy; household genres in art; symphony, sonata, opera, and musical drama; critique and opinion-based journalism… Their overarching theme was the outlook passionately defending its rights, which were finally made conscious. Yet, the time had already changed by then. Whereas pre-Russianism was not bereft of spirituality by any means – it was just particularly connected with Navna and the worlds of elementals, rather than the Transmyth of Christianity – the new stage was marked with almost an entire fading of magical and mysterial elements, as well as vigorous manifestations and growth in social-reformational and revolutionary-political impulses. Thus the subterranean streams burst onto the surface of culture and flooded the whole country with all of its churches and monasteries in the first half of the twentieth century.

With regard to this process, metahistorical dialectics comes down to understanding the very “Rossian” movement in culture – the justification of the light-filled side of the elementals, coupled with the dark demonism of the other; the progressiveness of the one stage and the regressivity of the other (By regressivity, I mean, of course, any engagement in struggle with the Providential principle in humanity and cosmos.).

Love for the world is not only justifiable, but indispensable: nothing is possible without it, except the egotistical striving for individual salvation.

Yet, love differs.

Love for the world, that is, for the natural and cultural environment, with a purely utilitarian and hedonistic approach, seeing it entirely as our serf and slave – this is something that we can well do without.

Love for the world as for something beautiful, albeit distorted, muddied, and suffering, yet bound to become purer, more beautiful and blissful over the ages and eons of our enlightening work – this is the totally legitimate love.

This does not imply, of course, that the forces of Nature cannot be turned to the advantage of humans. It only means that, alongside such treatment, there has to be reciprocity: turning the forces of humans toward the advantage – spiritual advantage at that – of Nature.

Love for life, as for a sum of our gratifications and benefits or for a material that we forcibly and tyrannically transform into whatever we want – such impulse of ours is subject to complete and unequivocal eradication.

Love for life as for the global current of being created by God, hierarchies, and humans, blessed throughout from constellations and suns to electrons and protons (except for everything demonic); love for beauty, not merely of our plane but of myriads of other planes, awaiting our engagement in them, all for the sake of love – this is what prevents humanity from all-out tyranny and spiritual extinguishment.

Again, this does not mean that sensual joy as such, is to be forbidden for humans. Quite the opposite: such joy is justifiable if it does not increase the sum of sufferings of other beings and is balanced out with our eagerness to accept grief, labor, and duty alongside the pleasures in life.

Such clarity of distinctions could not be reached as late as in the previous century. Mixing these forms of love for the world and life was still inevitable. Yet, their amplification, intensity, and upswing were needful, and this is what the mission of our second greatest artistic genius, Leo Tolstoy was all about (if one considers Dostoevsky to be the first).

Whatever other, more particular tasks were carried out by Tolstoy through his literary creations, however great were the human images created by him, however many psychological, ethical, and cultural questions he raised and attempted to resolve – what truly matters for a metahistorian, is his powerful message of love for the world and life. No, not the life in that condensed, degraded, and totally unenlightened sense in which, say, Balzac or Zola understood it. The life I am talking about lives when its images and forms are transfused with the light of some indefinable and inexpressible, but invariably supreme Truth. In some cases, this Truth would be shining through grandiose historical collisions, through wars of peoples and fires of capitals; in others – through magnificent, full-blooded, and passionate nature; yet in others – through the individual searchings of human souls, their love, their unremitting longing for the good, their spiritual thirst and faith. Tolstoy, as a genius and messenger, had to and did spread this kind of message, often despite his too logical, too rationalizing mind. Rather than giving opinionated sermons, he wrapped his message into artistic images, totally steeped in love for the world, life, and the highest Truth standing behind them – the images which are more powerful than all sermons and more compelling than any rationality.

He loved and, through enjoyment of this love, taught us to love everything: a branch of the blossoming cherry-tree sprinkled with rain; the trembling nostrils of the spirited horse; a song of scythemen walking down the road, with sounds of their song as though swaying the ground; the strong calves of running boys; the twilight years of the harborless Karl Ivanovich; manor idylls of Lyovins and Rostovs; the spiritual thirst leading Pierre to the masons and inspiring father Sergiy to set out for a pilgrimage; the crackling of snow under the hasty steps of Sonya, when her face, illumined with the winter moon, draws to the lips of Nikolai with uncompromised youthful purity and amorous beauty; the ardent prayer of God’s fool Grisha; the physical enjoyment of galloping the horse and swimming, drinking cold water from a creek and wearing a corny dress, working in the field and sensual love.

Yet, it is no coincidence that stanzas from Pushkin’s “Prophet” have been branded, once and for all, in the first pages of the great Russian literature. This is what led Gogol to self-immolation and Tolstoy to renounce his literary works and attempt to realize the image of Prophet within himself.

All my life I hear all around the lamentations of literature lovers, to the effect that Tolstoy took to religio-moral preaching. “So many genius artistic creations have not come into existence because of that!” – wailings like this only prove the lack of understanding of Tolstoy’s personality and childish crudity with regard to what the Russian artistic genius is. At the twilight of life for each of the Russian geniuses, there emerges a powerful, irresistible need: to become more than a messenger – a prophet, a harbinger of the heavenly world, expressing the highest Truth, not only through artistic means, but also through one’s lifestyle. Finding such a synthesis and realizing it is the province of only the few. Leo Tolstoy was unable to find it and did not create anything comparable to “War and Peace” once he took to preaching. Yet, he could not do otherwise.

The tragedy of Tolstoy is not in departing from general fiction but in being unable to tap into the gifts necessary for turning one’s life into a majestic image that would exceed the significance of all artistic works. His spiritual sight was not uncorked, so he did not behold heavenly planes. As he remained spiritually deaf, he did not hear the world harmony. What his soul had experienced in other planes or in other incarnations was not released by his deep memory. For him, Shadanakar remained unexplored, metahistory – unintelligible, historical processes and goals – unraveled, and love for the world and the demands of spirituality – unreconciled. His preaching does not seem grace-filled, for it was born only by conscience and rested upon rationality alone, rather than spiritual knowledge. Hence, he could not become a prophet in the true sense.

Yet, his spiritual thirst was so great, and the sense of responsibility for preaching weighted down on him so relentlessly, that, for thirty years, he had tried to teach what his conscience would prompt to him. Owing to his deep conscience, sharp mind, and superb mastery of writing, even his graceless preaching proved to be potent enough to create a sect and to spill over far beyond Russia, disseminating ideas of non-resistance to evil. These seeds fell onto the fertile soil of some countries and sprouted, for example, as the social-ethical doctrine of Mahatma Gandhi.

Thus, the essence of what had happened to Tolstoy starts glimmering to us fifty years later. He took his spiritual thirst for a call to preaching; his repentance – for the right to sententiously address the world; his embarking on a long and thorny path to prophecy – as a sanction for prophecy. He outpaced himself.

Yet, his premature prophesizing puffed up his pride and, by entangling him in contradictions, slowed down, rather than expedited his movement along that leg of his journey, which led to the opening of his inner gifts and turning him into a prophet. It seemed to him that some heroic act was to be committed on his part: either martyrdom for faith, or ascetic reclusion from society and cultural life. Indeed: hadn’t he strayed amid the shambles of his mind; had he left home twenty years earlier, first going into reclusion, then preaching to people, literally wandering the roads of Russia and telling the common folk in simple words about Heavenly Russia, about the highest worlds of Shadanakar, about the supreme Truth and universal love – this preaching would have resounded all over the world, this embodied image of Prophet would have shone over the whole of Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, over the whole of humanity, and it is impossible to gauge the uplifting and purifying influence this would have exerted on millions upon millions of hearts. Yet, having been entangled in his conflicting responsibilities, real or imaginary, Tolstoy long hesitated over the soundness of his thought to leave behind his family and lifestyle, established over so many scores of years. When he finally believed in himself and took the plunge, he was already eighty-two, his life forces were on the wane, and his spiritual thirst was quenched, after so much waiting, only on the other side of death.

The one who used to be Tolstoy, does not guide, it seems, anyone living over the rings of Shadanakar, unlike Lermontov, Gogol, or Dostoevsky. At the height of the metaculture, he is busy with something else – for those planes, it appears even more grandiose than “War and Peace” does for us. For the threefold gift-duty of the genius-messenger-prophet, which he had long fought for with himself, is only a semblance of the highest forms of serving and creativity inherent to the zatomises of metacultures or still higher – to the Synclite of Humanity. Earthly creativity is but a preparation for creativity at a higher level. Precisely for this reason Providential forces take so much care of the destinies and souls of those who we normally call, cultural luminaries. That is why daemons are sent to them, cherubs are so watchful over them, and demonic forces are so adamant to fight for every sliver of their life and every movement of their soul.

to the next part: 10.4 Missions and Destinies (end)
to the previous part: 10.2 Missions and Destinies
to the beginning: «The Rose of the World». Table of contents