Does the soul of the Veda have a gender? Vedic concept of the universe. Why does God need the material world?

Interview with Bhakti Vijnana Goswami (“goswami” is a monastic title in the Vedic tradition).

Meanings of metaphysical terms:

God and Absolute Truth- the classic definition of the Absolute Truth: “the source of all things, its support and the cause of final destruction”; in this article, both of these terms (God and Absolute Truth) are used as synonyms - it is implied that the highest manifestation of the Absolute Truth is God the Personality.

The modes of material nature- literally a word guna means "rope" or "quality". The three fundamental principles of material creation are goodness, passion and ignorance. Like three threads of three primary colors, they intertwine with each other, giving rise to various forms of existence, living conditions, levels of development of consciousness and evolution. In the process of creating the world gunas play the role of guiding factors in the formation of certain elements of matter.

Spiritual and material world s- in the Vedas the reality of both is accepted. The spiritual world is limitless and united; his nature is characterized by three qualities: eternity, knowledge and bliss. The material world is limited (i.e. measurable); it consists of three gunas, which are transformed into five gross principles and three subtle ones: gross - ether (space), air, fire, water and earth; subtle - mind, intellect, false ego.

Conditioned soul- this is the name given to souls that came into the material world from the spiritual world and adapted to the conditions of material existence.

Sense organs- five organs of cognition (ears, skin, eyes, nose and tongue) and five organs of action (arms, legs, tongue as an organ of communication, genitals and organs through which waste products are excreted).

Ego- 1) the inherent ability of the spirit to be aware of its existence. There is a distinction between true and false ego; 2) the original consciousness of God, projected onto matter.

Primary elements (beginnings) of nature- conventionally called ether, air, fire, etc., these elements represent certain states of matter. Not to be confused with ordinary air or water.

Energy- The Vedas define energy as “the essence of the cause, directed towards the effect, that is, towards the external manifestation of the cause.” Energy is simultaneously one with its source and at the same time different from It. This can be understood from the example of the sun and the sun's rays. The rays are the external manifestation of the essence of the sun. Without rays, the sun is not the sun, but at the same time, the sun's rays are different from the sun itself.

QUESTION: What do the Vedas say about the emergence of this world?

Don’t you think it’s strange that people often wonder how the world came into being and try to find the answer to this question with the help of modern science, but almost no one asks themselves the question: why did this world come into being? Without an answer to the “why” question, it is impossible to correctly answer the “how” question. In fact, man lives on Earth only to find the cause of all causes, so the first question that any child asks is the question “why?” Human life begins with this question. Therefore, if you allow me, I will answer your question in the context of a much more important, in my opinion, question: “Why was this world created?” In other words, why did a perfect God need to create a obviously imperfect world?

QUESTION: Where do we start?

At the origins of creation there must be reason, will, desire - in other words, God the personality. In the Vedic tradition, God is called Krishna, meaning the personal God with His energies. God minus His energies turns into an abstract, impersonal Absolute, just as the sun minus His energy turns into an ethereal “concept of the sun.” The sun with its energies includes mountains, rivers, oceans, clouds, that is, everything generated by its energy.

To understand God as a person is to understand the energies of God, or the way in which God acts. Sridhara Swami, the great 12th-century philosopher, defines energy (shakti) as “the inner nature [of being] directed towards action.” The Vedic scriptures talk about three main energies of God: internal, external and marginal. Internal energy reveals aspects of existence that are inaccessible to our perception - the spiritual world and the immediate environment of God. This is the main part of creation, and it is as perfect as God himself, for everything in it is in harmony with God and his will. In other religious traditions, this part of creation is sometimes called heaven. The external energy of God manifests itself as the material world in which you and I live and act. The soul is a product of the third, marginal energy of God. The limit of its position lies in the fact that the soul can live both in the spiritual world and in the material world.

DEPENDENCE OF THE SOUL ON MATERIAL

A PLEASURE Akin to ANY OTHER

DRUG DEPENDENCE:

SHE IS ALSO ILLUSORN AND INFERTILITY

This can be understood with a simple example. A person may have two apartments, but in one he lives himself with his loved ones, and everything in it is arranged according to his wishes, and he rents out the other, and the tenants adapt it to their needs. The spiritual world is the house of God, where he lives himself with his immediate environment, and the material world is rented out by him to conditioned beings, souls who wish to live separately from Him. Thus, the entire creation consists of the internal energy of God, His external energy, living beings and, in fact, God himself in his infinitely diverse forms and manifestations.

The nature of the material world is described by science, which in Sanskrit is called Samkhya. Sankhya is something like an ancient prototype of chemistry. It analyzes and dismembers the material world into its elementary components. The word Samkhya literally means "numbering". The founder of this science is the sage Kapila, who lived in ancient times. In a sense, Samkhya is a complement to yoga. If yoga is a practice by which the soul can disentangle itself from the bondage of material energy, then Samkhya is a theory that explains the reason for the presence of the soul in the kingdom of material energy and describes the nature of its activities there. This science disassembles the material world into elements and thus helps those who study it to get rid of attachment to it.

The soul, which has found itself in the world of matter and has identified itself with matter, tries to enjoy the endless diversity that it sees before itself. This diversity attracts her to itself, promises her happiness and thus enslaves the soul, forcing her to forget about her eternal spiritual nature. The soul’s dependence on material pleasures is akin to any other drug addiction; it is also illusory and fruitless. Sankhya mercilessly dismantles this world into its components and shows that there is nothing particularly attractive here.

THE WORLD SEEMES ALIVE TO US EXACTLY BECAUSE

WHAT IS IT BASED ON

SPIRITUAL ENERGY OF GOD

This can be understood by comparing the material world with a kaleidoscope. Children can spend hours looking at changing pictures, but at some point they have a desire to understand how they appear. I remember that with great interest and more than once I gutted the cardboard tube of the kaleidoscope, and each time I was disappointed, because the only thing I found inside this amazing toy was a bunch of cloudy glass shards. Likewise, the material Universe enchants us, surprising us with more and more new manifestations of diversity and inviting us to endlessly enjoy this diversity. But, as soon as we “eviscerate” this world with the help of Samkhya philosophy, we will see that at the basis of all this diversity, at first glance alive, lie just a few boring material elements, which in themselves are devoid of life.

QUESTION: What makes this world so attractive?

Samkhya philosophy begins with a very important postulate: the world rests on God himself. In fact, we are attracted to God, who is the very essence of life, and even the material world seems so attractive to us only because God is behind it. The world seems alive to us precisely because it is based on the spiritual energy of God. In Sanskrit, one of the main names of God is Vishnu, which means “omnipresent”. The Sanskrit root Vish, from which the word is derived, means “to enter.” According to the Vedas, God has entered into every atom of the Universe, and the entire Universe rests on the spiritual power of His energy. In the collection of thousands of names of God from the Mahabharata, the first name is “Vishwa”, which means “Universe”.

THE WHOLE MATERIAL WORLD IS

BIG MATRIX CONTAINING SOULS

ENJOYING VIRTUAL CONTENTS

PLEASURES AND ILLUSION

POWER OVER MATTER

Nowhere in the scriptures is it said that the material Universe is something obviously dirty or sinful (an impression that may arise from a person who contrasts the creation with the Creator). On the contrary, the Universe is a way available to us to meet God. The energy of God can reveal God to us, and the same energy can hide Him from us. An example is a cloud generated by the energy of the sun. The sun evaporates the water, the water collects in the form of a cloud in the sky. By studying the nature of clouds, one can understand how the energy of the sun operates, but, on the other hand, clouds hide the sun from us. In the same way, the material energy of God can obscure God from the vision of the conditioned soul, or, on the contrary, it can help him understand Him.

QUESTION: As far as I understand, this brings us to the answer to the question posed at the very beginning: why was the world created?

Yes. In these two functions of the external, material energy of God - its ability to reveal God and hide Him - lies the answer to the question “Why did God create the imperfect material world?” The first purpose of material creation is to enable the soul not to see God, to forget about Him, not to feel His presence. The entire material world is a large matrix in which souls enjoy virtual material pleasures and the illusion of power over matter. Thus, the material world helps the conditioned soul to forget about God, hides God from it, giving it the opportunity to feel independent.

THE UNIVERSE IS A WAY AVAILABLE TO US

MEET GOD

The psychology of the conditioned soul is somewhat like the psychology of a child. Or rather, children demonstrate more clearly and openly what is characteristic of all conditioned souls. Sometimes children crawl under the covers to feel free from adult supervision. The illusion of independence that they feel when they crawl under the covers makes them rage, scream and do other stupid things. The external energy of God is like a blanket that God has given to conditioned souls who desire independence from Him. When children feel like adults don't see them, they start doing whatever they want. Much the same thing happens to conditioned souls. Left to their own devices, alone with the material energy of God, people go to great lengths and try to enjoy the material energy, while simultaneously committing many stupid things. That is why the material world, although it is the creation of a perfect God, is full of imperfections.

QUESTION: A logical question still arises - if God created the material world for the pleasure of conditioned souls, so that they would enjoy life and imagine themselves as rulers of this world, then why is there so much suffering in this world?

Suffering is a natural result of the falsity of the original premise that brought the soul into this world - the desire to enjoy independently of God. The soul can never become independent; this is contrary to its very nature. Therefore, the energy of God has another, much more important function, the second purpose of material creation - to help the conditioned soul to remember God and restore his relationship with Him. Suffering is, on the one hand, the result of nonsense committed by the conditioned soul, imagining that there is no God. But suffering also sobers the soul, giving it the opportunity to understand that God is behind everything and that His highest desire is for the soul to stop pretending to be independent, to realize its complete dependence on him and return to him, restoring its spiritual damaged by being in the kingdom of matter nature.

THE MATERIAL WORLD HELPS

FOR THE CONDITIONED SOUL TO FORGET ABOUT GOD,

HIDING GOD FROM HER, GIVING HER AN OPPORTUNITY

FEEL INDEPENDENT

QUESTION: But if God is perfect, then why didn’t He create a perfect soul that would never think of turning away from Him?

The first thing to understand is that the soul was never created. She is the energy of God, and therefore is as primordial as God himself. In fact, the soul is perfect by nature, but perfection is unthinkable without freedom. Consciousness - the greatest gift of God - implies freedom, and this freedom is manifested in the freedom of choice of the soul. The soul can choose in which energy it will seek refuge: in the spiritual, that is, in a relationship with God, recognizing His existence and its dependence on God, or in the material, which gives it the illusion of independence from God.

The material world is essentially an extension of the independence that the soul is endowed with. It must exist so that the soul has the right to choose. If the soul always saw only the complete spiritual reality, then it could not feel independent of God and, therefore, would lose freedom. Therefore, there is an external energy called the material world, which obscures the omnipresent God from those souls who imagine themselves to be independent.

QUESTION: Hardly anyone in this world feels independent. Even if we do not depend on God, we depend on a huge number of people...

Yes! Because a tiny soul under no circumstances can be absolutely independent. We always need someone. The soul is incomplete by its very nature. However, everyone has a false desire to become independent. Everyone here rebels against their dependence - children rebel against their parents, wives against their husbands, servants against their masters. Everyone has a desire for independence, no matter how unreasonable it may be. For example, the irrational thirst for power that many people in this world are obsessed with, what is it if not the same obsessive desire for independence?

SUFFERING IS A NATURAL RESULT

FALSEIES OF THE ORIGINAL PREMISE,

WHO BROUGHT THE SOUL INTO THIS WORLD -

DESIRE TO ENJOY SEPARATELY FROM GOD

The entire history of mankind is a history of desperate attempts to gain independence, attempts that constantly ended in failure. Nowadays people are trying to become completely independent of God with the help of science. All modern civilization is based on this desire. And man seemed to have achieved quite great success in his attempts to prove his independence from God with the help of various artificial means. But these attempts have brought humanity to the brink of a global catastrophe, which will ultimately force people to admit their dependence on the higher will of God. And the environmental crisis, global warming, the crisis of overproduction, etc. - all these are just the first signs of a systemic crisis, which was led to by a person’s erroneous attitude towards independence.

QUESTION: In other words, God created the material world so that the soul could realize its right to “independence” from it. It turns out that the soul is also indirectly involved in the creation of the world?

Exactly. And that is the only reason why the material world - the creation of a perfect God - is imperfect: it is based on the false desire of the soul to gain independence.

QUESTION: How do the Vedas describe this process?

In the main scripture of our tradition, Srimad-Bhagavatam, the sage Kapila describes in detail the process of the emergence of the material world. It is necessary to immediately make a reservation that at the same time he operates with categories that are unusual for modern people. The picture of the creation of the world in his description appears as a series of reactions, or acts of interaction of various primary elements, but by elements we mean, of course, not elements of Mendeleev’s periodic system, but completely different - more subtle - metaphysical categories. Therefore, in order to understand this mechanism, one should abandon the usual stereotypes. At the same time, we must remember that the described process, no matter how strange it may seem to us, is an encrypted practical guide for people who practice mystical yoga. By reversing it, yogis free the soul from the captivity of matter. All the categories that Samkhya operates also form the basis of other applied Vedic disciplines, such as astrology or Ayurveda. In other words, this “theory,” unlike all other theories of the origin of the world, has been repeatedly confirmed in practice.

The Vedas speak of two main stages in the creation of the universe. One is called sarga, or "primary creation." At this stage, primary elements, “bricks” arise, from which the material world is then built. The second is visarga, “secondary creation,” when planets, constellations, space are created and various types of living beings arise. Today we will touch only on the first part, namely the emergence of the primary elements, the “building blocks” of creation that underlie everything that we see.

THE SOUL IS PERFECT BY ITS NATURE,

BUT PERFECTION IS UNTHOUGHT WITHOUT FREEDOM

According to the Bhagavata, the material world appears as a result of the interaction of two principles: the active one - God, and the passive one - the material energy of God. Materialists believe that everything is a product of material energy, but energy itself is inert and, therefore, unable to give birth to anything, just as a woman is unable to conceive a child without the participation of a man. Just as in conceiving a child, the role of the active, masculine principle, or God, is only to give the initial impulse. After this push, all other processes occur on their own in the bosom of material nature - God seems not to be involved in them. But for the process of creation to begin, the passive material energy must be set in motion by the Lord.

QUESTION: How did material energy itself appear?

Material energy, like all other energies, is a part of the Absolute Truth, God. It is as primary as God himself, that is, it was never “created,” and yet, being energy, it occupies a subordinate (secondary) place in relation to God. The Absolute Truth, by definition, includes everything. In other words, it must include something external to it and something internal to it.

It cannot be said that at some point God came up with a brilliant idea: to create a material world and conditioned souls who will suffer in it. No. Both soul and material energy always exist. They are part of the Absolute Truth. However, the soul is eternal, and the material universe, although it exists eternally, passes through cyclically repeating phases of creation and destruction, and therefore the “creation” of the material world is spoken of.

FOR THE PROCESS OF CREATION TO BEGIN,

PASSIVE MATERIAL ENERGY MUST BE

MOVED BY THE LORD

It is stated in the Srimad-Bhagavatam and other Vedic scriptures that until the next cycle of creation begins, the material energy of God remains in an unmanifested state. Let's compare this statement with the first words of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” I will allow myself an unorthodox interpretation of this passage from the point of view of the ideas described in the Vedas. “Heaven” and “earth” may well mean the spiritual and material worlds. In Sanskrit, the spiritual world is called paravyoma, which means “highest sky.” And the “neutral zone” that lies between the spiritual and material worlds is called Karana Samudra, or the “Causal Ocean”. The Lord in the form of Maha-Vishnu reclines on the “waters” of this ocean (“...and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters”). From there he glances at the “formless earth” - dormant, undifferentiated, unmanifested material energy.

Unmanifested material energy, according to the scriptures, represents the three gunas of material nature in a perfectly balanced, and therefore passive, unmanifested state. The three gunas: sattva, rajas and tamas are the subtlest primordial elements, material reflections of the original spiritual qualities of sat, chit and ananda - eternity, knowledge and bliss. The Upanishads compare them to three threads: yellow, red and blue. Three colors, mixing with each other in different proportions, give rise to an infinite variety of colors and shades, but when they perfectly balance each other, an invisible white color appears - an analogue of the unmanifested state of the gunas.

QUESTION: So, matter sleeps. Why does she still wake up? What prevents her from sleeping further? What brings her out of this state?

God's view, in other words, his desire to give souls the opportunity to realize themselves. God's view of material energy, saturated with creative power, is the first and most important stage of creation, which triggers all other processes. The Aitareya Upanishad describes the creation of the world in just four words: sa aikshata lokan utsrijah - “He looked and the worlds appeared.” It is also stated in Bhagavad-gita that the material energy operates under the supervision of the Lord.

TIME IS THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD'S WILL

IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

In fact, the gaze that unbalances material energy is a special force that we humans call time. In the material world, everything changes, and the time factor that determines these changes is nothing more than the gaze of God, saturated with creative power. Time is a manifestation of the will of God in the material world. Symbolically, it is depicted as a rapidly rotating disk in the hands of Vishnu. And therefore the sage Kapila says that time is the cause of fear in the hearts of all living beings. Putting an end to everything, time reminds living beings of God.

So the glance of God moves the material energy. At the same time, this view brings into the womb of material nature the conditioned souls with their unrealized karma, which had been dormant in the body of Maha-Vishnu since the previous cycle of creation. This process, as we have already said, is compared to the fertilization of a woman’s womb. After the material energy is fertilized by particles of the spirit, the unmanifested material energy turns into prakriti. Prakriti is material energy in an activated state, ready to manifest all kinds of forms. Literally, this word (pra-kriti) means “primordial form, primordial cause, source.”

From prakriti appears the brightly shining mahat-tattva, the cosmic mind - the product of pure sattva (“goodness”). The unmanifested, formless, dark state of material energy is suddenly illuminated by the blinding light of consciousness that has been injected into it by the gaze of God. A comparison involuntarily arises with the big bang, which modern scientists talk about, or with the Biblical “... and there was light.” At this moment, the material energy has an ego, or consciousness of its existence. To understand the meaning of this category, you need to remember that the microcosm (man) was created according to the same scheme as the macrocosm - the Universe.

SPACE IS CONCRETE

MATERIAL ELEMENT, IN SANSKRIT

CALLED AKASH

Let's give another example from everyday experience. The destruction that periodically occurs in the material world is compared to a person falling into sleep. In deep sleep, the soul ceases to feel itself and its own existence. And the body, which we are accustomed to identifying with ourselves, at this moment is as if it does not exist - it is in an inactive, sleepy state. In the same sleepy state, in the intervals between the creations of the material world, all material energy is located. But in the morning, when we wake up, we again remember that “I exist.” The very first glimpse of consciousness before awakening, when we have not yet identified ourselves with the body and its inherent desires, but have already remembered ourselves, is a microcosmic analogue of mahat-tattva - consciousness reflected in material energy.

In our body, mahat-tattva manifests itself as chitta, consciousness as such. In other words, a clear, undisturbed state of consciousness, free from passions and desires, in which a person spontaneously remembers God, a state to which saints of all religions and traditions come, is the manifestation in our body of mahat-tattva, the universal mind.

Further, impelled by time, or the will of God, the mahat-tattva gives rise to ahankara, the false ego. False ego, endowed with three energies: cognitive energy, creative energy and material energy, appears in three forms, which are called false ego in sattva guna, false ego in rajo guna and false ego in tamo guna. The false ego in sattva guna gives rise to the mind (manas), the false ego in rajo guna gives rise to discrimination (intellect, or buddhi in Sanskrit) and the senses, and the false ego in tamo guna gives rise to objects of sense perception and gross material elements.

THIS IS why GOD CREATED THE MATERIAL WORLD,

TO ALWAYS STAY HERE

"UNPROVED HYPOTHESIS"

The four subtle elements, citta (mahat-tattva), ahankara, manas and buddhi, together at the microcosmic level constitute what is called internal organ feelings (antah-karana). Essentially, this describes the structure of conditioned consciousness with its four aspects that allow the soul to interact with the outside world. This is a complex mechanism, a kind of interface through which the unchanging, spiritual in nature soul interacts with the world of matter and thus gets the opportunity to enjoy this world.

QUESTION: Can you explain this with an accessible example?

For example, when we hear a sound, it is first registered by the citta as a sensation. Then buddhi, the perceptive faculty operating with our senses, allows us to understand what kind of sound it is and assign it to some category already familiar to us. After this, manas, the “mind,” based on past experience, determines whether we like this sound or not, and generates a desire to listen to it further or, conversely, to avoid it, and ahankara, the false ego, relates it to us, as if making this sound is part of my “I” (for example, a person begins to be proud that he managed to get to the concert of a famous musician).

QUESTION: So, we got It is said that the consciousness reflected in matter, having entered into interaction with the material gunas, took the forms, respectively, of the false ego, mind (manas) and the ability to perceive (intellect, or buddhi). What happens next?

We have already talked about the three types of energy that the false ego is endowed with. Jnana-shakti, or the energy of knowledge, stimulated by time, gives rise to proto-devatas, prototypes of the subtle forces of nature that control the senses. Kriya-shakti, creative energy, under the influence of time gives rise to the senses. And dravya-shakti, material energy, gives rise to subtle objects of perception and five gross primary elements - carriers of objects of perception. The first to appear is sound, which gives rise to ether, or material space. In other words, all previous stages of creation took place outside of material space. Space, or ether, is the stage on which all subsequent events in the material world unfold. According to Vedic philosophy, space is by no means an inert void. Space is a concrete material element, called akasha in Sanskrit. Likewise, the four other primary elements, or elements, should not be confused with what we usually understand as air, fire, water or earth. These five elements are the five states in which matter can exist: wave-like (in the form of vibration in the ether), gaseous, plasma, liquid and solid.

Thus, one after another, the twenty-five main elements of creation arise. The first element is time, then the four aspects of consciousness arise, then the five cognitive senses and the five acting senses, the five subtle and five gross elements.

From this description it becomes clear that we are not talking about material, physical elements, but about metaphysical categories, so to speak, proto-elements, or qualitative characteristics of matter that arise before the creation of matter itself. These qualities are the subtle matrix on the basis of which the reality accessible to our perception arises in all its diversity. Neither the gunas, nor time, nor space, not to mention the mind or intellect, can be isolated, examined under a microscope, or touched. But this does not negate their existence.

MODERN QUANTUM PHYSICS HAS DISCOVERED

THE WAVE NATURE OF ALL MATERIAL OBJECTS,

ALTHOUGH THE SAGE KAPILA SPEAKED ABOUT THIS

THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO...

As we have already said, based on this concept, many applied disciplines have emerged (yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, astrology, vastu architecture), the effectiveness of which has been proven in practice. Moreover, although all these ideas may seem to modern man unusual, because, at first glance, they contradict everything we were taught at school, in fact, modern science is just beginning to approach the need to introduce these concepts for full description reality. For example, modern the quantum physics discovered the wave nature of all material objects, although the sage Kapila spoke about this thousands of years ago when he explained that the first material element is sound, or wave.

Another example: the theory of self-organization of matter Nobel laureate I. Prigogine, in fact, postulates the existence of such characteristics in matter as intelligence. Who knows, maybe some future scientist will be awarded the Nobel Prize for the theory of the existence of a Supreme Intelligence that created this entire amazing mechanism? However, God created the material world for this purpose, so that it would always remain an “unproven hypothesis.”

According to the Vedas, there are material and spiritual worlds... Anyone can choose their place of life, but how?...
In the spiritual worlds, living beings are constantly in a state of caring for everything around them, and therefore in ever-increasing happiness, they do not age and live forever.
In our material Universe, which has the shape of a ball, there is a tendency to first take care of oneself, happiness is limited by the framework of matter, which itself is by its nature limited both in space and in time. Therefore, inveterate materialists, attached exclusively to material happiness, are always dissatisfied. After all, the true nature of everyone is the nature of the soul, which is “born” to live in a limitless spiritual world with ever-increasing happiness, but here everything is limited... But how, please tell me, can something limitless be satisfied with something limited? . Therefore, the material world is conventionally divided into three layers, or levels, of planets:

1) the highest level, where pious beings who know how to live correctly live in happiness, i.e. those who understood their true nature - spiritual;

2) middle level, where piety is not enough; and living beings at this level have to either rise higher or fall lower in subsequent lives, depending on their actions and desires. Those. this is the level of choosing a further path - the path of spiritual happiness or material hunger and dissatisfaction.

3) the lowest level, where creatures mired in sins live. Those. those individuals who care only about themselves, completely forgetting about others. This is comparable to a rider who, in anger or simply because of a bad mood, kills his horse, which is carrying him. This is a sin - any act that does not take into account the interests of everyone around, therefore everyone around at this level of planets is dissatisfied, angry, at the slightest opportunity they put others into unpleasant situations, slander each other, etc.

Regarding the Earth, the Vedas say that our planet is at an average level, just below the center. That’s why we have almost equal amounts of happiness and suffering, a little more suffering: after all, it’s a little lower.

Each person, or soul, in our world acquires the type of body that corresponds to its desires, adjusted to its level of consciousness, or piety.

The meaning of the human type of body is to comprehend higher knowledge, therefore the human body is endowed with the highest level of consciousness and intelligence, while animal bodies have a more developed mind, or feelings. Man asks questions about the meaning of life and existence, his purpose and level of development, while animals live only with feelings, much more developed than those of humans, and “today.” Animals do not know who they are and why they live and do not think about their fate and which path in life to choose. They follow a well-worn road, written by their instincts and reflexes.

This is the main difference and advantage of humans over animals. Therefore, only by correctly forming its character and studying spirituality, the soul in the human body can find happiness, even in its unsuccessful specific earthly incarnation.

universe, universe, fate
The Vedas say that good and evil have always existed in our material world, but the spiritual world was created for absolutely selfless living beings who live for others. And they don’t even have the idea of ​​living for themselves, so they live there, and we... we live here. Our material world was created for those who want to live for themselves.

Why is everything arranged this way?

This is the nature of eternal living beings. They are absolutely free and this is where the aspect of happiness comes into play. That is why everyone is given freedom of choice, so that everyone can choose their own path and their own happiness.

If a living being chooses life for himself, he ends up in the material world and lives next to the same selfishly minded souls like herself.

And if in this world a person gets tired of living for himself, he begins to engage in spiritual practices, learns to live for others and subsequently gets to the higher planets, and from there he can get to the spiritual world - a world where everyone cares primarily about the other.

How can you make the right choice so as not to be reborn again in the material world and get into the spiritual world?

This is possible only in the service of higher knowledge. God.

When a person strives to help others, wants all people to become better and accept the divine attitude towards life, without envy and gossip, when he himself fulfills his duties and adheres to the right way of life, he will be able to rise and, after a certain number of lives, be freed from his karma, from one’s past desires and actions Only selflessness can help a person get to the higher worlds

Are there selfless individuals today who may not return to Earth?

There are always such people, but there are very few of them. Usually they live an exclusively spiritual life. They are not interested in popularizing themselves. Only if one of them chooses the path of missionary work will the world know about them. Among the spiritual personalities recognized by all, one can mention Sergius of Radonezh. Seraphim of Sarofsky There are also our contemporaries, but it is not customary to talk about them publicly in order to avoid envy and gossip

Have you been lucky enough to meet such people?

Undoubtedly, I had such meetings. I spent a long time in India, where I studied various areas of spiritual knowledge and, accordingly, met priests and holy people. I wanted to understand what perfection is human character. And, what makes me happy, I was able to meet such people not only in India, but also in post-Soviet countries and even in the West.

What benefits does communicating with such people give?
According to Vedic knowledge, one minute of communication with a pure, exalted person completely changes a person’s destiny.

Accordingly, the main asset of a person is his ability to humbly communicate with a sage. The highest manifestation of luck and wealth in the Vedic understanding is when a person acquires enough internal strength to actually find such a person, humbly listen and build his life according to the principles that are shown to him.
From an interview with Tatyana Timofeeva
with Ayurveda doctor O.G. Torsunov
... www.Krishna.org.ua ...

Soul, what is this? Modern science divides everything in the universe into animate and inanimate, thereby saying that not everything has a soul. The term Soul is present in almost all religions and beliefs, but only the Vedas give an understanding of the essence of the Soul. So what is it? The Vedas, both Indian and Slavic-Aryan, provide the answer to this question. I immediately draw the attention of the meticulous reader that the connection of the Soul with Karma and Reincarnation is extremely simple and at the same time extremely difficult to understand. This connection is paradoxical in its nature and therefore has a philosophical and esoteric character.

The concept of the Soul in the Bhavad Gita (Mahabharata) (according to the book by Swami Bhaktivedanta A.C. “Bhavad Gita as it is”

Although the Bhagavad Gita is published and read as a standalone work, it was originally part of the Mahabharata, an ancient epic written in Sanskrit. The Mahabharata narrates the events leading up to the age of Kali, the era in which we live. This era began about five thousand years ago. The entire work is structured in the form of a dialogue between God Krishna (Stribog, Kryshen) with his friend and admirer Arjuna.

Their conversation, representing one of the greatest philosophical and religious dialogues in the history of mankind, took place before the first battle in the great fratricidal war between the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra on the one side and their cousins, the Pandavas, sons of Pandu, on the other.

Two brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, belonged to the Kuru dynasty, founded by King Bharata, who once ruled the entire earth. From his name arose the name “Mahabharata” (“ Great story descendants of Bharata"). Since Dhritarashtra, the elder of the two brothers, was born blind, the royal throne destined for him passed to his younger brother, Pandu. It so happened that Pandu died young, and his five sons - Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva - were left in the care of Dhritarashtra, who after the death of his brother temporarily took the throne. Therefore, the sons of Dhritarashtra and the sons of Pandu grew up and were brought up together in the royal court. Both of them were taught the art of war by the highly experienced Drona and instructed by the revered elder of the clan, “grandfather” Bhishma. However, the sons of Dhritarashtra, especially the eldest of them, Duryodhana, hated the Pandavas and were jealous of them. And the blind and weak-willed Dhritarashtra wanted his own children, and not the sons of Pandu, to inherit the royal throne. Then Duryodhana, with the consent of Dhritarashtra, planned to kill young sons Pandu. It was only thanks to the protection of their uncle, Vidura, and the protection of their cousin, Lord Sri Krishna, that none of the attempts on the life of the Pandavas succeeded. Lord Krishna was not an ordinary person, but the Supreme Lord Himself, who incarnated on earth in the form of a prince of one of the royal families of that time. As a result of all the vicissitudes, war finally broke out between the sons of Dhritarashtra and the sons of Pandu. The entire Bhavad Gita consists of collections of texts that are united by the events that describe them, which can be interpreted as individual chapters of the book.

The sages who saw the truth came to the conclusion about the frailty of the non-existent [material body] and the immutability of the eternal [soul]. They reached this conclusion after carefully studying the nature of both.

Know this: that which permeates the material body is indestructible. No one can destroy an immortal soul.

The material body of the eternal, indestructible and immeasurable living entity is doomed to death. Therefore fight, O descendant of Bharata!

The one who considers a living being to be a murderer, just like the one who thinks that it can be killed, does not have knowledge, for the soul does not kill and cannot be killed.

The soul is neither born nor dies. It never arose, does not arise and will not arise. She is unborn, eternal, always existing and original. It does not die when the body dies.

Just as a person takes off old clothes and puts on new ones, so the soul enters new material bodies, leaving behind old and useless ones.

The soul cannot be dismembered by any weapon, burned with fire, wetted with water or dried out by the wind.

This individual soul cannot be broken into pieces, dissolved, burned or dried up. Unchangeable, motionless and eternal, it is everywhere and always retains its properties.

The soul is invisible, incomprehensible and unchanging. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.

The one who is born will certainly die, and after death he will be born again. This is inevitable, therefore, while fulfilling your duty, you should not indulge in sorrow. In the beginning, all created beings are in an unmanifested state. At the intermediate stage of creation they manifest themselves, and after the destruction of the universe they again pass into an unmanifested state. So is it worth mourning them?

Some look at the soul as a miracle, others talk about it as a miracle, others hear that it is like a miracle, and there are those who, even having heard about the soul, cannot comprehend it.

The Bhagavatam says: “There are innumerable particles of spiritual atoms the size of one ten-thousandth of the tip of a hair.”

Thus, an individual particle of the soul is a spiritual atom, which is even smaller than the material one, and there are countless such spiritual atoms. This tiny spiritual spark is the basis of the material body and its influence spreads throughout the body, just as a medicine taken penetrates all parts of the body. This movement of the soul is felt throughout the body as consciousness and it is proof of its presence. Any layman can understand that a material body without consciousness is dead and that no material means can revive this consciousness in the body.

Our constantly changing body cannot exist forever. Modern medicine recognizes the fact that at the cellular level the body changes every moment; this determines the processes of growth and aging. But the eternal soul, despite all the changes that occur in the body and mind, always remains unchanged. By its nature, the body is changeable, but the soul is eternal. All those to whom the truth has been revealed come to this conclusion. The concept “existent” refers exclusively to spirit, and the concept “non-existent” refers to matter. A paradox, of course, but this is affirmed by everyone who sees the truth.

The material body is perishable by nature. It can die immediately after birth or after a hundred years, but its death is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. The body cannot exist forever. However, the soul in the body is so small that no enemy can even see it, let alone kill it. As has been said, the soul is so small that no one knows how to determine its size. In any case, we have nothing to mourn, for a living being cannot be killed, just as the material body cannot be protected from death forever or even for a long time.

An infinitesimal particle of the spiritual whole receives a material body in accordance with its activity in the past.

The Vedanta-sutra states that the living entity is of the nature of light because he is a particle of the supreme light. Just as the light of the sun sustains life in the universe, the light emanating from the soul sustains life in the material body. As soon as the soul leaves the body, it begins to decompose - therefore, it is the soul that maintains life in the material body. The body itself has no value. Therefore, Krishna encourages Arjuna to fight and not compromise the principles of Faith in the name of preserving material relationships based on bodily concepts of life. A living being cannot be killed at all, for it is spiritual in nature. Only the material body can be killed. However, this does not mean that the Vedas encourage murder. Vedic injunctions read:

ma himsyat sarva bhutani - “No violence should be used against any living being.”

The fact that an infinitesimal soul can reside both in the body of a huge animal or a mighty tree, and in the body of a microbe, millions of which fit in a space no larger than the head of a pin, certainly seems to us a miracle. People of limited knowledge and those who indulge in worldly pleasures are unable to penetrate the secret of the tiny spiritual spark, even when narrated by the greatest scholar of the Vedas. Guided by material ideas about the world, most people living in our time are not even able to imagine how such a small particle can take on both huge and very tiny forms. Therefore, seeing manifestations of the nature of the soul or hearing its descriptions, people are only surprised. Bewildered by the material energy, they are so engrossed in sense gratification that they do not have time to know their real Self, although it is obvious that without knowing oneself, a person, no matter what activities he engages in, will ultimately suffer. defeat in a difficult and exhausting struggle for existence. It probably does not even occur to them that the purpose of man is to remember the soul and thereby put an end to his suffering in the material world. Some of those who seek to learn about the soul attend lectures on spiritual topics and seek the company of spiritual people, but sometimes, out of ignorance, one falls under the influence of false ideas that the Supersoul and the individual soul are identical with each other.

Nowadays it is very difficult to find a person who has perfect knowledge about the position of the soul and the Supersoul, their nature, relationship, etc. And it is even more difficult to find someone who has taken full advantage of this knowledge and is able to comprehensively describe the state of the soul. But if one way or another a person manages to comprehend the nature of the soul, the goal of his life will be achieved. The immortality of the soul is not a justification for violence, but during war, violence is permissible if the need for it really exists.

The concept of Soul in the Slavic-Aryan Vedas

In the beginning, the Earth was a continuous, highly heated ocean. After the Earth cooled to the required temperature, then new seeds of Spirits created by God Svarog fell into this substance. The power lines of these Spirits began to unite this substance around themselves, forming physical bodies. Due to the constant modification of the power lines of Souls, the development of various creatures took place. Since the earths in the Universe and the suns around which these earths revolve are different, this led to the formation of different types of people. And although everyone’s Souls are potentially equal, until matter is exhausted, people differ from each other. And while a person, still possessing the same Soul, lives an unjust life, he will not rise higher along the Golden Path of development, and his Soul will wander through the so-called planets of horizontal circles, incarnating into bodies with five, each time with new feelings and three again - new dimensions. These transitions will last until, in the crucibles of different lives, the Soul burns in itself all those imperfections that it perceived through its body, giving it too much will.

And these transitions in the Russian tradition are compared to a squirrel running in a wheel.

One of the main concepts that distinguishes Vedism from other faiths is the concept of Death. The Christian tradition, Judaism, and Islam are based on this concept, which is natural, since the source (Judaism) is the same. Death in the concept of a Christian is represented in the form of a bony, disgusting old woman with a scythe in her hand and dressed in a white veil. Let's take a closer look at the attributes of Christian death.

Descriptions of death among Christian peoples evoke horror and fear. Death is inevitable, it will come and comes to everyone in its vile guise. And it doesn’t matter at all whether you are a righteous person or a sinner, death is scary. This fear is based both on the appearance of death and the fear of ending up in Hell and subjecting one's souls to excruciating suffering. Those. death and fear are synonymous. No less characteristic is the description of the veil, namely white, but the White color characterizes Light, Purity, Righteousness and cannot be an attribute of Death. Obviously, these are the remnants of the ancestral Belief about Death, preserved from ancient times.

This is what God Perun says about Death, in a dialogue with representatives of the Clans of the Holy Race in the Santi Veda of Perun:

6. …..Tell us, tell us, is there death in the Revealed World or is everything Immortal? Which of the two is true?

7. Svarozhich answered them: Both are correct, but only in error do singers teach about death, people. I call death a deception, and I call deathlessness not a deception.... In self-deception Legs perished, It is not through deception that existence is achieved in Rule. And death does not devour the born like a lynx, it has no perceived form... You observe death in your surroundings, but for yourself you will not find it... Other people believe that Uzdrzec is the God of the dead, Different from death, and walking in the World Rules Immortal, It abides in your Souls and Spirit; This same God reigns in the World of the Ancestors, He is good to the good, but He is not good to the ungood... By the command of Udrzec, anger, delusion and death appear in the Children of men, Taking the form of greed...

9. A person led astray by the Self does not achieve unity with the Soul... In the power of death, lost people move along this road and, having died, again and again end up in the Navi World... Behind them, feelings go astray, That is why death is called Madder...

10. Carried away by their deeds, in pursuit of their fruits, they continue to go in this direction and do not overcome death...

12. In the world of Reveal, manifested by the Rod, the first thing that strikes people is the desire for someone else’s, soon it entails anger and lust. These three creatures of the Dark Ones, unreasonable people lead to death. Those. a person living according to the laws of the Gods is immortal, he simply loses his physical shell over time, but the Spirit, the soul is immortal and the soul ends up either in the world of Rule and continues its development, or in the world of Navi and is purified there.

13. Having calmed the seething thoughts with an aspiring thought, one must fight them by neglecting them... For such there is no death, for they have overcome passions with Knowledge and have surpassed death...

14. For all creatures and people, the Inferno seems like hopeless darkness; like madmen they strive for failure... But to a person who has rejected madness, what can death do? Whoever refuses to possess Ancient Wisdom, Let him not think about anything else, As if expelling the Power of Life from yourself!

From what has been said, one simple thought clearly follows - man destroys himself. Destroys both body and Soul. Himself, accepting false values ​​as a rule of life. It is these false values ​​that Perun points out:

envy, anger, lust.

And only the only death - Death in defense of the Fatherland - gives Immortality. By his death in defense of the Fatherland, a person, as it were, erases all the negativity accumulated in himself and

4. ... There is no death for the warriors of the Heavenly Family....

at their core, the Vedas are instructions on how to achieve perfection and return to the Spiritual World, full of eternity, knowledge and further development.

Or in the book of Veles:

Rod III, 1:17:

And so we proclaimed glory to the Gods, who are our Fathers, and we are Their sons. And we will be worthy of Them by the purity of our bodies and SOULS, which will never die. And they do not die at the hour of death of our bodies....

and also in the text Gen. IV, 4:2:

Mother Glory shines in the clouds like the Sun and announces to us victory and death. But we are not afraid of this, for we have eternal life, and we must care about the eternal, because earthly things are nothing against it.

As can be seen from the above texts, the concept of Soul is very similar. In both the Indian and Slavic-Aryan Vedas, the soul is immortal and indestructible. And the concepts of 3 Worlds among the Hindus and Rule - Reveal - Navi among the Slavs are associated with the concept of Soul. As well as such fundamental concepts as KARMA and REINCARNATION.

Karma and reincarnation

The concept of reincarnation clearly follows from the definition of the Soul. Since the Soul is immortal, then a person, or rather a soul that has not reached a certain level of development, cannot continue to ascend along the Golden Path, or end up in the World of the Gods in accordance with the Indian Vedas. Our Soul, in accordance with our past pious or sinful activities, is forced to incarnate in material bodies various types and forms. This is the law of reincarnation - reincarnation or transmigration of souls. Throughout life, the material body changes several times, but the soul remains unchanged, in the same way, after the death of one body, the soul changes it to another and so wanders around the Universe, moving from one form of life to another, in strict accordance with the law of Karma - the “wheel of samsara.” "in the Indian Vedas.

And here’s what the Slavic-Aryan Vedas say about this:

And while a person, still possessing the same Soul, lives an unjust life, he will not rise higher along the Golden Path of development, and his Soul will wander through the so-called planets of horizontal circles, incarnating into bodies with five, each time with new feelings and three again - new dimensions. These transitions will last until, in the crucibles of different lives, the Soul burns in itself all those imperfections that it perceived through its body, giving it too much will. And these transitions in the Russian tradition are compared to a squirrel running in a wheel.

In 1931, like a bolt from the blue, the word of the 25-year-old Austrian mathematician Kurt Godel sounded. He proved his incompleteness theorem, from which, in particular, it follows that

there is no complete (self-sufficient) formal theory in which all true theorems of arithmetic would be provable. Gödel proved that the consistency (consistency) and completeness (self-sufficiency, solvability) of any logical system can be established only if it is immersed in a more perfect system. At the same time, due to the complication of logical language, the problem of consistency and completeness becomes even more complicated, and this leads to an endless logical escalation in a spiral of complications. Hence, mathematicians concluded that a universal criterion of truth is impossible.

Simply put, only the complex can appreciate the simple. For scholars of the humanities, Gödel's theorem lends itself well to paraphrasing without distorting its meaning. Let's translate it into human language. Here is one of its possible interpretations:

the system cannot understand its own device unless it rises to the next level of complexity. At the same time, it will become more complicated, so it will never understand itself.

Just like a surprised dog spinning behind its tail or an eccentric running around a pole with the desire to kiss the back of his head.

In fact, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem completely proves the existence of the “Golden Path of Development” or the “Ladder of Soul Cultivation” among the Hindus.

The complex is protected by the automatic inexorability of the closedness of Karma. The simple cannot profane (humiliate) the complex with impunity. Having despised the complex, simplicity is doomed to degradation and self-destruction, because it itself refuses to break through the ceiling of its limitations with its own head. You cannot spit on God, drive out philosophers, stone, burn or crucify prophets. History shows how it ends. God is fair.

The system (person) cannot understand the degree of its limitations unless it rises to the next level of complexity (Gödel). Therefore, everyone is happy with their completeness, does not consider themselves deprived of intelligence and imagines themselves to be a genius, and evaluates others according to their ceiling, but not higher. Therefore, not a single new (complex) thought is recognized until it becomes outdated. Only a small dose of novelty looks familiar and is perceived by the human consciousness. Knowing this, the Initiates never bothered themselves with useless profanity. Only unbearable pressure from within forces one to give up pregnancy and bear the burden of responsibility for what is said. Every idea (thought) is a soul with a birth instinct. This does not justify graphomania, but it does mean that what bigger soul, the greater the container (womb) of the mind is required, the stronger its pressure from within. Information wants to become energy. This is the law of reincarnation immortality of great souls. Like understands like. To deny and destroy the incomprehensible is an ineradicable natural instinct of the profane crowd and its leaders, based on a lazy desire for passivity, peace, entropy, and death. Only by constantly overcoming the inertia of laziness of the mind can one remain human.

Engravings by M. Escher clearly illustrate the paradoxical isolation of Karma.

Here in the engraving the monks climb up the stairs and find themselves in the same place and height. The artist achieved the effect of a closed path by introducing geometric contradictions - paradoxes. Such nodes are easily distinguishable in the figure, but not in real life and not in your own subconscious. And if the reader instinctively ran after the crowd to a robber meeting (and not in the opposite direction) and was hit on the head with a police baton, the head is to blame, not Karma.

Life is a constant choice (“or”) and decision making. Karmic knots look like axioms (values, customs), the truth of which no one has proven. An example from politics. “Man is a cog in society” and “the rights of the individual (the egoist) are higher than the rights of society” are false postulates due to their primitive one-sidedness. “The right of nations (?) to self-determination” and the “principle of inviolability of borders (?)” are a slyly thrown in paradox that led to senseless wars, beneficial only to those who came up with a way to redistribute the economy and peoples by the hands of the peoples themselves (every nation contains a nationalist the mob, fascinated by the romanticism of cannon fodder).

Here is an example of political-psychological PR unprofessionalism: “Ukraine is not dead yet...” As it is lived, so it is sung. And vice versa. But the name of the terrorist network “Al Qaeda” (Arabic: القاعدة‎‎, al-qāʿidah, IPA: /ælˈqɑːʕɪdɐ/, “foundation”, “base”, “foundation”, “principle”) was given by a very high-class professional.

If you hit the wall with your fist, you will immediately feel pain in your fist. The principle of closedness of Karma is the same as that of time (“or”, choice), but with the addition of “and”. The hard “and” leaves no alternatives. Once you do something, you will inevitably receive a similar answer. Immediately and without delay, the seed of the effect appears in the cause. By hitting the wall, they received the pain they caused it. The presence of Karma (“and” and “or”) is due to the holographic principle “everything is everything, everything consists of everything.” The whole world is Me. You are like Me. If one part (being the Whole) hits another part, it hits itself. By causing harm to another (who is I), I cause harm to myself. I bite my own tail and scream from the pain that came from nowhere. Karma underlies the instinct of self-preservation, the feeling of pain and illness. Karma (conscience) is a protective principle of self-preservation from the idea of ​​destruction (evil), from self-degradation. The inexorability of the consequences cannot be prayed for and the charlatan cannot be taken away. Karma can only be experienced. Repentance, rebirth, knowledge calms, but does not forgive. Absolution of sins is the same arrogance as the abolition of the law of universal gravitation. When I cry, I cry. The karmic closed cause-and-effect relationship is Mobius-like with its paradoxical nodes. Your paradoxical dreams indicate the presence of such nodes in the subconscious (in the unconscious unconscious), in the endless complexity where the intellect plunges daily in search of intuitive insight.

Human thinking is the discrimination and unraveling of paradoxes.

A person walks along a multivariate cause-and-effect karmic life chain with paradoxical nodes and rings. Having walked the path of accomplishments and achievements, he suddenly finds himself in the place where he started. Why then were all the useless feats? The wise pessimist Solomon (Ecclesiastes), who uttered a brilliant thought about the vanity of all things and the uselessness of human labor, was a king who had relished all the delights of life and was tired of satiety, but not an Initiate who knew how to unbend a circle into a spiral. “There is no royal path to geometry” (Euclid). “Everything,” starting with an elementary particle, reincarnates. Reincarnation is the principle of the eternally renewed existence of “Nothing”. The truth of reincarnation is proven by the evidence of the existence of vibration (waves) and the fact of the information-energy essence of the Universe. A person stays in the World for a short period of time in order to, by copying Reality, create in memory his inner virtuality, in which consciousness lives, in order to, by becoming more complex, expand the subconscious (soul), that is, himself. In the next reincarnation (rebirth, palingenesta, regeneratio) the soul will continue to ascend from the achieved level. The child's mind will have developed subconscious and abilities, opportunities for rapid growth. For this purpose, the ever-creating God only gives, without demanding anything in return. The underdeveloped are not born because God offended them by unequal starting conditions. This is the action of Karma. All other human “priorities” are disproportionately insignificant fussy little things, the path to entropy. From what he left, he came to this - a sign of delusion in life path.

In ideology, history, politics, wars there is an inner meaning hidden that has never been published anywhere. The cynicism of revelations would shock so-called democratic humanity. It's better not to know. False priorities lead people in circles. Nations are driven by kings, and kings are driven by players who slyly throw out plausible ideas. The nature of biological and ideological viruses is the same. The Hermetic virus is especially dangerous due to its hidden archetypal effect on the subconscious. He can distort the fate of nations for an entire era. The information-energy field (unconscious, soul) is common to everyone and personal to everyone. It is rich in the complexity of diversity. There is no absolute karmic independence and freedom for anyone. A person is dependent from the inside on his (and everyone’s) subconscious, i.e. from myself (and everyone). Each Soul is connected by invisible karmic threads (ties) with children, parents, clan, people. From the outside, a person is dependent on Reality and society. From within, his mind is exposed to subconscious impulses generated by outsider, coding minds. There is no equality. The equality of essentially different people lies in their equal value. Each uniqueness is unique, therefore absolutely valuable and significant. Only in a free tribe, as in a family, children are not slaves.

Rencarnation in Christianity

Modern Christians reject the doctrine of reincarnation because:

a) that it is not confirmed in the Bible. They argue that the doctrine of transmigration is a late addition to the biblical tradition, and the revelation of John prohibits adding anything to or removing anything from the sacred texts. However, it should be noted that it is precisely this prohibition on free handling of the scriptures that has given rise to many criticisms, since modern scholars have established that some biblical books were compiled after the “Apocalypse”;

b) that because one of the main Christian hopes is the resurrection of the dead and actually denies reincarnation:

“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to whomever He will.”

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live.”

“... having hope in God that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both righteous and unjust, for which they themselves are waiting.”

"God! You brought my soul out of hell and revived me so that I would not go to the grave.”

The Revelation of John has not always been considered the final text of the canonical Christian scriptures. And if this is really the case, Christian believers must come to terms with the existence of reincarnation, despite the fact that the teaching about it came into the Christian tradition quite late. Christian writers spoke quite harshly about the doctrine of reincarnation, using very intolerant epithets: “a doctrine contrary to faith and disastrous” (St. Justin), “women’s tales” (Tatian), “chimera, stupidity, madness, absurdity” (Hermias the Philosopher), “nonsense” (St. Theophilus of Antioch), “defective faith” (Minutius Felix), “dreams” (Clement of Alexandria), “monstrous fiction” (Tertullian), “unreasonable teaching,” “opinions contrary to our faith,” “fabulous teaching", "absurd and impious fables", "dogma alien to the Church of God" (Origen), "idle talk" (St. Methodius of Olympus), "fairy tales for gullible children" (Lactantius), "doctrines filled with laughter, worthy of condemnation and shame" (St. Cyril of Jerusalem), "bookish amusement" (St. Gregory the Theologian), "ravings of gloomy philosophers" (St. Basil the Great), "reasoning of fabulous people", "pagan myths", "vain talk" (St. Gregory of Nyssa ), “obscenity” (St. Ambrose of Milan), “shameful teaching,” “absurdities,” “myths” (St. John Chrysostom), “impious teaching,” “impermissible and impious opinions” (St. Epiphanius of Cyprus), “vile reasoning,” “fables of the pagans” (Blessed Jerome of Stridon), “absurdity” (St. Cyril of Alexandria), “lies hostile to the Christian faith” (Blessed Augustine), “absurd fables” (Blessed. Theodoret of Cyrus).

Is it possible to prove the existence of the soul? Now our consciousness is entirely focused on the body. But the nature of the soul can only be comprehended by those whose gaze is turned inward. For people whose consciousness is purified by keeping vows, meditation, prayer and repentance, the fact of the existence of the soul seems self-evident - for them it is not a matter of faith, but of real spiritual experience. For others, even despite the presence of enormous empirical material, the existence of the soul will remain an unproven hypothesis.

“If an Asian asks me what Europe is, I will be forced to answer: “It is that part of the world in which people are obsessed with the fantastic idea that man was created out of nothing and did not exist before his present birth.” A. Schopenhauer

“Some look at the soul as a miracle, others talk about it as a miracle, others hear that it is like a miracle, and there are those who, even having heard about the soul, cannot comprehend it.”"Bhagavad-gita".

Even the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides argued that if something exists, then it always exists*. You can doubt anything except one obvious truth: I exist, which means, according to Parmenides, I have always existed and will not cease to exist in the future. Almost verbatim the same idea was repeated by one of the founding fathers of America, Benjamin Franklin**.

Of course, a reference to Parmenides is unlikely to convince anyone now, but the idea itself is quite logical, so people return to it again and again. If there is a law of conservation of matter and a law of conservation of energy, then why cannot there be a law of conservation of consciousness? Many of the laws discovered in ancient times are only now being rediscovered by us. The law of conservation of consciousness is one of them. This is how the Bhagavad-gita formulates it: “That which is constantly changing is as good as not existing, but that which exists must be unchanging and always exist” (Bg. 2.16). We can divide the arguments in favor of ideas about the eternity of consciousness into four broad categories: 1) These ideas are confirmed by the revealed scriptures (primarily the scriptures of the Vedic tradition) and the experience of many genuine saints and mystics, who by definition are free from the tendency to deceive; 2) the concept of the eternity of consciousness is logical, corresponds to our innate ideas about justice and goodness and allows us to create a complete picture of the universe; 3) there is a huge amount of experimental material indicating the preservation of consciousness after the death of the physical body; 4) practical conclusions made on the basis of the idea that the soul is eternal allow a person to live his life much more meaningfully and fruitfully.

* “Being does not arise and is not subject to death. Whole everything, without end, does not move and is homogeneous.”

** “Based on the fact of my existence in this world, I can assume that in one form or another I will always exist.”

Do ideas about the eternity of the soul have pragmatic value? The answer is obvious: those who live based on the idea of ​​the eternity of the soul have a much better chance of living this life with dignity and not being afraid of its continuation in the future than those who proceed from the unproven hypothesis of the “disposability” of life. The inability to think about the long term is intellectual myopia, a sign of mental weakness. Intuitive insight into the eternity of the soul is inherent in man by nature. A truly visionary person lives without trying to suppress the feeling of the eternity of existence. The wisest people in all centuries have tried to develop this feeling in themselves and thus acquired happiness, fortitude and fearlessness. The same pragmatic proof applies on the scale of human history: the denial of the existence of an eternal soul and attempts to build a paradise on earth without God - an experiment begun by Western civilization about two hundred years ago, during the Enlightenment - brought the entire Earth to the brink of ecological disaster. In other words, consciousness that denies the existence of the eternal soul is destructive by its very nature. The motto “After us there may be a flood” is dangerous not only for our descendants, whom we, without asking, condemn to the flood we provoked, but, above all, for ourselves, because the “flood”, as a rule, comes much faster than we predict .

But is it possible to prove the existence of the soul? It depends on what we consider evidence. Can we, for example, prove the existence of the mind? Who has seen the mind? Who groped him? The mind cannot be understood using logic or the methods of physics and chemistry. To study it, other methods are needed. The same is true in relation to the eternal soul: everyone can be convinced of its existence, but for this it is necessary to use special methods. Now our consciousness is entirely focused on the body. Only one whose consciousness is directed inward can comprehend the nature of the soul. The Upanishads explain that the mind gains the ability to comprehend the soul when prana (vital air) ceases its activity, that is, when the mind concentrated on the body is concentrated within (Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.9.). Therefore, while philosophers break their spears, arguing about the nature of the soul, yogis plunge into a mystical trance, and believers try to wash their hearts with tears of repentance. In other words, for people whose consciousness is purified by keeping vows, meditation, prayer and repentance, the fact of the existence of the soul seems self-evident - for them it is not a matter of faith, but of real spiritual experience. For others, even despite the presence of enormous empirical material, the existence of the soul will remain an unproven hypothesis, because the soul belongs to those categories whose existence is difficult to prove using a purely scientific apparatus adapted for the study of external objects.

Of course, for the philosophers of the Vedic tradition, the fact of the existence of the soul did not seem so difficult to prove. Their logic was something like this. The observer (subject) is always different from the object of observation. To prove the existence of a thing, it is enough to see it, that is, the existence of an object is proven through observation. But the subject cannot see himself: the existence of the subject (observer) is proven by the very fact of observation. Descartes said: “I think, therefore I exist.” It is also obvious that the nature of this observing self is not reducible to body and mind, because both my body and my mind can be the object of my observation. Therefore, the bearer of this “I” must be distinct from the body and mind.

Someone may object: “As for the body, everything is clear, but what prevents us from assuming that the mind itself is observing the mind? Let's say, one part of the mind, some kind of superprogram, takes on the functions of monitoring other parts of the mind, programs working in it? Let's see how the introduction of the concept of a soul separate from the mind corresponds to Occam's famous logical principle, which states: “New entities should not be attracted unless absolutely necessary.” In other words, in order to prove the validity of the introduction of this concept, it is necessary to show that the entire range of manifestations of consciousness cannot be fully explained based on the hypothesis that consciousness is simply a product of the human brain.

From the point of view of the Vedic scriptures, the soul is an indestructible atom of consciousness, the bearer of a special quality: the ability to perceive existence. Matter itself has no consciousness and is not capable of playing the role of a subject (observer). In Sanskrit, this atom of consciousness is called atma, which means “subject”, the bearer of “I”, the personal principle (from the verbal root am, “to move”, “to act”). The Upanishads call the soul anu, which means “atomic” or “indivisible.” Another name for the soul is jiva, “living being.” The Russian word life and the Sanskrit word jiva come from the same Sanskrit root jiv, which means “to live.” Unlike most Western philosophical and theological teachings, the Vedas assert that not only humans have a soul, but also animals, including the lower ones. In other words, any manifestation of life has a spiritual nature; the basis of life is an indestructible spiritual principle.

So, the soul, or jiva, is an eternal particle of spirit endowed with limited independence, an atom of consciousness, the cause of all manifestations of life. What distinguishes it from dead matter, first of all, is the ability to realize its existence and cognize the world. It is this quality - the ability to perceive - that distinguishes living from non-living.

The atma-soul has three main properties: 1) the soul is indestructible; 2) the soul is atomic; h) the soul has consciousness, that is, the ability to act and enjoy relative freedom. These properties of the soul are axiomatic. The scriptures postulate their presence in the atma - or rather, they define the atma as that which has these qualities.

We can clearly see that the human self is permanent. Everything we identify with - our body, mind, environment - is constantly changing. If our

“I” changed along with them, we would not notice the changes and certainly would not perceive them so tragically. To notice the movement of something, you need to be motionless yourself: being on an airplane, we do not feel the movement of the airplane. A person's body and mind are constantly changing: we were a baby, then a child, a teenager, a young man, an adult. But there is a certain fixed reference point from which we observe all these changes. By some miracle, our “I” remains unchanged in the process of all these changes. What provides constancy, or continuity, to our self-perception? This constancy must have some basis in reality.

The development of science only confirms the variability of matter. Modern medicine has found that in about seven years our body completely changes to molecular level, that is, every seven years we get a completely new body. But at the same time, our “I” remains unchanged. Someone, recognizing the variability of matter, may argue that the stability of our “I” is ensured by the stability of the structure of, say, the brain, which contains mechanisms of structural self-reproduction. This is what Roger Penrose, one of the most prominent theoretical physicists who, among other things, studies the nature of consciousness, writes about this in his book “Shadows of the Mind”:

Most of the matter that makes up our body and brain is constantly renewed - only their patterns remain unchanged. Moreover, matter itself seems to lead a transitory existence, since it can be transformed from one form to another... Thus, matter itself is something indefinite and short-lived, so it is quite reasonable to assume that the permanence of the human “I”, perhaps has more to do with the preservation of models than actual particles of matter.

But the constancy of patterns that Penrose speaks of must also be based on something, have some reason or substrate. Attributing this property to matter, which is changeable by its very nature, is at least illogical. This is one of the arguments in favor of the existence of the soul, the bearer of properties that changeable matter does not have.

And one more curious fact: a person does not feel the reality of death. There is nothing more alien to our consciousness than the thought that we will someday die, that we will cease to exist. Nobody wants to die, moreover, no one believes in their own death. Yes, theoretically we allow this possibility. Any person strives for constancy, eternity, immutability - and denies death with all his might. What is the basis of this stubborn desire? Even if something does not suit us in reality and we rebel against it, demanding change, subconsciously we hope that in this reality changed for the better there will be the constancy we are looking for. Any change, be it change outside of us or change with our body, unbalances a person and puts him in a state of existential crisis. In other words, the unreasonable desire for constancy has very deep roots in our psyche. An obvious example of this is the age-related crises that every person experiences throughout life. A child becoming a teenager experiences a very strong crisis; a teenager becoming a young man goes through a difficult period in his life; an adult also faces an equally severe crisis, the so-called midlife crisis - a crisis of anticipation of inevitable changes caused by old age. And of course, the most serious crisis in the life of every person is death, which mercilessly forces us once again to change our ideas about ourselves. The cause of age-related crises is internal discord, the discrepancy between two realities: the changeable external reality and the unchanging reality of our “I”. If variability were in the nature of consciousness, death or aging would not be subjectively perceived by us as an anomaly or cruel injustice.

Sometimes the soul is compared to a spark flying from a fire (Brihad-aranyaka-upanishad, 2.2.20.), or to a ray of the spirit. To give an approximate idea of ​​the point size of the soul, the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (5.9) says that the size of the soul is less than one ten-thousandth of the tip of a hair. The atomic nature of consciousness is closely related to the property of the immutability of the soul. An atom, in the original sense of the word, is indecomposable and, therefore, indestructible and unchangeable. Further, the atomicity of the soul, or its localization, explains the limited scope of manifestation of individual consciousness. There are philosophers in India who, while denying the plurality of souls, believe that we are all manifestations of one omnipresent consciousness. But from experience we know that our individual consciousness permeates only our body and does not extend to other bodies. Even a baby in the mother's womb does not feel everything that the mother experiences, and the mother does not know exactly what the baby experiences. Thus, the atomicity of the soul explains the indestructible individuality inherent in every living being: my conscious experience is always unique and will always remain only mine. I will never become you and you will never become me.

The soul spreads its consciousness throughout the body, just as a flower spreads its fragrance around itself. The Upanishads claim that in our body the soul is located in the region of the heart (Prashna Upanishad, 3-6.) and from there, through the flow of prana, vital air, it spreads the energy of consciousness to the entire body. From the heart there are seventy-two thousand channels, nadis, through which prana, life energy (qi in Chinese philosophy), circulates, allowing the soul to sense and control its entire material body. Any disturbance in the circulation of prana leads to the fact that the corresponding part of our body becomes numb and eventually atrophies. It is no coincidence that it is the heart, and not the brain, that has always been considered the source of life, consciousness and emotions and the most vulnerable part of a person. Bhagavad-gita (13.4) gives another example: the soul, being in one place, like the sun, illuminates the entire body with the light of consciousness. The postulate about the atomicity of consciousness also explains another important fact - the integrity of our perception. We do not perceive all kinds of sensations in different organs of the body separately, although different parts of the brain are responsible for them. All this experience belongs to one “I”. This fact is very difficult to explain if we proceed from the assumption that consciousness is generated by the joint activity of billions of nerve cells. Which of them arrogates to itself the right to be the bearer of a single “I” that extends to the entire body?

The nature of consciousness is both self-evident and mysterious. Scientists studying consciousness in connection with the problem of artificial intelligence find it difficult to even define it. R. Penrose, already mentioned by us, writes in this regard:

So what is consciousness? Of course, I don't know how to define consciousness, and I don't even think it's worth trying to find such a definition (since we don't understand what it means).

And this comes from the greatest expert in the field of consciousness! In other words, we understand a lot in this life, but, paradoxically, we don’t really understand what it means to “understand” or, for example, “to feel, experience.” Penrose further writes:

I am confident that a physically based concept of consciousness can be found, but I think that any definition will be incorrect.

Wikipedia, talking about artificial intelligence, states:

There is no exact definition of this science, since the question of the nature and status of human intelligence has not been resolved in philosophy.

Why is it so difficult to understand the nature of consciousness? The Vedas explain this as follows. The nature of atma, the individual soul, is twofold: it is simultaneously the bearer of consciousness and consciousness itself, that is, consciousness is both a property of the soul and the soul itself. In other words, the soul is both an observer and an observation; the one who experiences the experience, and the experience itself. The first aspect is called attributive consciousness, the second - constitutional consciousness. (In Sanskrit these two aspects of consciousness are called dharma-bhuta-jnana and dharmi-bhuta-jnana, or svarupa-jnana.) To understand this, we can again use the example of fire. Light is a property of a flame, but the same light is not just a property, but the very essence of a flame. Light as a property of a flame allows us to see the world around us, and the same light as the essence of a flame allows us to see the flame itself - I don’t need another candle to see a burning candle. Like a flame, the soul is self-evident.

Consciousness as an attribute of the soul allows us, living beings, to comprehend and exploit the world around us. Comprehending external world, I can understand a lot, but by comprehending myself, I must understand that this understanding is myself. In other words, the soul reveals itself in the act of cognition. Therefore, to study the nature of consciousness, we must turn inward, to ourselves, which at the same time implies limiting the external, extroverted function of consciousness. As a matter of fact, in all centuries there have been people who devoted their lives to this very thing - deep comprehension of themselves and self-mastery. Vedic philosophy claims that only in comprehending oneself lies the meaning of human life. Exploiting material nature - eating, sending, copulating and fighting for existence - can be done with the same success in any other form of life, but only man is capable of comprehending the nature of the soul. The state in which the soul comprehends itself is called samadhi. The degree of extroversion of consciousness determines the place of the soul on the ladder of evolution: the more extroverted the consciousness, the further it is from comprehending its nature and the more external the goals and values ​​of the soul are.

Scientists are persistently trying to reduce man to the level of a complex biological mechanism that arose accidentally in the process of evolution. However, a huge number of facts, even the simplest ones, cannot be satisfactorily explained within the framework of this paradigm. Even the appearance of the elementary instinct of self-preservation, which, according to the theory of evolution, should have already existed in the proto-amoeba, is almost impossible to explain. Honest scientists admit that “so far no physical, biological or mathematical theory has come close to explaining our consciousness and its logical consequence - intelligence” (R. Penrose, “Shadows of the Mind.”). In their attempts to explain the phenomenon of consciousness, scientists and philosophers are forced to postulate the presence of this quality even in the atoms of matter themselves! (This is done, for example, by the Australian physicist Reginald Cahill.) In other words, any deep consideration of this issue inevitably leads to the need to introduce some idealistic elements into the system, so isn’t it more logical to immediately single out consciousness as a separate category?

Within the framework of Vedic ideas, the entire spectrum of various observable manifestations of consciousness finds a simple and natural explanation. I think that any impartial person will agree that the introduction of this concept in no way contradicts Ockham’s logical principle, which prohibits the unnecessary “creation of new entities.” At the same time, even from the point of view of the Vedas, the nature of consciousness is logically incomprehensible (See, for example: “Bhagavad-gita”, 2.25. This quality of the soul in Sanskrit is called acintya.), because the soul is obviously contradictory. In a sense, this statement echoes one of the formulations of Gödel’s theorem: “If a system of axioms is logically consistent, then it is incomplete.” In other words, the quality of completeness implies logical inconsistency. The soul, as a particle of God, His tiny likeness, is complete and perfect, and therefore must be contradictory.

In this article I have tried to touch a little on some of these contradictions inherent in the nature of the soul: it is unchanging, but the consciousness of the soul evolves; it is atomic, that is, infinitely small, and at the same time inexhaustible, eternally dependent and at the same time endowed with freedom; she is blessed by nature, but is forced to drag out a miserable existence; all souls are equal, but at the same time there is a spiritual hierarchy. As paradoxical as it may sound, these contradictions found in descriptions of the nature of the soul and consciousness are philosophical proof of its completeness and immaterial nature. The spirit is always contradictory and does not obey the laws of logic. Although these contradictions are resolved within the framework of different schools of Vedic philosophy, in order to truly comprehend the soul, it is not enough just to know philosophy - the soul and consciousness are comprehended as a result of the inversion of consciousness, strict spiritual discipline, concentration of the mind, and, ultimately, revelation. Therefore, concluding the description of the nature of the soul, Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita (

The essence of the soul according to the Vedas.

Divine and demonic consciousness.

We must clearly understand that God has two energies - material and spiritual. Spiritual energy is life, living beings: God (the Supreme Being) and all of us, His integral parts. All living beings have a spiritual form, and they are all eternal. The spiritual world is a world of pure spiritual energy, pure living beings. He is full of eternity, knowledge and bliss (sat-chit-ananda).

The material world is a world of temporary forms consisting of material energy. All these forms are built from particles of matter (molecules, atoms, etc.) that are devoid of life. Unlike spiritual particles, or spirit souls, material particles are not living.

When we talk about the living entity in the material world, we must clearly understand the difference between the spiritual soul, or the living entity itself, jivas from the material body in which it is embodied. The material body consists of two sheaths - the gross body and the subtle body, the material mind. The material consciousness of a living being, his mentality, is recorded in his subtle body, and it is this consciousness that determines whether a living being belongs to divine or demonic natures at this stage of his stay in the material world.

Unfortunately, most teachers of modern religions do not understand this, in general, quite simple truth. They confuse spirit with matter, and the living being, the pure soul, with the material body and mind. Many examples of such confusion and the resulting error can be given, but I will give only one - the teaching of Aristotle and Christian philosophers about “different types of souls”: the human soul, animal souls, etc. (And the point here is not only the difference in terminology, when different people call different things with the same word - for example, Christians often call “soul” what we call the subtle body - but in real misunderstanding.) Further, as necessary, I will mention other similar misconceptions.

Masters belonging to the pure disciplic succession explain very clearly that all souls, or jivas are qualitatively the same, regardless of the bodies in which they are embodied. Wherever there is life, there is a spiritual particle, a soul. It is she who represents life, and it is her presence that makes a body consisting of dead particles of matter appear “alive.” There is no “living matter,” as some materialist scientists say, but there is matter (material body) in which a particle of life is temporarily located. When the soul leaves the body, it immediately becomes obvious that it is dead. It was dead before, but the presence of a living immaterial soul was noticeable in it.

And then the truth about reincarnation becomes clear: the eternal spiritual soul passes from one body to another, receiving, in accordance with the development of its consciousness, the bodies of tiny bacteria or other single-celled forms, plants, animals, people, demigods (virgos) creatures of the astral world, etc. So-called esotericists call astral beings “entities”, casting a shadow over the fence by introducing this new term, but in fact all of these are just different living beings - spiritual souls identical in essence, embodied in various material bodies, gross and subtle or only subtle ( astral beings, or spirits, do not have a gross material body).

So, in my own way essence all living beings are the same. They are all pure spiritual souls, children of God. In this sense, they are all saints. Why do they often behave very “unspiritually”, demonically? It's all about material consciousness. Although the spiritual essence of all living beings is the same, their temporary material covering can be very different.

Thus, chapter sixteen Bhagavad Gita,“Divine and demonic natures” describes precisely the types of consciousness. But the type of material consciousness cannot change the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul. Material consciousness is the content of the subtle body, a kind of “mind form”. It doesn't touch the soul. But it can cover it so tightly that the true spiritual radiance of the soul will not be able to break through this cover, and on its surface we will see a demon, an evil creature that hates God and treats others cruelly. However, the essence of the soul remains the same, this should never be forgotten.

Material consciousness is constantly changing - today the “demon” can be in a complacent state, and tomorrow, as they say, “it’s like it’s broken free.” But even more permanent, deeper qualities of character change, although not so quickly. This may take many lives, but still it is nothing compared to the eternity of the spirit soul. “The soul is by nature Christian,” this saying is attributed to the Christian theologian Tertullian. To paraphrase it, we can say: “The soul by nature is a devotee of God.” This cannot be changed because this is who we are, forever. But the Lord has given us freedom of choice, and we can choose not to love God and be at enmity with Him for an unlimited time. This will not change our essence - but it may last a very long time. Almost forever. However, our true essence as a pure, holy soul devoted to God will sooner or later still manifest itself, and then we will return to God. This cannot but happen, because, I repeat, everyone - absolutely everyone! - a living being by his eternal nature is a loving servant of God. This love may be temporarily unexpressed, but it is with us forever. There is no “evil” that is independent in its essence. Evil is simply the absence of a visible manifestation of love for God.

So, from what has been said, it should be clear that a demon can change and become a saint, and sooner or later he will do this, obeying his true nature. Although this may take a very long time, millions and billions of lives, and other “zillions” for which there is not even a name and which cannot even be imagined. But time exists forever, the material world, together with the souls in it, eternally moves from the manifested state to the unmanifested state and back, and God will not get tired of waiting.

Love, Joy and Happiness to you! :)