XII. Chapter 2. The Outer Measures

Having touched upon the problem of forming the human being of the ennobled image and the related problems of transformation of the state into a brotherhood, and of the planet – into a garden, I have temporarily left aside another formidable problematic: the outer social-political, economic, and cultural measures, which will usher in universal material wellbeing and the harmonization of human society.

It seems to me that the whole period between the emergence of the Rose of the World and its assuming ethical control over political authority is to be viewed as preliminary. This period will see the formation of its structure, as well as the fashioning and proliferation of its religious, political, or cultural organizations. Its teaching and specific historical program are going to be elaborated; its preaching far and wide in all the languages, both written and spoken, will sweep across all the democratic countries. Its initial cadres amounting to just tens or hundreds of people will turn into a multimillion planetwide commonwealth. Any country, of which the constitution at that period of time will make it possible for the Rose of the World to exist, will allow its political organizations to take part in the nationwide election alongside other political parties. It goes without saying that none of its agitators or candidates should be allowed any slander, thoughtless promises, self-advertising, maligning of opponents, or even unverified claims to escape their lips during the election campaign (well, this equally applies to all other times). They are to behave in such a manner so that the Rose of the World would stay unblemished in the eyes of the people. It is ought to achieve political victories not contrary to but, rather, thanks to its ethical tenets.

Perhaps, the Rose of the World will be gaining political control in different countries at a different pace. Some of those countries may unite in a confederation well before the all-out unification will become a possibility. Yet, the social and political situation over the course of this preliminary stage may be motley and unpredictable, and so too the ways in which the Rose of the World, a branched-out global organization at the time, will come to power on a planetary scale. It is only safe to say that, inasmuch as it is capable of making such a step only under normal democratic procedures and having obtained the majority vote in all the countries, the decisive development would be not unlike a referendum or plebiscite. It is easy to conjecture that such a referendum would see the victory of the Rose of the World, even though not in all the countries. Yet, time will be on its side; its ideals and methods will appeal to the infinite human masses such that, having held the second referendum in several years’ time, the last dissenting states will join the Global Federation. Thus will begin the first stage of the Rose of the World’s ethical control over global political power, with its national assemblies overlooking national governments at that.

If the all-out total disarmament has not been carried out by then, a law mandating the immediate, all-out, absolute disarmament would herald the Rose of the World’s ascendance to ethical control. As for the technicalities of the disarmament, it is impossible and needless to preempt these: all will be thought out by the generation, which is going to be responsible for this process. For example, it is conceivable to create the Ministry of Disarmament in the government of the Federation along with corresponding ministries in governments of all the member states. Considering the gravity of economic problems associated with the all-out demilitarization and civil repurposing of the military complex, as well as with employment of tens of millions of people that have given up their firearms, it would be only natural to suggest that the process of total disarmament will take no less than five or seven years.

The amount of money, which could be freed up due to the all-out demilitarization, has long been the subject of curiosity. We do not know when and in what milieu it is going to happen; for this reason, precise calculations in this area are but scribbles in the sand. Yet, a trillion dollars would not be too far off the mark. Be that as it may, the sum in question is unimaginably humongous; precisely this sum will enable the implementation of great reforms.

During the first period of the Rose of the World’s rule, national and local peculiarities of the political system along with traditional social institutes in different countries will still be in place, if rather changing gradually from within, not from without, until the universal state will lose specific features of the bureaucratic machine. All in all, the coming of the Rose of the World does not presume the immediate review of the member states’ constitutions except for one single statute, which is to be changed or amended so as to acknowledge the Rose of the World as a body overriding national sovereignty. Further on, making changes in many statutes will be possible, even inevitable. Yet, those changes are first going to be technical rather than essential, it seems. In any event, each country will decide by the free expression of its populace, whether its political system will be subject to immediate and fundamental transformation or remain largely unaffected. For instance, there may be even such countries, of which the adherence to the traditional monarchical system will prove to be rather steady and solid. Is it hard to conjecture this kind of conservatism in England or, say, Japan? It goes without saying that the principle of monarchy is to stay in place in such instances. When the modern notion of the state begins to die out assuming largely economical coloration, the crowned heads will just remain as spiritual leaders or will personify the glorious past of their people and its traditions.

The same applies to the socio-economic structure of certain nations. The further all-out socialization will gradually pull in all the peoples, thus evening out the material levels of different countries, as well as their socio-economic structures. By then, the majority of industrial, agricultural, and commercial enterprises will have been handed over to public associations; each of them will become an independent legal body managing all its income except for deductions going to the state. The state will finance the creation of new associations accounting for the material demands of society and provide them with all the required equipment by way of a long-term lease. Reorganizing private enterprises into such associations is going to be bolstered. Perhaps, taxation of the populace will be not unlike collecting general revenue tax but in a more refined fashion. Yet, quite some time will have to pass for the principle of association to be firmly established as the basis of the universal state’s financial system.

With regard to political parties, they will be functioning just as before. The only obstacle to this may be their aggressively nationalistic, aggressively classist, or aggressively religious nature. Only bodies within the Rose of the World itself will be authorized to qualify one or another party as aggressive. At the same time, such parties will not be completely outlawed even at the first, relatively restrictive stage; yet, they will be not allowed to propagate their views either orally or in writing. Their coming to power is fraught with too horrendous consequences for humanity, if only those espousing such views do not realize the full scale of this horror. Later on, the control will be loosened up, and the ban will be lifted even from those parties for the complete freedom to reign supreme. Yet, to my mind, this is feasible no sooner than at the second stage when the overall cultural level itself will safeguard against any aggressive and separatist ideas.

The first stage is going to see the attainment of universal wellbeing. Activities of the Rose of the World will even have something in common with the communist dream. Any citizen regardless of nationality, residence, and occupation will be taken care of in that his or her basic needs are going to be met, whether it be food, clothing, housing, suitable work, rest, pastime, healthcare, basic amenities, higher education, access to art and science, or religious activities. In capitalist countries, tremendous amounts of money are being poured into an infinite expansion of production, which entails nothing but overproduction, unemployment, and crises. Instead, the money will go to the endeavors bringing no profit, thus producing no economic chain reaction. I am talking about construction and cultural projects on a global scale. The cadres of the global workforce will be reshuffled, so as to bring an end to unemployment from one side and to progressively shorten the working day – from the other. Further technological advancement and the rise of productivity will see just several hours of the normal working day remaining. Healthcare and social service agencies will spread their network of health and recreational facilities down to the remotest corners of the world. It will encompass all of the social strata including the peasantry, which has almost never enjoyed this right. Is it worth mentioning here the more specific achievements in this area such as, for example, the total elimination of pests and parasites due to the all-out sanitary-hygienic measures? Or, that medical advancements will eradicate many of the diseases, with which humanity is now plagued?

It is none of my business to speculate on the purely economic aspect of those future reforms. I would even say that it is none of my generation’s business, however much economically versed some of its representatives are. Discussing those particularities, which are decades away from us, is tantamount to useless, even detrimental projections. The time will come, and a credible authority will elaborate and embark – having first obtained everybody’s consent – on a planetwide economic reconstruction. Nonetheless, it is not hard to prefigure some of those particularities. For example, it is easy to prefigure or, rather, to figure out that the first years will see the all-round development of a robust building-material industry, which will make the basis for planetwide construction. This construction, mainly that of residential buildings, will later be running in full-swing. It will sweep across all the countries such that slums, hovels, and shags of the backward peoples or urban “ghettoes” crammed with have-nots would remain just a sad memory. They will give way to all kinds of residential buildings depending on the climate, needs, preferences and likings, everyday traditions, and national styles – from cottages and bungalows to, perhaps, high-rises. No matter the design, all these buildings will meet the demands of their dwellers.

Prospective thinking leads to the conclusion that it would be reasonable to proceed with the task of the planet’s transformation into a garden starting from uninhabited areas. This comes to be linked to the realization of the age-old dreams of reclaiming the great deserts – Sahara, Gobi, Kalahari, and the interior of Arabia and Australia. Their irrigation and greening will herald the first experience of the comprehensive, full-scale transformation of vast areas of the earthly surface into an artistically accomplished landscape. Warming polar and permafrost areas is going to be another task – harnessing the nuclear energy seems to make necessary technological provisions this way. The tropical belt will see an extensive wood clearing in the Congo, Niger, Amazonia, and Orinoco, as well as turning them into highly cultural zones. The exodus of the workforce will afflict the countries suffering from overpopulation, which will relocate to the areas matching up with its climatic, cultural, and vocational preferences. Volunteer immigrants, with all their basic needs met, will set about turning these areas into highly productive agricultural lands with the help of state-of-the-art technologies. Hundreds of billions will be invested into the development of international transport and the means of communication, so as to strengthen economic ties and engage the backward regions into a global exchange of commodities and culture. By that time, the advantages of civilian air travel over land transport will have become even more pronounced.

Nonetheless, railway transport or some of its specimens will long remain the most popular and democratic means of traveling apart from being the most widely used freight transport over great distances. Meridian and latitudinal transcontinental railroad lines will interlace the continents just like ropes tying up the box with a newly bought lampshade. It is clear to me that the direction of those lines will be based upon development of the cultural-economic ties, which are now hard to foresee without inaccuracies and great gaps. Yet, even now, with a purely childish pleasure, I fancy resting my gaze upon the world map trying to figure possible directions of those routes. I like to think, for example, that the Cape to Cairo railroad project, which was outlined in the previous century, will be finally brought to completion and even continue through the Caucasus up to St. Petersburg, with the other branch stretching from Cape Town across the entirety of Western Africa, only to reach London via two underwater tunnels under the Gibraltar and la Manche. My imagination delights in picturing a railroad stringing together Ethiopia, Lake Chad, and Senegambia, let alone a terribly long Afro-Asian line from Saigon to Casablanca passing through Bagdad and Cairo. It seems to me that there has long been a call – and it will be certainly built – for a trans-Eurasian line, which would connect the countries of the Southern Europe with Middle Asia and, having intercrossed with a line running through Tian Shan and Xinjiang, reach Beijing. It saddens me that I will not live to see the construction of a great railroad line from Moscow through Tashkent and Kabul to the blessed Delhi, and only my grandchildren or grand grandchildren will have a ride on the high-speed train “Madras – Lhasa – Irkutsk – Noril’sk”. I feel some comfort in the thought that the polar railroad line in Siberia will be finished fast enough thus connecting it with Central Europe through Vorkuta and with the railroad meshwork of America through the tunnel under the Bering Strait.

Here I am, fantasizing for half a page long. Now, I am brushing my dreams aside.

At a certain historical stage, the Rose of the World and the whole of humanity will face a dilemma: either the global Federation will continue to exist as such, or the universal state, while being transformed into the Brotherhood, will first have to take the form of a cosmopolitan monolith. What is meant here by “cosmopolitan”: while the ethnographic and cultural idiosyncrasies of nations will certainly be respected and preserved, the antagonisms across them will weaken such that it would be possible to unify the administrational-political backdrop across all the countries with some minimal local deviations. Be that as it may, the strife between adherents of those two ways of development would hardly remind one of the socio-political conflicts of the past: it will be a struggle of ideas happening on a high ethical level, with only one weapon being wielded at that: words. After a prolonged worldwide discussion, a new vote will settle the issue. If the Federation is set to turn into a monolith, the preceptor of the Rose of the World – the recent leader of those championing the Federation – will voluntarily yield his or her post to the ideological opponent. There is a certain logic in technological advancement, the logic of civilization. No matter the convictions and ideals, if the individual is capable of prospective thinking, at some point in time it would be impossible for him or her to overlook either the problem of reclaiming the Sahara or Arctica, or worldwide residential construction, or the roadmap for building great railroad lines. All this comprises ideas in which the tenets of the Rose of the World somewhat overlap with the communistic vision of the Future.

Yet, what appears to be landmarks heralding the limitation of the communistic dream, which aspires no further than for space traveling, these are just some of the Rose of the World’s outer manifestations at the first stage of its rule. As huge sums of money are to be poured into profitless construction, into unremunerative enterprises and establishments in order to avoid overproduction and economic crises, financing religio-cultural construction in the next century is bound to be virtually unlimited. This construction will assume numerous forms, which are now beyond the imagination, and develop alongside various parallel routes. I would like to dwell upon one of those routes, that is, the creation of great spiritual centers for a new religious culture. With the persistence of the inevitability and clarity of first-hand experience, the ensembles containing and expressing those hotbeds have haunted me for nearly the whole of my conscious life. I was almost fifteen when those images started popping up before me, and just in one year’s time I was already trying to pencil them. I became neither an artist, nor architect. Yet, the images of those ensembles, their exceedingly majestic interiors and exteriors well reminiscent of mountain ranges from white and pink marble, crowned with golden crests and submerging their feet into blossoming gardens and forests, have been shaping up with more and more precision with each passing decade of my life. Whether the Rose of the World is going to materialize those images or not, it would not hurt to recreate this mirage of the faraway epochs in the pages of this book. After all, the components of this mirage are bound to exist albeit at a great distance, while the mirage itself makes them appear closer to those plodding along in desert sands.

Those great spiritual centers of religious culture, along with a large network of their branches, will be gradually engaging greater and greater circles of humanity into a wide stream of the creation of a happy, sunshiny religion, of the most complete knowledge of God, and of the partaking of the other worlds through love, nature, creativity, and sacred ceremonies. The religious-cultural construction will not come to a close for as long as the Rose of the World stays at the helm of humanity and spiritual thirst is alive in the human soul. Constructions, which are going to be erected first, will be followed by newer upon newer ones. It is impossible to foresee either the character of many of those incredibly grandiose buildings, with which the third stage of the Rose of the World’s rule will be marked, or even their purpose. I should like to take notice of just several main types of those constructions, which, apparently, will be built far and near at the first and second stages. It is impossible to exhaust all their variety even if we talk about both near and foreseeable times.

As I see it, the largest cities of the world, to be followed by all other cities, will see the erection of spiritual centers and wellsprings for the new religious culture. Since the days of my youth, I have called them “vergrads” (towns of faith), a provisional and quite an unfortunate term, for I do not know their exact future name. These make architectural ensembles: the central part of each of them is going to be the Sun of the World Temple encircled with a wreath of lesser shrines. Being integrated into the system of parks, ponds, avenues, groves, and squares, mysterials (theaters for the enactment of mystery plays, translator’s note), meditoriums (meditation centers, t/n) theaters, museums, religio-philosophical academies and universities, galleries, philosophiates, temples of Synclites, temples of the elementals, and stadiums will comprise each and every vergrad. Some residential buildings will be included there, too Such a complex will become the hub for spiritual and cultural life of the city or district, the center for public celebrations, parades, popular divine services, processions, and sports competitions freed from their erstwhile secularism and steeped with the cult of the light-filled elementals. They will become the centers of religio-educational, religio-artistic, and religio-scientific work, the sources of solidarity, joy, and refinement.

In order to avoid major reconstruction of the town center, the vergrad would occupy large areas at the outskirts of the residential massif. Several wide green strips or rays will shoot from the vergrad deep inside the town. In conjuring up these images of the future, one should not go into great detail – the particularities will most likely be a far cry from their real outlines once developed. Nonetheless, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of going to great lengths in describing them. Here, I should emphasize that certain names are totally provisional and have been coined by me just to distinguish some images from others. Such are, for example, the names of green strips connecting the vergrad with the residential massif, which are designated for celebrations, recreation, walks, and solemn processions: the Golden Path, the Triumphal Gardens, and, lastly, a park having a particular artistic-historical significance. All these three parks are totally unique undertakings both in terms of their character and purpose.

These are ensembles brought to the highest level of artistic mastery and combining lush tree plantations with powerful sculptural-architectural constructions: arches and monuments, stairs and fountains, and, most importantly, monumental groups of unheard-of genres. I picture their footing as a sea of flowers interspersed with grass lawns and ponds. The purpose of such parks is for the development of the sense of style and artistic taste, the sense of history and metahistory, the sense of cultural universalism, and for the partaking of one humanity, by way of providing high aesthetic enjoyment.

I see the Triumphal Gardens as one of those parks connecting the vergrad to the historical town center: they would be dedicated to local historical memories. For our successors, picturing our capital without the Triumphal Gardens, for example, will be as hard as for us trying to imagine Moscow without the Kremlin.

It would be impossible to apply the old name “park”, all the more so “avenue” or “boulevard” to those Gardens. A wide green space with monumental clusters of tree, lawns, and entire groves, is skirted on the sides with passageways paved with multicolored slate-mosaics, which are heading from the out-of-town hills dominating the river – that’s where the Sun of the World Temple1 is located – for the Kremlin. The passageways separate it from the buildings’ facades, which now become nearly the size of a high-rise at the intersections, then drop to being just several stories high: these are cultural establishments, hotels, and residential buildings. At times, they are set in more deeply so as to free up space for the square or parterre. The green massif itself is cut lengthwise, with the main pedestrian walkway and sinuous pathways branching out right and left. There are clearings and flower gardens; sculptural constructions of a new type show here and there amid mighty groups of trees. Oh, their versatility will be nearly boundless.

The following odd genre, for example, pops in my mind. Plated with red or green, grey or pink marble, there towers a wall on the open rectangular and oblong pediment with gentle-sloping, low-stepped stairs on three of its sides. Its oblong surface is just a backdrop. Partly flat against the surface, partly extending out from it as an alto-relievo, partly freely standing in front of it, are numerous, compositionally interconnected groups of figures: some are bronze, some are marble. Yet, the color of the marble figures does not match the marble backdrop thus creating a subtle and impactful contrast with it. This way, great events of long bygone times in the national history come to be engraved in stone and metal: the adoption of Christianity, the Kulikov Battle, the rise of Moscow, dramatic collisions of the Time of Troubles, and the spectacular activities of Peter the Great – everything down to the epic world wars and Great Revolution. There is no way to guess how many of such compositions will decorate this artistic park: twenty? Thirty? Yet, each of them is just a semantic unit of an individual sculptural-architectural system: each composition is complemented by randomly standing memorials to historical figures. Sometimes, a monumental arch happens to be through the thick of the greenery. Intersections of the Triumphal Gardens and city highways will have peculiar architectural structures towering on them (I do not

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1 In Fili (a district in Moscow, t/n) or Kolomenskoye Village (a former royal estate in Moscow, t/n)

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know their future names), all to commemorate the historical events, which nature is more easily expressed through architectural rather than sculptural means. The great tribulations of the people are not to be excluded from this artistic presentation: the Tatar Yoke, oprichnina, the rueful events of the Times of Troubles, and many more. These can be expressed in simple and stern memorials.

Another green massif heading from the vergrad for the Kremlin in a semicircular fashion does not feature the ceremonial linearity of the Triumphal Gardens: it is dedicated to Russian cultural figures. It is designed to be more haphazard and picturesque, to form a more intimate inner landscape with individual monuments easily inscribed into it. Their individuality, their naturalness, the versatility of their artistic solutions, as well as their close connection with the surrounding vegetation will prevent visitors from being blunted with the abundance of memorials and the monotony of sculptural motifs. At the same time, such a type of park will bring visitors into a special mood, weaving together solemnity and warmth, awe and tenderness. Sculptors, gardeners, and architects of the future will have a boundless field of work in solving these problems. They will recourse to new building and surfacing materials, to a new interpretation of park space and street-block massifs rimming the park in part as a frame, in part as the backdrop. They will enrich their compositions with elements of running, spouting, motionlessly mirrorlike, or quietly splashing water, with lamps burning under the open sky, with porticos made for walking, with terraces designated for performing sacred rites, and with many more elements prompted to their imagination by the needs of their epoch.

Yet, conceiving the great future cities as a veneration for their national cultures alone is nothing but modelling the future after the past. In the consciousness of the people of the twenty-first century, boundaries across cultures and peoples will be fading away with every passing decade. It is impossible to picture the then Moscow, for example, without monuments to Plato and Copernicus, Shakespeare and Rafael, Wagner and Mahatma Ghandi, just as in the Moscow of our days – without the monument to Minin and Pozharsky. The third green ray of the vergrad may be about commemorating the geniuses of other cultures.

With my mind’s eye, I see the Golden Path as an avenue-park having a very distinct purpose. Starting several kilometers away from the vergrad and heading for the World Synclite Temple, it is to be marked with special architectural constructions on intersections with city highways. Each of those constructions will represent a great metaculture of humanity along with its Synclite. On the corresponding festivities, the mass processions will be moving along the Golden Path. Standing before the architectural symbols of Eanna, Sukhavati, Olympus, Meru, Monsalvant, the Heavenly Kremlin, and Arimoya, people, together with ecclesiastics, will be performing a mystery rite connecting the hearts of those living with the enlightened humanity.

I picture accessways to the vergrad along the same lines. The vergrad itself consists of three architectural complexes: relating to the temple, cultural, and residential. I would rather touch on the temple-related complex in the next chapter when talking about the cult of the Rose of the World. For now, let us glance at certain constructions representing the cultural complex.

One of the main buildings of the vergrad is the mysterial, that is, the mystery-play theater. Large vergrads would have two theaters: drama and music.

The idea of the mystery-play dates back to as early as antiquity: let us recall the Eleusinian Mysteries, medieval Catholic productions and their present-day remnant – the Holy Week mysteries in the Bavarian town Oberammergau. Other mystery traditions are still alive in India, Indonesia, and countries of the Indomalayan culture. Yet, standing in no comparison with the religious primitivity of the Middle Ages, the ideological richness and depth of the new religious consciousness will call into existence such theatrical performances that will prove to be as far from the old mysteries as our ideas about space are from the Ptolemaic system. Technologies, which people at the turn of the twentieth century did not even dare to dream of, will make possible the embodiment of multi-layer literary and musical texts, to mysterially reflect the events from Shadanakar’s past or present. The repertoire of mysteries will form gradually when, having gained widespread currency, the mystery genre of a new type will give rise to monumental drama epics. Yet, the repository of world poetry and music drama even now could offer a great many stellar works to stage mysteries after. Aeschylus’s tragedies, “Faust”, “Orpheus”, dramas of Kalidas and Tagore, “Peer Gynt”, “Lohengrin”, “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh” – all these masterpieces could and should be, after all, interpreted philosophically and theatrically as mysteries. Even now theater technologies would permit us to replace a naïve, fake fairytale set of old plays with a subtle, mystically convincing reflection of multilayered worlds. Vistas of such a technological advancement are shaping up which would enable theaters to portray the hierarchies not in a downgraded, flat, and anthropomorphized vulgar way, but as having gigantic sizes, hazy or radiant, swishing as a gust of wind or towering as fiery vortices. Enriching the technological arsenal with cinematographic means will enlarge the stage space and allow for the stratification into any number of planes, thereby reflecting the parallelism of events and processes happening in them. All this will enable productions, for which the artistic magnificence and philosophical depth are yet beyond our imagination.

Yet, theatrical productions of such mysteries cannot be likened to normal performances: mystery is a midway from theater to cult, and many of its aspects make it similar to a divine service. Therefore, the teaming-up of mystery performers and producers is by no means to be fashioned after the theater troupe. Ethical norms in the mystery collective, the atmosphere and customs reigning there, the religious zeal imparting meaning to everything – all this is not and cannot be applicable to theater actors. Actors playing in a mysterial make up a collective, which resembles something quite the reverse to the troupe: a monastery of sorts. “Cohabitation” by the mysterial, the common submission of the everyday life to the meaning of the mystery-plays, inner work, casting away any traces of animosity, envy, competition, etc., from personal relationships – aren’t such guideposts capable of inciting in theater actors anything but rejecting every opportunity to embody these principles in real life? However, one would search in vain for too many common features between the mystery collective and the monastery: “the unit character” of such a collective does not come down to a solitary, familyless monk. It goes without saying that celibacy cannot be imposed upon anybody. There is no call for the degree of isolation inherent to monastic life or, rather, it is totally unwarranted here, for the mystery actor does not escape from life. Instead, he or she both stays within and transcends it. The task is to find such outer forms of existence that would reflect this inner situation and help strengthen it.

One of the main components of inner work, that is, contemplation, is facilitated through mediatoriums making a part and parcel of any vergrad. Surrounded with a quiet and solitary garden, the mediatorium, a round and several-story building resembling a tower, is divided into small soundproof rooms. Similar simple-furnished studies go radially with a staircase-elevator well placed at the center. Windows overlooking the garden trees, a comfortable chair, a couch, and a small table comprise the interior of the study. A visitor is given an opportunity to enjoy the perfect calm and silence for several hours on end. At his or her disposal are items usable in all kinds of meditation, be it flowers, grains, minerals, sculptural and artistic images, or icons. A religious-philosophical library may be set up on the ground floor.

Art centers, at times located within the vergrad but mostly outside the town, would hardly break ground. There is no call to dwell upon such vergrad’s establishments as museums, scholarly and educational institutions, clubs, and small and quiet monasteries hiding in the verdure.

Yet, it would not hurt to touch on the philosophiate, an especial cultural and religio-educational establishment. It would have features making it similar to community centers of our times. In the philosophiate, they would organize or provide space for exhibitions, lectures, club activities, interviews, conferences; its workers would educate wide swaths of the public. A great emphasis would be put on engaging children and youth into the religio-scientific and religio-artistic stream of creativity at that. Oh, the religious element is by no means to be enforced and presented by way of annoyingly rational and dry schemes, inculcated into the consciousness as ready-made and mandatory mores. It acts on a deeper level by developing the sense of beauty, the sense of greatness and loftiness, the sense of history and metahistory, love for nature and love for culture, love for the human being and all that is living, and the apprehension of the world as a host of planes showing through each other. Naturally emanating precisely from this kind of nascent worldview, ethical and religious proclivities will form. The formative influence of the Rose of the World does not presuppose a confusing meshwork of abstract regulations without the recipient’s active involvement and in totally ignoring his or her individuality. Quite the contrary: it sparkles up the inner source of religio-ethical activity, invites its manifestation in a variety of ways, and helps crystallize surfacing spiritual streams into creative images, into the conscious command of ethics, and the principles of self-cultivation.

As the religio-cultural construction progresses, vergrads will be erected in more and more places – several of these in each large city – until the whole planet comes to be saturated with them. Certain components of the vergrad, especially the Sun of the World Temple, temples to the elementals, and the philosophiate can be constructed individually, that is, apart from the rest of the ensemble.

Thus vergrads will become connected with urban massifs, enter into the thick of residential districts, into the depth of vital interests, into the daily rounds of life of wide swaths of the populace. Temples of other creeds will be being erected close to or even inside them. As for the heart of the vergrad, the Sun of the World, Synclite, and temples to the elementals will comprise it. On completing the outline of the coming universal transformation, I deem it necessary, if only sketchily, to shed light on their purpose, their design, and their inalienable-as-breath multifarious cult.

to the next part: 12.3 The Cult
to the previous part: 12.1 Formation of the Human Being of the Ennobled Image
to the beginning: «The Rose of the World». Table of contents