XII. Chapter 1. Formation of the Human Being of the Ennobled Image

Only the Omniscient knows the future in all its entirety and certainty. To us, it appears as an ever-ramifying chain of dilemmas. Each link in this chain is twofold: it creates a pair of mutually excluding possibilities.

We can never be absolutely sure of how humanity will deal with each of those links, of whether this or that possibility will be opted for. For example, I cannot say exactly when the Rose of the World will rise to prominence. I cannot make any claims on whether it will ever materialize either. Yet, if humanity – given a certain historical link, that is, a pair of possibilities to choose between – opts for the ascendance of the Rose of the World, soon people will invariably have to choose between one of the two possibilities. Once one of them has been chosen, the third pair will soon shape up. If the other alternative happens to be preferred, the third pair will emerge as well, albeit a different one.

The more acute the metahistorical sight, the farther it can discern this chain of ramifying dilemmas in the haze of the future.

History knows such phenomena and such personalities that had been readied by powerful hierarchies – light-filled and dark alike – so meticulously, so preemptively, with so much importance attached to them, and with so much effort hurled into their preparation that, in fact, these could not be avoided. However, the exact materialisation of such phenomena in history – whether they are followed through or interrupted, happen in accordance with the dreamed-of ideal or become distorted, and how much distortion is there if any – all this has been impossible to foresee not only by humans but also by the intellect of the higher hierarchies. That is to say, being a part of only one of the global camps precludes one from seeing the power balance of the struggling forces locked in their fateful, ultimate battle.

As early as at the turn of the twentieth century, for instance, a world war had been predetermined. Yet, whether it would be the world war or just one in a series of global military conflicts, who was going to be the victor, and what would be the exact make-up of the two coalitions – all this was known only to God. The human gaze could only discern the inevitability of a world war and a new era of great international upheavals coming alongside it. The maximum this gaze could reach was in tracking a new pair of possibilities in history if one side happened to win, with another pair shaping up in case of its opponent’s victory. Only the greatest visionaries at the time could peer into the future chain of dilemmas down to the fourth or fifth link.

Therefore, certain key events of great processes are as though “etched” into the future as predetermined junction points. Yet, there are very few of them. Besides, while materializing in history, they may assume one or another form, reach this or that degree of the intended outcome. The birth of the Planetary Logos in humanity had been predestined millennia before it actually happened in Palestine. Yet, the century and the people that were to see His birth were decided much later. The question of whether He would become victorious, that is, whether His mission was going to be accomplished in full or in part or even end in a temporary failure – all this had been hazy up until the end of the struggle marked with Judas Iscariot’s betrayal. No one, save the Omniscient, knew of the degree of the victory or the defeat, including Jesus Christ.

The mystical mind and mystical intuition gain insights of a special kind. At times, such a gaze sees faraway events not as a chain of dilemmas but as more or less isolated images that are absolutely compelling in terms of their justifiability and vividness. A host of intermediate links between our time and those images, a host of dilemmas of the near future remain unlit or only partially discernible at that. Such pictures reflect those junction points of the Future which had long been predetermined and, therefore, are unshakeable. Or, they happen to be a foresight into an alternative of the historical reality, the most probable, albeit not inevitable, or not precisely the apprehended one at the least.

The birth of Zventa-Sventana in one of the zatomises is “written in the stars”. Hence, the birth of the Rose of the World in humanity is predestined. Yet, when and how exactly, and to what extent this momentous event will be materialized is beyond us.

Our most immediate dilemma, which hangs like the sword of Damocles, is the choice between the third world war and a universal peaceful coexistence. If the war becomes unleashed, humanity will be thrown so far back, and demonic hordes will grow so powerful having feasted on heaps upon heaps of gavvakh that, over time, even the fourth world war and the physical suicide of humanity may become a possibility, or an endless chain of more local wars and coups could ensue. The ultimate unification of the world under the auspices of the American or some other witzraor is not a far-fetched scenario either. Even though the Rose of the World will emerge in humanity in the interim, perhaps, it may be just an “undercurrent”, a hardly tolerable (later totally intolerable) organization, a kind of beacon in the vault of the catacombs. Its ascendance by way of a planetwide referendum and the establishment of ethical control over the global state appear hardly feasible. The global state will enter upon the path of a global tyranny. The gap between our days and the coming of the antichrist will shorten manyfold, and its physical and, most importantly, spiritual victims will rise in equal measure.

If the choice is made in favor of peace – unfortunately, the odds of this are not great – the Rose of the World will manifest full-blown. Yet, this is just a possibility. The very emergence of the Rose of the World will have a completely different air about it: it will appear in the milieu of democratic rule established in many countries that will be gradually spreading around and engaging the best representatives of humanity into its ranks. Then the following dilemma will arise: choosing between the unification of the earth under the ethical guidance of the Rose of the World or unity based upon some other foundation, perhaps, the cosmopolitan concept of America, or any other less spiritual, less religious, and morally deficient tenets overall. If the first choice is made, the Rose of the World will rise to prominence, and there will be a green light for all its tasks to be carried out. Otherwise, it will be a barely tolerable organization having almost no influence in the wake of the third world war, the only difference being: over the period between the first and the second dilemma, it would broadly branch out, have a sizeable membership, bring forth a number of prominent figures, make an impact upon the overall cultural development, and spread its seeds across the whole face of the earth.

While accounting for the various alternatives of the future, I will focus only upon several of them so as to not become lost in their throng. I will be talking about my vision of the Rose of the World’s activities provided that a favorable resolution of the nearest dilemmas in the chain will make it possible to raise a question before humanity about the Rose of the World’s global ascendance. In order to narrow down this humongous problem without losing the focus, from now onwards I will not be touching on potential negative possibilities, that is, anything that could thwart the realization of the global tasks of the Rose of the World in the future. Let’s talk only about happy things for now! The heart is ravaged with horrors of the past and the present. Let’s light up the fibers of our souls with contemplations about the most beautiful of potentialities! Having fewer victims fall prey to the dark camp is one the chief tasks. For this to happen, humanity needs such a spiritual milieu wherein the enlightenment of the soul is to be experienced not by hundreds or thousands but by millions of individuals. This way, millions, perhaps, even billions of souls will be prevented from being enslaved by the coming antichrist, that is, from the ruinous depravation of their being and from entering upon the path of long expiatory sufferings afterwards.

If one sets such a goal, a certain program of actions will inevitably emanate from it. This program comprises a host of tasks to be solved step by step or in parallel to one another. For this reason, I would like to recall the foremost tasks of the Rose of the World: the cultivation of the human being of the ennobled image; establishing universal material wellbeing; helping humanity develop the highest capacities and tap into light-filled creativity; consolidating the efforts of all light-oriented teachings; the transformation of the planet into a garden and the Global Federation of States – into the Brotherhood.

Among these tasks, there is one, which the Rose of the World can embark upon long before its rise to prominence. The reason being: laying the foundations for this new, most spiritualized education system does not require global supervision over all schools on the planet. A new education will be able to form in certain individual education institutions run by the Rose of the World. It can have such establishments at its disposal even while at the level of a religio-charitable organization in any truly democratic country with all its freedoms coming alongside. The experience accumulated in the course of such a preparatory stage would be later extrapolated onto the universal formative education. When I was talking about the communistic education system, I highlighted some of its most seminal achievements, albeit trimmed-down and depreciated with a host of educational-ideological switches. These included character-building, development of willpower, honesty, the sense of camaraderie, courage, resilience, cheerfulness, and high-mindedness. The human being of the ennobled image will certainly be courageous and strong-willed. Yet, unlike being poured into the struggle of some collective to spread its hegemony over all other collectives, his or her courage and willpower are going to be channeled into activities relating, first and foremost, to self-development, then to the conditions conducive to someone else’s character-building, and, finally, toward the perfection of others in an uncoercive environment filled with love. These activities will be aimed at the unification of humanity without bloodshed, toward lessening the sufferings of all living beings, increasing the total sum of love and happiness in humanity, and bringing about the state of harmony to all living beings inhabiting the Enrof of our planet. Such a person cannot but feature high honesty and a full-blown sense of camaraderie. Lies are justified only when one takes someone else’s sufferings upon himself or herself or tries to keep someone away from danger. Yet, divulgation of someone’s secret, giving away a comrade, or a denunciation, however nicely clothed, will remain the most shameful of betrayals in the eyes of such a person. His or her soul cannot help being cheerful, too. Yet, such cheerfulness is far from a contrived optimism that would dodge any inkling of the dark side of life, or the sorrow and gloom of certain worlds, or future dangers. All phenomena of life and culture will be assessed, regardless of its optimistic or pessimistic bearing, as per its capacity to broaden or to narrow down the spectrum of personality, to elevate or debase the soul, and, ultimately, to contribute to love and freedom or hatred and enslavement. Such a spirit is courageous enough to be looking into the eyes of any monster and has developed enough spiritually to love life not “as is”, but as it has been preconceived in the worlds of ascent or in the future enlightened Enrof.

The cultivation of the ability to be creative in any kind of work is going to be one of the essential tasks of education. If the need for creativity does not become an inalienable quality of the personality, then this will be fraught with satiation, apathy, and the paralysis of spirit in the milieu of the universal wellbeing and ever-decreasing working hours. Yet, one has to be prepared to significantly revise the utility and justifiability of one or another type of work in terms of its degree of creativity. Any however creative work aimed at multiplying the sufferings of living beings – whether it be the invention of the murderous means or in the publishing of depraving books, or in killing animals just for fun’s sake, out of gluttony or so-called “scientific expediency” – all such work will be seen as an atavism, as something abominable and shameful. On the contrary: many forms of the inner work that have been looked down upon as a mere idleness will come to be rightly appreciated. Contemplation; meditation; all kinds of religious activities; communion with nature; the development of the physique through much more versatile forms than offered now in sports; excursions and pilgrimages to great hotbeds and memorials of culture; engaging, however humbly, in literature and art; creative love between man and woman; spiritually enriching friendships – all this will attest to the sparkle of the blessed and necessary genuine inner work that will require honorable, fulfilling hours instead of meager bits of leisure time. As long as the work is conducive to the deepening, broadening, elevation, or ennoblement of one individual at the least, it is bound to add to the perfection of the world. Should the overarching drive stem from egotistical pleasure-seeking, the unrelenting psychological war will be waged against the dominance of such a drive – it is an axiomatic truth that a person living just for himself or herself makes not even a naught but a negative value in the wellbeing of humanity. Perhaps, it goes without saying that the drive for knowledge is an incentive to be roundly and thoroughly developed. Yet, this drive will not be narrowed down by the compass of knowledge obtainable through scientific and artistic pursuits alone – it will also include metahistorical, transphysical, and religious fields. Not only the thirst for knowledge is going to be developed, but also, the thirst for the spirit in general.

The communist education, which I have passingly touched upon, was keen on developing three more qualities of utmost importance: the submission of the personal to the collective, the spirit of internationalism, and an aspiration for the future.

Let us not dwell on how successfully these qualities were instilled in the generations, which had been nurtured by the system’s workers. Be that as it may, the system was adamant on inculcating its subjects with the sense of collectivity as overriding any individualism. Unfortunately, two ideological switches had been insensibly pulled. “The collective” did not mean humanity overall or even the populace of one or several countries. Rather, it was a part of humanity unified with a strictly delineated ideology. Everything outside its domain was seen either as “enemies” – and these should not have expected any mercy – or as temporary allies whose destiny was to be decided in the future: either they were to join “us” and be included into the growing belligerent collectivity or turned into enemies, hence to be wiped out. Thus was the first switch: switching communality with groupism. The second switch was about losing the sense of proportion: minuscule, pitiable collective benefits coming from the self-renunciation of individuals were deemed higher than personal interests, even, at times, lives. A petty transgression was seen as a state crime, whereas the natural human unwillingness to become separated from the family for long, all for the sake of many years of labor in a remote and barely reachable periphery, was met with a great many barriers piled up by the state, party, and society. A new attitude between the individual and the collective was to eliminate these switches. A group, state, or social movement interest must not dominate over individual interests by default – essentially, such collective tyrants are vampires, idols, and Molochs. Rather, the wellbeing of the whole humanity is to be given the pride of place. Some would object along the lines that humanity is not monolithic, that it is divided into antagonistic classes, etc. Indeed, it is divided. But its genuine wellbeing precisely comes down to having been united – not by way of truncating some parts and forcibly remolding other parts but through the development of centripetal forces and in the ridding of centrifugal forces in humanity. This unity is not to come at a cost of yet another hundreds of millions of violent deaths, of even the greater sum of personal tragedies and the turning of a part of humanity into prisoners. No matter how opportune, there must be this reminder that my generation did burn its fingers on these switches and lies. I will keep hammering on about this, opportunely or not, for as long as my admonishments reach at least a few minds and hearts, even those who are yet to be born – eventually, they too are going to come to live and create. In sum, only understood in this light, the collective has enough reasons to claim its superiority over the individual. Yet, even this superiority cannot be absolute, for the right correlation is what matters, too: great sacrifices on the part of the individual are to be made for great goals, and vice versa. Deception, however, was quick to have crept in even here: the thought that all peoples are equal in terms of their temperament, giftedness, and historical “oughtness” is a sheer demagogy. It goes without saying that there is no single or several peoples specially preselected by the Deity to enjoy some special privilege and right. Yet, each people has been providentially destined or chosen, if you will, for solving some singular historical and cultural tasks; these missions are inimitably idiosyncratic. There are peoples – normally, they are quite populous – which are predestined to play colossal roles of planetary significance; others have more specific and particular goals. Yet: To whom more is committed, from him more is required. Special giftedness is to lead to being more self-demanding rather than tough on others, and this concerns both individuals and peoples alike. Giftedness and stature entitle one to greater deeds rather than to the enjoyment of more rights than other mortals. All in all, exceptionalism does not give one any special rights; rather, it presupposes an extra load of duties.

Precisely this kind of understanding inherently refutes any racialist or nationalistic ideas.

At the same time, when we hear claims to the effect that a small and backward people that has made virtually no contribution to the treasury of humanity stands on equal footing with the Chinese, British, German, or Indian people, this sounds unconvincing and absurd, for such a thesis cannot be supported with any self-evident, irrefutable facts. The true rebuttal for racism, along with any other superhuman claim – coming from an individual or a people alike – comes down to the “noblesse oblige”, that is, nobility toward those less privileged. Would anybody except for ethically barbarian individuals justify the exploitation of the poor by the rich and of the weak by the strong? Only ethical barbarians may presume that higher ethical giftedness and power may entitle one to the exploitation of cultural “minors”. Sadly, hypocritical blubber about the so-called “white man’s burden” proved to be yet another sham. If the white man’s burden really exists, it is not about colonizing others. Rather, it is a burden of highly refined beings obligated to enlighten the ignorant, feed the hungry, bring joy to those distraught, heal the ailing, uplift those lagging behind, illumine, beautify, and mollify their lives. This makes the real burden of a great nation!

It is clear that no nationalistic drivel can sprout on the spiritual fields hallowed by the blue petals of the Rose of the World.

There remains yet the third feature of the old education system, that is, aspiring for the future – a great one! This feature is characteristic of the people brought up by this system. Such an individual thinks futuristically. He or she dreams of and believes in a bright new world, is inspired toward the wellbeing of the future generations, and is a stranger to egotistical aloofness. Although this aspiration for the future is a huge stride forward, it is not without flaws. The Doctrine has suffused this notion of the future with a downgraded and simplified content. Basically, two values make up this notion: material prosperity and the subjugation of nature. Such a notion is as linear as a T-square. It is as devoid of spirituality, as concrete and materialistically naïve, as the utterances of a seventh-grader sitting by the bonfire. True, the prospect of the future does presuppose material wellbeing and, ultimately, prosperity. Yet, the universal wellbeing can be reached relatively soon, it is just the first stage, only a preliminary condition toward mental and spiritual blossoming. In the twenty-first century, people will be taking delight in this wellbeing or prosperity, paying attention to it, and experiencing it emotionally as little as a modern resident of New York or Moscow barely takes notice of, for example, sewerage or bus service. People of the next century will be just using material wellbeing, and later prosperity – just that. As for the notion of the subjugation of nature, an aggressive, imperialist, and nearly colonialist stance as it is, it will be counterweighted with the idea of harmonizing the interconnection between humans and the natural world. Once having become acutely aware of nature’s duality, its providential and demonic principles, people will interfere into the life of nature such that its demonism will be being grappled with, and its light-filled aspect will have a close interpenetration with humans. The latter will take interest not just in extracting newer upon newer natural resources, but also in seeing to the spiritual development of the animal kingdom, the harmonizing of the relationships across species, perfecting the plant kingdom and the entire natural landscape, and establishing relationships of love and friendship with the elementals of light.

The real depth of feeling in those epochs will come, first and foremost, from the ever-increasing spirit of love; secondly, from acts of creativity or, rather, divine co-creation in a plethora of shapes and forms; thirdly, from the enlightenment of nature; fourthly, from removing the barriers between physical and other planes of existence; fifthly, from the joy of life seething in Enrof as well as in numerous other worlds; sixthly, from the highest forms of knowing God. Aspiring for such a future is what distinguishes the human being of the ennobled image, from all preceding cultural stages.

What about the mindset of such an individual? Its characteristics will include an ever-growing thirst for knowledge, nourished through ever-developing erudition; experience in independent thinking and intellectual self-sufficiency; free and joyous awe of the manifestations of the Deep and the expressions of the Great.

How about his or her esthetic makeup? It will be characterized with the following: development of the intrinsic need for artistic impressions; highly refined taste; knowing and understanding the arts and artistic works of the past; the need for artistic activities, however humble; taking free and joyous delight in the manifestations of the Beautiful.

What can be said about his or her morality? Dynamic kindness toward others; capacity for intense compassion and conjubilation; the sense of unity with the entirety of humanity; the sense of cosmic unity; free and joyous reverence before expressions of the Lofty.

Concerning the spiritual mold of the human being of the ennobled image, it with be characterized with: the vivid experience of our material plane as merely one of the planes of Shadanakar; the inner work aimed at unsealing the organs of spiritual apprehension; an ever-fresh look at life as a mystery; a knowledge of religious forms of the past and present; an ability to relate to all religious creeds [of the right hand], that is, to understand the experience and teaching of each of them as a reflection of one of the many facets of spiritual reality; the imperative need for personal participation in the religious life and creative activities of humanity, as well as the capacity for being overcome with joy while participating in them.

Finally, what could be an outward, physical appearance of such a human? It seems to me that he or she will feature a well-built physique, fluid movements, light gait, harmonious musculature, and an open, highly intelligent, and cheerful face as though lit with the inner light. This is all due to the imperative to base one’s physical development upon the commandment of friendship with the light-filled elementals. Sports, dancing, and games are to be steeped with this friendship since a tender age. Another reason being, such a human is keenly aware of nature’s duality and therefore blocks the involtations of dark forces from entering into his or her being. As a child of the sun, he or she glides through his or her early years and, upon entering into youth, looks like a deity. Lightly clothed, the son or daughter of the Earth is walking on her blossoming lands. He or she is a big friend of birds and animals, talk-partner of angels, builder of the most exquisite towns, perfector of mountains, forests, and deserts, and master of the planet-garden. This is how the future human being of the ennobled image appears to the mind’s eye. These characteristics give a clear idea of which of the natural proclivities need to be targeted by the formative and educational efforts of the future.

Developing these qualities while being out of touch with nature would be extremely hard. For this reason, the mandatory secondary education facilities, something like a boarding school, are to be located either on the outskirts or outside of the town. The schools that serve children living in urban areas are to arrange regular fieldtrips and outings for them throughout the summer at the least. If class lessons last for seven, unlike eight or nine months a year, and if the overall duration of school studies comes to twelve or thirteen rather than ten years – there is no harm in this. After all, there would be no crucible of the mandatory military conscription lying ahead for the youth; no arms race, no competition between two politico-economical systems would spur the pace of life. Even if one completes his or her postsecondary studies by thirty, it will mean entering life as a human in the full sense of this word, not as a narrow specialist.

One should not feel intimidated with the discredited term “boarding school” either. Such a boarding school does not presume any isolation of its students from life. These will be connected with society through a variety of binding threads: giving a helping hand in farms; taking part in amateur performances in clubs and day schools; spending weekends with families; participating at sports festivities as a part of the activities of youth organizations; going on guided tours to museums, factories, and scientific establishments; traveling along with all kinds of cultural strata within one’s own, as well as within other countries. Such schools are boarding only provisionally. The purpose of keeping children within the walls of the school most of the time, of course, is far from separating them from their family or life overall. Such a regime ensures the most efficient use of time, allows to influence the student in a variety of ways, and helps with the building of the sense of collectivity.

It goes without saying that educationists in such schools will be required to exhibit an especially mindful preparation, pedagogic tactfulness, and deep understanding of their mission. The boarding school is to be midway between a community and a family. Everything with an air of perfunctory dryness, hierarchical officialdom, superior coldness, all the more regimentation is to keep a wide berth from the establishment. After all, the personality being formed there has to be able to live in the society, which is based on free will, not coercion. Of course, the system of prohibitions, punishments, and rewards will remain in place up to a point, especially, in the beginning. Yet, it will play just a supplementary role and, eventually, be minimal. Rather than instilling the fear of punishment, the qualities making it impossible to do wrong things in the first place are to be nurtured. It is not fear or conceit that will prevent the student from lying, bullying, neglecting studies, committing antisocial and anti-camaraderie acts, and being cruel to animals: gradually, all this will become impossible, for he or she will learn how to love friendliness, honesty, courage, and compassion. From a tender age, he or she will be instilled with the taste for work, for creative acts, for inner and outward civility. Only this can naturally ensure abomination for idleness, abomination for ignorance, abomination for cruelty, callousness, and narcissism. I am far from being an educationist, and this is not a right place for putting forth some educational methodologies. Yet, what I deem possible is in outlining the tasks of the Rose of the World’s education system and its basic tenets.

It must be assumed that the religio-ethical and religio-artistic upbringing will account for the bitter experience of such archaic disciplines as, for example, the infamous “Religious Education”. Rather than being incapsulated into the immovable crystals of dogmas, squeezed into a narrow discipline that contradicts all others with no hope for reconciliation, there has to be a true nourishment, which steeps and vivifies everything. Sports, swimming, strolling, gardening, floriculture, romping about with animals, games – all becomes intertwined with fun and frolic, poetic, and joyful activities, which initiate one into the cult of the elementals. Studies, artistry, reading, singing, going to museums and temples, conversations on cultural, historical, and metahistorical topics will touch the profound and solemn rites, which initiate one into the cult of the Synclites. At the end of a busy, eventful day that has enriched the heart and mind, it would be a good idea to recite holy scriptures – something like a chapter every evening, with boys and girls alike reading in turns. It would be a great disaster if such a regime becomes degraded, all due to the incompetence of teachers, into a string of tedious and mandatory obligations. The real task is to have each child realize the inner poetry, beauty, depth, and loftiness of these religious activities. Once all this has been felt and understood, children would naturally gravitate toward those activities, and there would be no need to be nudged.

Yet, it will be impossible to avoid introducing a special course dedicated to the world of religious ideas: alongside developing personal religious feelings in his or her soul, the student will have to espouse a systematic religious outlook. To my mind, one could draw this kind of knowledge from a special discipline – a comprehensive history of religions, which would present the spiritual evolution of humanity as objectively as it gets. This has to be interlinked with a course in political history, which, in turn, is greatly expanded and enlivened through imagery borrowed from the history of the arts, sciences, philosophy, and material culture. It goes without saying that these disciplines will be enriched – for as long as time and the means would permit – by way of film, exhibitions and TV programs, club activities, visiting the temples of different confessions, as well as hotbeds of the folk religious life.

All in all, creativity is nourished and cherished in a variety of ways, through, however small, seedlings of musical, literary, theatrical, architectural, artistic, philosophical, and religious creativity. As already has been said, the creative approach to any kind of work is to be cultivated, and so too an abomination for violence, for destruction, and for the oppression of the will of the others.

Such pastimes as fishing, hunting, or amassing entomological collections will be out of question. What hunting! So much for educationists speechifying on developing kindness and love that, at the same time, coolly contemplate their students entertaining themselves with torturing animals. The total ban on such activities will be followed with an abomination for any cruel treatment of living beings – this would only stem from loving them. In turn, such love will develop through taking care of domesticated animals. Gradually, feeling close to the elementals will imbue the daily rounds of life; being ready for such an apprehension will be thoroughly sustained. Bodily fitness improves with physical exercise, clothes lighten up, allowing the body to become exposed to being touched by the elementals as much as the climate permits, and shoes are done away with except for in being outdoors in cold weather.

This being said, now I am going to touch on a group of techniques, a more particular and auxiliary, yet, in my opinion, practically viable one.

By all appearances, the day is not far when the discovery by natural sciences of a special radiation from the earth’s surface will change the way we look at many things.

Experimental research will establish that different kinds and degrees of this radiation are inherent in different natural landscapes; that, having penetrated into us by way of touch, that is, through the soles of our feet or entire bodily surface while swimming (to a lesser degree – through the air), these radiations exert an unflagging and powerful influence upon the human being, not so much physically, but more in terms of his or her nervous system and psyche. However, these emanations from the upper crust have nothing to do with the radiations coming from the incandescent entrails of the planet. We will also find out that the material medium of the populated areas, their soil in particular, gives off emanations of another kind which exert a different, yet no less beneficial influence upon us. Later, it will be established that the soil is a kind of reservoir, which accumulates, stores, and gives off an energy of the emanations over great periods of time. The sources of these emanations abide in the worlds of another materiality, albeit their movement in space there becomes reflected in the elements and the entire landscape here. I am not a physicist, and it is none of my business to make predictions about the course of the development of the natural sciences. Rather, I will be quietly waiting until physics has knocked on the gates, which will burst open to transphysical depths and expanses; until, with a meticulousness inherent in the exact sciences, it has pointed out that one of the classes of emanations belongs to the layer of certain elementals in nature, while another relates to the elementals of the populated areas and, most importantly, to the arungvilta-prana of humanity.

It is a known fact that swimming, the air, and the sun are beneficial. Now, it will be ascertained that the actual benefit is much greater and more multifarious than ever before thought, and the earth itself is even more beneficial at that. It will turn out that the greatest benefit has long been unheeded: not only do shoes protect the coddled-up feet from being injured, but also are the greatest barrier between our bodies and the emanations from the earth. It will be also confirmed that walking barefoot is not only beneficial in nature, all due to the emanations of the elementals coming from the soil, but also in the populated areas, where the decline of these emanations is replenished with the emanations from the living forces of humanity. This discovery will turn around the system of physical education, dramatically change sports, and rapidly be reflected in the apparel. Toppling the archaic mores of Europe and America and muffling the outcries of the bedazzled snobs with a carefree stamping of bare feet, the new fashion will first become popular with the youth, only to turn into an all-out custom, which will be bounded geographically and seasonally only with cold, northern winters. However, these are just particularities, and this change in the customs could well be taken no notice of if it were only about health improvement. In reality, the question is deeper than meets the eye.

Among our five senses, we have one that has been barely paid heed to; it seems to be even stigmatized with an odd neglect. Our languages have developed pairs of verbs: “to listen – to hear” or “to look – to see”. Yet, in our conceptualizing of the sense of touch and what is apprehensible through it, there is a setback, an incommensurate delay of sorts. Normally, we “sense” something in terms of mechanically receiving sensory stimuli rather than consciously processing these impressions. We “look” but don’t see, “listen” but don’t hear. Who, and when, ever experiences at least a modicum of enjoyment or ponders even for a second upon what he or she is feeling when touching everyday items, walls and floors of houses, plants, water, and the earth? Half of humanity, that is, more than a billion people at the least, walk barefoot. It is awesome, wholesome, and convenient, there is no doubt about this. Yet, some people do not experience anything however significant at that; others take purely bodily pleasure, for walking barefoot feels lighter and freer than in shoes. Whereas, if I am aware that every step of mine is nothing but touching the body of the dear Earth; that even the tiniest curvatures of the soil, alterations in its moisture and dryness, coolness and warmth, roughness and smoothness, softness and hardness, density and crumbliness is nothing but the Earth’s communication with me, is but the touching of the soles of my feet by this universal Mother that loves me with a motherly and with some other incomprehensibly warm, superhuman love – apart from the purely bodily pleasure, I will experience an indescribable feeling akin to a caressing love and warm, ecstatic joy.

A great many people in the South also walk barefoot in urban areas. By the force of habit, at least the majority of them seem to experience nothing special at that. If only these people would have listened closely to their sense of touch! If only they had realized that thousands and millions, which belong to the same humanity, had lived, breathed, walked, worked, and loved there! If only they had tried to grasp that effluences, which rise up through their being off the unassuming asphalt they tread, are hot with some other, non-physical warmth! If only they would grow aware of all this, they would also realize that, by treading those pebbles with their bare soles, they can experience, apart from physical pleasure, an especial surge of jolly and hot energy, a refreshing feeling of the fullness of life, the sense of being a part and parcel of the whole.

In order to develop this capacity to steadily register essential impressions and think them out on a deeper level, one needs neither burdensome meditations, nor dry mental acrobatics. I am not going to force anyone into this method. Yet, I do not deem it necessary to conceal the ways, which helped me personally penetrate into nature more than usual and magnified manifoldly the joy of interacting with it, as well as with the force of humanity. For this end, one has to develop the sense of “peripheral touch”. By focusing attention on just about anything while perceiving various objects which one gets into contact with through the sense of touch, he or she is to register these with a certain angle of consciousness and, every so often, as though peer at them with the mind’s eye and ponder upon them. This is first. Second, one is to connect one’s “peripheral touch” with the general approach toward the physical layer, which can be called being ready to apprehend what “shows through” it. The world will start speaking to us in thousands of voices, each being full of its own individuality, expressivity, and surprisingly deep meaning. The wind will no longer remain just the mechanical pressure of dead molecules of the air against our face and body: it will reveal itself either as coddles of wonderful invisible beings, or the boisterous pranks of another, harsher layer. The earth that we have treaded so far with indifference, mindlessly responding either to extreme hot or cold, will now talk to us with a living language. She will talk through our bubbly and laughing soles now with playful squeals of streams and puddles, then with a tingling laughter of brush and needles in the pinewood, then with the impassioned recitation of the dry road. She will caress us away with the moist clay of forest trails, with the touching tenderness of the grass, with the stern wisdom of pebbles, and with the softest mat of the dusty road. – “Indifferent nature will shine on with its eternal beauty…” Poor Alexander Sergeevich! (a quote from Alexander Pushkin’ poem, translator’s note). He happened to be born at the time when this barefoot happiness was beyond the aristocracy’s reach! Now, nature would no longer appear indifferent to him: with full certainty, he would feel loved by nature, not just experience love toward her.

Deepening and thinking out of the sense of touch, as well as in the regular, daily practicing of it – to my mind, this is one of the major trajectories in the educational system aimed at developing the capacity for transphysical apprehension. It is as though we were looking through the magnifying glass at a spot in the organic tissue, discerning its structure and the contraction of its fibers, which before had born no meaning whatsoever, and… hey presto, now we are looking with a simple and clear gaze and suddenly realize that we have the bodily tissue of a beautiful face in front of us, in which there lives a deeply intelligent life full of expressivity. It used to be a meaningless aggregate of dead matter. Now, it as a stunningly beautiful Face of the World that is full of vitality, that wisely and lovingly gazes at us along with myriads of other beings.

It is only natural that the profile of the future college will change as compared with the modern secondary [and high] school such that the humanities will gain more prominence. Enlarging the history course and introducing the history of religions in the broad sense of the term will require extra hours; these can be found by increasing the overall duration of studies. Perhaps, the higher grades will need to be taught in a system that branches out into three orientations: humanitarian, natural science, and technical. Whether a graduate is going to apply to a postsecondary institution or is readying himself or herself for practical work, he or she is to be granted a yearly stipend for traveling – this can be done individually or in a group – to any country of interest or a number of them, all for expanding their horizons, exploring nature and culture, and establishing new connections. The network of special youth-tourist hubs all over the world, along with the highly professional educationists working in them would prevent the majority of grantees from wasting this precious time on trifles and help them avoid casual and fruitless fancies.

One may wonder: how could such a rise of humanities be justified? After all, the first epoch of the Rose of the World will require numerous cadres of workers from other specialties: for one thing, those in the exact sciences and all kinds of engineers. Doesn’t securing the universal material wellbeing presuppose tapping into natural energy resources, whether already found or waiting to be discovered? It does. Yet, what will be also required is the no less numerous cadres of workers to help carry out the all-round social reforms. Besides, engineers, natural-science and technical workers of a new formation will differ from their predecessors in that, unlike being very narrow specialists, they will be human beings of the ennobled image. Thirdly, over time, the material base will be firmly established, thus diminishing the demand for the engineer-technical intelligentsia – those having the humanities background will be replacing them.

All in all, we often forget that the needs of society in general and of each of its members in particular only now can be familiarly and convincingly articulated. Looking back at the Dark Ages, for example, or at the societal organization of the clan system, we tend to fancy sorcerers, quacks, monks, and astrologists to be nothing but leeches. Such a view, of course, shows nothing but narrow-mindedness. All these social groups and professions, as it were, could exist precisely because they met certain needs of society – the needs, which now are nearly non-existent. From the other side, people from those epochs had no idea of the multifold needs of their distant successors, which would shape the course of all our lives. A physicist of the twentieth century in his or her office together with laboratory assistants, a director surrounded by cameramen and actors at the film set, museum visitors and guides, tourists and sightsmen, physical education instructors and sportsmen, telephone operators and tractor drivers, chess players and photographers, millions of people from countless professions – to a person of medieval times, all of them would seem to be either sorcerers, or eccentrics, or idlers and leeches at best.

Certain occupations, which are going to meet the needs of future eras, would appear equally odd, absurd, harmful, or meaningless to us. Some of the needs, which now are the province of just the few, will become popular in a matter of several decades. Apparently, needs of the aesthetic kind are going to skyrocket, whereas religious needs will change their cast by becoming more versatile and closely connected to the natural world and the compass of culture. Therefore, it is only natural that the prevalence of the humanities will catch up not only to secondary school’s specialization, but also to that of postsecondary institutions, their programs of study and unit weight, as it were. For as soon as the Rose of the World has set about implementing universal reforms, there will be a dramatic spike in the demand for new educationists, lawyers, social activists, historians, rehabilitators of criminals, literary scholars, psychologists, and philosophers armed with a new methodology and inspired by new goals.

Inevitable is the emergence of new scientific disciplines: zoogogics (zoology plus pedagogics, t/n), metapsychology, and metaphysiology. The two latter, each in its own fashion, will direct efforts into investigating the organs of spiritual apprehension, which have long been awaiting their discovery by Western science. Based on the experiential data from these two disciplines, a totally new educational system will subsequently form, the one aiming to practically help unseal those organs, in-built in every human being. However, provided even the most favorable conditions, the bloom of this kind of educational system is hardly feasible other than in several scores of years when metapsychology and metaphysiology will have amassed enough data and summarized it with an overarching theory.

The scale and depth of these reforms will make it necessary to remold other higher educational institutions, including those specializing in the natural sciences.

By now, I have touched several times upon the turning of the surface of our planet into a garden, all under the guidance of the Rose of the World and through the effort of a few generations. Let it not baffle adherents of the wilderness! The whole surface of the Earth had been remaining pristine for thousands and millions of years. In the nineteenth century, the wilderness part had already been slashed by half. As for now… As saddening as it may sound, there is no and cannot be another way of development. Population growth, technological advancement, and discovering immense reserves of energy resources have predetermined the future of “wilderness” in no uncertain terms. The dilemma is not in choosing between wilderness and nature-garden but, rather, between nature-garden and anti-nature.

What is meant here by anti-nature, as far as I understand it, is first converting large areas, then the whole of dryland into an urbanized complex that would include maimed leftovers of nature, all for utilizing them for hygienic ends as well as physiological enjoyment.

When talking about nature-garden, I mean to say conversion of vast areas and, eventually, of the entire dryland into an alternation of mountainous parks, grassland-forest parks, fields cultivated with the help of high technologies, wildlife sanctuaries, wildlife reserves, town-gardens, and village-gardens. This way, not only the life of humankind but also that of the animal kingdom, plants, and the elementals would rise up into harmony, and the global landscape will assume a highly artistic cast.

This work will see a confluence of many sciences and arts under the nourishing umbrella of the religio-ethical teaching of the elementals. New scales, new requirements, new technical and decorative techniques will turn the old art of gardening into something totally novel – not only in terms of size but also quality. It will merge with monumental architecture and sculpture. It will encompass forestry, horticulture, agrotechnology, selective breeding, decorative art, zoogogics, melioration, desert greening, and much more. This art will pool the efforts of all kinds of professions and qualifications. Perhaps, at a certain point of history, it will become the leading, most popular, and favorite form of art.

It is clear that activities of the corresponding scientific establishments – educational and research-and-development – will be refashioned in line with those tasks.

Yet, this does not exhaust the transformation of postsecondary education and the entire research-and-development complex. A robust ladder of religio-cultural educational institutions of a new type, starting from colleges up to academies, will be erected.

To my mind, a humanities boarding-college for twelve-twenty year-olds could most likely be its first step. Children that combine a proclivity for the arts or humanities with ethical giftedness are to be cherrypicked for such colleges. The second step will make a religio-philosophical university: a host of its departments will be preparing – apart from ecclesiastics of all five cults of the Rose of the World – new social activists, leaders of religious and philanthropic organizations in the broadest sense of the word, philosophers, psychologists, journalists, editors, commentators, directors of mystery plays, and many more. We should not forget that lying ahead is a titanic work of hundreds of millions of people intent on breaking through the shell of pseudoscientific ignorance and antireligious prejudices, which had enchained a great number of people in the first half of the twentieth century! It suffices to recall that, over the course of two or three generations, expansive countries had been totally deprived of any essential religious literature, be it the Koran or the Bible, let alone some however serious works or religious treasures of the antiquity. Lying ahead is the publication of the canonical texts of Christianity and other religions complete with scientific references, which would meet the demands of the contemporary reader; of numerous series of artistic editions and study guides reproducing monuments of world religious culture; of scientific-research works capable of satisfying the deepening interest for the spiritual history of humanity; of special and popular series, which familiarize society, having regressed into atheism or indifference, with the great teachings on Spirit – from Vedanta to Schopenhauer, from Gnosticism to anthroposophy and existentialism. Special religio-philosophical universities will be preparing such workers. Finally, this ladder of educational and academic establishments will be crowned with the planetary religio-philosophical Academy, the one coordinating and guiding the ideological work within the Rose of the World. Such national-scale academies will emerge in every country.

There will be yet other areas of activity demanding such a number of humanities workers that could be described with no other epithet than “grandiose”.

Transformation of the global state into a brotherhood is not feasible with outward means alone. Some of those means as the chief prerequisites for such a transformation will be touched upon in the following chapter. Here, it suffices to say how the upbringing of generations of the ennobled image will lead to the transformation itself. Just as the generation of Israelites, upon their leaving Egypt with Moses, had to make place for other generations before they could enter the Promised Land, so the generation of the mid-twentieth century poisoned with the air of world wars has to step down for the long-awaited state system to reign supreme, the one shining through the enfilade of three sequentially enlightened periods. For this state system is not an outward formation. It will stay organic and naturally requisite until the ethical cast of new generations will make it impossible to abuse freedom and turn it into anarchy. No rehabilitation measures are enough to turn around the psyche of two billion people, which had been formed in the atmosphere of bloodshed and barbarities. It goes without saying that millions of those living now – the cream of the crop – would meet the highest demands of that future epoch. Yet, not just the best of us, but the overwhelming majority of humanity are to meet these demands such that entire generations could be nurtured by the Rose of the World as human beings of the ennobled image.

Transformation of the essence of the state – what is it, after all? Is it the disarmament of all, the true democracy, liberalized legislation, and mitigation of punishments? It certainly is; yet, these do not exhaust it. The essence of the state is a lifeless automatism, which is guided with material interests of big or small human massifs understood as a single whole. It is aloof to the interests of the individual. As for spirituality, it is totally foreign to the state, and so too to witzraors and egregors. Spiritual wellbeing, be it individual or social, is totally beyond it.

The significance of the first stage of the Rose of the World’s rule comes down to achieving universal material wellbeing and paving the way for transformation of the Federation of state-members into a planetwide monolith. It goes without saying that the most democratic socio-political institutes will belong to all the countries. Vast communities of legislators, educators, psychologists, lawyers, and ecclesiastics will see to revising law codes, reforming the system of legislative and procedural norms, and mitigating punishments – the very principle of punishment will be superseded by the principle of rehabilitating the criminal. The very period will see preparation of the cadres of workers of a new type, those instrumental in carrying out universal reforms which will herald the next, second stage: the transformation of the mitigated planetwide state into the Brotherhood.

One would presume that the onset of the second stage would overlap with the implementation of universal judicial reform. After all, jury trial or some of its specimens at the least appear to be the most progressive of all existing trial forms. Yet, it is far from having hit the ceiling of development. People of all kinds of ranks pointed out some serious shortcomings of this form of trial. Specifically, the principle of freely hiring a professional lawyer was shown to be fraught with the turning of the lawyer into a virtuoso of sorts, whose techniques in eloquence undermine the genuine, cordial human involvement with the defendant’s destiny. Hardly would anyone disagree that the principle of public prosecution does not warrant the prosecutor from turning into a bureaucrat that sees but a criminal in every defendant and takes interest only in that side of the defendant’s personality, which, according to him or her, may have dictated the crime. With regard to the principle of jury trial, it is imperfect in that psychologically intricate cases, which often beg not only for a scrupulous investigation, but also for a high level of culture, acumen, and the sense of fairness on the part of the jury, welcomes random and unqualified, often poorly developed individuals to consider cases. It would be too naïve to think that a few hours of help on the part of professionals would be enough to make up for their inadequacy.

At present, replacing this trial form with something else does not seem to be feasible. It will become a reality once the decades-long rule of the Rose of the World has ensured the formation of a new type of judicial worker. A youth will need to prepare himself or herself for this kind of activity, having chosen the humanities as the major as early as in college. The system of formative education outlined in the beginning of this chapter will take on certain specificities in the higher school of law, which will shape the formation of future judges. Perhaps, special attention will be given to those aspects of character, which would ensure against a perfunctory and formal, let alone egotistical attitude toward another human being. Studying the arts and philosophy, history of culture, history of ethics, history of legal acts, psychology, psychopathology, and psychiatry in parallel to the core subjects will add to the natural acumen and understanding of the problems of the human soul as well as of their possible solutions. The deeply ingrained notion of the value of the human person and of the reformative, apart from judicial duty of the judge will stimulate a highly considerate, caring, and warm approach toward the defendant. He or she will be looked upon as a patient to be healed – not necessarily a patient in the modern psychiatric sense, but as one with an impaired ethical structure of the soul. The role of such judicial figures cannot be overstated: these are saviors of human souls, and humanity is in need of them about as much as of physicians, educationists, and ecclesiastics. Someone would object: such ideal individuals are at a premium and are exceptions. Yet, even in the totally different, smothering and poisoned atmosphere of today, do we rarely see educationists and physicians of the highest and purest ethical caliber? Do we really have grounds to believe that an educational system, set to achieve precisely this goal and functioning in a favorable social milieu at that, will be powerless to select several millions of youngsters out of the billion of them, such that they would worthily bear the burden of trying and rehabilitating or, rather, healing criminals?

It seems to me – albeit the reality may prove me wrong – that workers of this type will make up several groups: investigators, judges, and rehabilitators in the true sense of this word. Right now, it would be untimely and inopportune to dwell on this reform; all the more, I have neither a professional legal training, nor experience. I would just allow myself a remark: over time, something else will emerge in place of the prosecutor, defendant, and jury institute. General debate will carry on, though not as a battle of eloquences or rivalry of artists, with one trying to besmirch the defendant as a matter of duty and the other whitewashing him or her. It will be an alternation of speeches of not just two but of three actors: they could be provisionally called “interpreters”. Making use of the investigation materials and drawing upon the results of personal communication with the defendant, two of them would be offering two different interpretations of the case. The third one would be trying to bring these interpretations closer together, reconcile them if possible, and show the advantages of each. Such a reconciliation of viewpoints seems hardly achievable in the first tour of the debate; yet, certain steps would have been made toward it. The second and the third tours would ensue then. Judges taking no part in the debate, yet closely watching and listening to everything would thus form a much deeper and objective opinion on the case. The defendant would be given the right to present his or her arguments, too. As for judges, these will be far from random, unqualified people – this is what the majority of assessors are – that have no penchant for unraveling knotty psychological and psychopathological collisions. Rather, there will be specially trained specialists of a new formation. It is no shame if the preparation of such judges takes longer than five years as is currently required, reaching as many as ten years: for the “penal establishments” (such a nefarious collocation this is!) to turn into a system of rehabilitation, ethical and social resurrection of the person, no number of years would go to waste.

It goes without saying that imprisonment as a form of punishment will eventually become outdated. The word “camp” has been now grossly discredited: it conjures up images of Buchenwalds, Pot’mas, and Noril’sk. Yet, I will have to use it here provisionally for the lack of a better term. At present, they try to rehabilitate here and there by way of labor – it should come as no surprise that they get sorry results. The majority of criminals are at a rather low cultural level. These are the people that ran off the rails at a young age and developed a deep aversion toward work. It would be naïve to expect them to become reformed as soon as they have gotten hold of a shoemaker’s hammer or a smoothing plane. The point is to raise their cultural level such that they could feel the charm of work. This work is not bound to be artisan or industrial at that (after all, not all people have those proclivities) – it could be an intellectual activity, too. It must be said that raising the cultural level does not mean some vocational training but, rather, being cultured all round, that is, intellectually, ethically, aesthetically, socially, and spiritually. Some religio-philanthropic organizations, especially Catholic and Methodist ones, are in part involved in something along these lines. They should have more involvement in such work, and their experience and methods are to be learned and, at times, embraced . In any event, the unwillingness to take an extra mental load, inertia, laziness, and flippancy of such criminals is to be mitigated with a provision to the effect that their prison service would not be about a mindlessly fixed number of years (having got a short term, one is just thoughtlessly looking forward to the release; a long term throws one into “not caring a dime about the world” mood) but a function of the criminal’s reformation: the sooner the criminal manages to complete the program of general humanitarian education along with acquiring some socially useful profession such that rehabilitators would deem him or her fit for living out of prison, the sooner he or she would leave its walls.

It is hardly doubtful that the combination of a high level of universal wellbeing with the inevitable results of the comprehensive educational system and all-encompassing psychological climate of the second stage will be seeing a decline in the crime rate from year to year. Considering that the number of crimes in some Scandinavian countries dwindled as low as to a few scores a year by the turn of the twentieth century, it would be far from utopian to conjecture that, given the aforementioned conditions, the global number of crimes would come to be no more than several thousands a year and be steadily declining further on. Certain foundational principles of the system of education and upbringing that would nurture investigators, judges, and rehabilitators will be replicated by other educational institutions preparing economists, managers, engineers, and technicians for work in state establishments. I mean the principles aimed at bringing up the true humanness in each of those workers. Even the institution which now bears the discredited name “police” or “militia” (in the USSR, police was called “militia”, t/n) will change its functions. At the second stage of the Rose of the World’s rule, this institution will be occasionally carrying out criminal investigations. Yet, with each successive decade, this police department will be losing its prominence. Over time, police will turn into a social assistance service of sorts helping both individuals and collectives. Working there will become as honorable and respectable profession as any other.

The state is made up of people. Those embodying state authority throughout its ladder are predominantly formal, callous, dry, and cold. It is impossible to eradicate the bureaucracy either through administrative means, or by appealing to conscience or the call of duty unless the sense of duty and professionalism has become a part and parcel of personality since childhood. The system of the Rose of the World will be preparing the cadres for the global state such that its negative qualities could be replaced with their opposites; such that everyone, when approaching an official or entering into a state establishment, would not meet bureaucrats with their compassion and empathy blunted from the monotonous service or one-sided fanatics caring only about state interests rather than their brothers and sisters.

I have pointed out only some of the singularities, which will distinguish the global Brotherhood from a state and previous psychological makeups – from the human beings of the ennobled image, those which are easy to discern even from the distance of our epoch. Yet, over time, many other traits will shape up – it is hard to imagine or foresee them as of now. They will gradually become clear and graspable only to the future, more spiritualized generations.

to the next part: 12.2 The Outer Measures
to the previous part: 11.4 On the Metahistory of Our Days
to the beginning: «The Rose of the World». Table of contents