The world of the living sees the world of the dead. How to exercise conscious control over the portal to the world of the dead Spiritual world and spiritual prison
The world of the living has always been interested in the world of the dead. Myths, legends, and fairy tales of all nations always feature heroes who were not afraid to look behind the curtain separating two worlds and see: what is happening behind it? But scientists perceived stories about a world inhabited by the dead as fiction. To believe in the reality of the existence of the world of the dead, they needed evidence, and it appeared.
At the end of the 20th century, scientists were literally bombarded with facts that were difficult to argue with - videotapes on which no longer the hero of children's fairy tales or a modern psychic who sees through walls, but any person could, as they say, see firsthand the existence of the world of the dead.
Since the end of the 20th century, almost simultaneously in different countries, people began to see images of deceased relatives on their television screens. Here, for example, is what happened to Elena Nikiforova from Novorossiysk on February 6, 1990: “I watched the “Time” program on TV. Suddenly the screen became covered with stripes, and then a man’s face appeared on it, as if in a haze. It was motionless - something like a photograph. I looked at him and screamed in horror. My brother Misha, who died in 1985, was looking at me point-blank from the screen. A few seconds later, stripes ran across the screen again, and then the TV started showing the program again.”
The deceased, or rather the deceased, suddenly appeared on the TV screen in Riga. A large Latvian family gathered for a traditional wake for the mother of the head of the family. The mother's relatives and friends kept arriving, and the apartment could no longer accommodate all those who sympathized with the family's grief. It was decided to move the funeral to the dacha, since it was located not far from the city. Two days later, the family returned home, and it was then that they encountered a ghost who appeared on the TV screen. When they turned on the TV, the white face of the deceased grandmother clearly appeared on its screen.”
In Russia, the first attempts to use modern electronic equipment to obtain images of the world of the dead were made by a group of St. Petersburg ufologists led by V. Korobkov. In 1996, researchers provided photographs from the “other world” to participants in the Russian conference “Realities of the Subtle Material World.” Several years passed, and Penza researchers decided to repeat the experiments of their colleagues. But they took a different path. Instead of complicating electronic equipment, they began to combine its use with medieval magical rituals.
Using ordinary household video equipment: a TV and a video camera, Sergei Volkov and Eduard Utenkov from the Penza Association of Unconventional Research “Logos” managed to record the shadows of dead people on videotape.
This happened on December 27, 2002. First, the TV was tuned to the so-called “white ripple” - a TV channel free of broadcasts. A video camera was placed in front of him. Then, in full accordance with the ancient ritual, they created a luminous closed corridor - they installed two mirrors: one behind the TV, the second behind the camera. Thus, a closed video information network was created, into which an otherworldly “signal” from the invisible, otherworldly world fell as if into a trap. But, according to Penza researchers, this was not enough for the ghost to appear on the screen. A resonator was needed - an amplifier of the process, the use of which seemed to pull entities from the invisible, otherworldly world into the world of living people. For this, elements of ancient rituals were also used: things that belonged to the deceased or his hair and nails were placed between the video camera and the TV.
According to one of the researchers, Sergei Volkov, they have already managed to get “shadows” of the dead on the screen: “They, these shadows, then appear in profile, then turn their heads, then disappear again. They do not have clear facial features, but only the contours of the nose and the back of the head. Upon closer inspection, we discovered the resemblance of eye sockets. This phenomenon occurs in complete silence: neither sound nor signal from the other world has yet been detected. It is impossible to perceive the world of the dead in the same way as ours. On the film you can see some landscapes, mountains and fields. But all this is “made from a different “dough”, using technology alien to us. The other world is constantly “trembling.” This is not a continuous space, but some kind of snake-like writhing field, in which the shadows of dead people periodically appear.”
Why don’t people see that they live surrounded by the “shadows” of the dead? Why do these “shadows” appear so rarely in recorded videos? After all, today only the laziest do not engage in video shooting. Moreover, this does not require a bulky movie camera, as at the end of the last century; now this can be easily done using a miniature “advanced” mobile phone?
There can be many reasons. Firstly, each of us perceives himself only as a body with a head, arms, and legs. Representatives of the world of the dead may look completely different. According to the recollections of people who experienced clinical death, they perceived themselves as small balls flying in different directions and easily passing through walls. In photographs and videos, such balls are found quite often, but are considered as defects in photographs or as annoying interference in video materials. Secondly, judging by the research of scientists carried out in the so-called anomalous zones, such as the Khoper zone, energy objects, and these can include representatives of the world of the dead, must be filmed on special photographic films or video equipment that allows them to reflect objects in the ultraviolet zone of the spectrum, invisible to humans.
In order to obtain on videotape an image not of a black ball, which ufologists call a “black mark,” but of a person as he was before death, it is probably necessary to comply with some additional conditions. In almost all cases, people saw their relatives on the TV screen, and especially often those who died as a result of disasters. Most likely, this is not accidental. The transformation of a ball, which is the normal form of existence of people in the world of the dead, into an entity that outwardly resembles a person, may require a large energy supply or some other additional conditions, for example, passionate desire on the part of a representative of the world of the dead. If there is no such desire, then ancient magical rituals, the energetic meaning of which we can only guess about, can help force the entity to transform from a ball into a person.
Mikhail Burleshin
The world of the living and the land of the dead
Another symbol of the spiritual world was the kingdom of the dead - “an unknown land from where there is no return to earthly wanderers” (79).
“A common idea regarding the fate of the souls of the dead,” writes the famous historian and ethnologist S.A. Tokarev, “consists of belief in a special world of souls (“the other world”), where they go after the physical death of a person. Almost all peoples of the globe have this faith, although with great differences” (80).
Concepts about the location of the world of souls are very diverse. The location of the land of the dead among various peoples depends on living conditions, the surrounding landscape (steppe, mountains, forest, sea, island), on the level of development, on familiarity with the outside world, on funeral customs.
Among the most backward peoples, ideas about this are extremely vague: the world of souls is “somewhere out there” (sometimes a certain direction is indicated) - beyond the forest, beyond the river, beyond the mountains.
Talking about the ideas of the Australian aborigines, J. Fraser writes: “When asked where the small body (i.e., the soul. - Auto.) left after death, some answered: it went behind the bushes, others - it went into the sea, and still others said they didn’t know” (81).
Usually in such cases, the kingdom of the dead is separated from the world of the living by a water barrier - a river, a sea.
Among coastal peoples and islanders, especially in Oceania, there is a widespread idea of an afterlife located somewhere overseas, on an island. Among the peoples of Oceania and Eastern Indonesia one can observe various shades of the idea of an island world of souls; For some it is one of the neighboring islands, for others it is a mystical island somewhere far to the west. Since the islanders of Oceania do not know any other form of earthly land except the island, then the country of the dead is depicted by them as an island; This is where the souls of the dead go. This is the case, for example, with Polynesian beliefs.
Perhaps these beliefs reflected the influence of the practice of water burial, especially in its more complex form - sending a corpse in a boat to the open sea: it is, as it were, sent to the overseas world of souls. This may be the origin of this belief in Melanesia, where the Island of Souls is not the mythical Distant Island, but one of the nearby islands.
One should not think that such ideas are characteristic only of the primitive peoples of Oceania or Australia. In ancient times, they existed everywhere, including in continental Europe, where the role of “island of souls” was played by “foggy Albion” - present-day Great Britain, separated from Europe by a strait. Procopius of Caesarea, a historian of the Gothic War (VI century), gives a story about how the souls of the dead travel by sea to the island Brittia.
“Along the coast of the mainland (France. - Auto.) live fishermen, merchants and farmers. They are subjects of the Franks, but do not pay taxes, because from time immemorial they have had the heavy duty of transporting the souls of the dead. Transporters wait every night in their huts for a knock on the door and the voices of invisible beings calling them to work. Then people immediately get out of bed, prompted by an unknown force, go down to the shore and find boats there, not their own, but strangers, completely ready to set off and empty. The carriers get into the boats, take the oars and see that, from the weight of numerous invisible passengers, the boats sit deep in the water, a finger from the side. An hour later they reach the opposite shore, and yet on their boats they would hardly have been able to cover this path in a whole day. Having reached the island, the boats unload and become so light that only the keel touches the water. The carriers do not see anyone on their way or on the shore, but they hear a voice that calls the name, rank and relationship of each arrival, and if it is a woman, then the rank of her husband” (82).
At a time when a significant part of the Oikumene had already been explored and populated and there was no room left in it for the land of the dead, the world of souls began to be placed underground, under water, in the sky. An idea has developed of three tiers of the world, in which the middle tier constitutes the ordinary world - the “world of the living”, and the other two tiers - the upper (“heaven”) and the lower (“underground kingdom”) belong to the world of spirits. The main division remains the same: the world of the living and the kingdom of the dead.
Ill. 29. The world of the living and the land of the dead according to the ideas of the inhabitants of the island of Kalimantan, Indonesia.
“According to the views of many peoples, the universe consists of three spheres: the underworld, the human world and the heavenly world. Through this three-part division, a more ancient two-part one clearly appears” (83).
In Oceania there is a belief about the world of souls under the water: it is noted in New Caledonia, in the Bismarck Archipelago (the souls of the dead are in the river under water), in the Marquesas Islands, in Samoa, etc.
The idea of underground world shower. It is possible that this idea was influenced by the custom of burying the dead in the ground or burying them in caves (84). But there were other roots of this belief; in particular, they point to its connection with volcanism: where there are active volcanoes, there is often a belief that the souls of the dead descend through the crater of the volcano into the underworld. This is the case, for example, in Southern Melanesia.
Finally, many peoples place the world of souls On sky. This idea is present, for example, among some Australian tribes: the Kurnai, Wakelbura, and in some places among the peoples of Oceania.
Sometimes the location of the souls of the dead is localized more precisely: the stars, the Milky Way, the Sun. The connection of the dead with the stars is noted in the beliefs of a variety of peoples - from the same Australians to the peoples of Europe. Some authors point out the connection between the idea of the heavenly world of souls and the practice of corpse burning: the rising smoke from a burned corpse symbolizes the ascent of the spirit of the deceased to heaven.
With the complication of religious ideas and the development of social differentiation of society, the geography of the kingdom of the dead also became more complex. It began to appear heterogeneous, divided into different areas intended for the spirits of different categories of people.
“Among the overwhelming majority of peoples,” noted S.A. Tokarev, “and even among relatively backward ones, the idea of the location of the souls of the dead is differentiated and the same place is not indicated for all the dead (just as the same place is not used for everyone funeral ritual). The reasons why some dead people are destined for one place in the afterlife, and others another, are different. Sometimes moral motives are indicated: they say, the good ones will go to some bright place, and the evil ones will go to a dark place<…>Many peoples associate different afterlife fates with the manner of death, and with the performance of the funeral ritual by relatives, with their observance of established customs and restrictions” (85).
Developed religions offer combined options for the location of various parts of the afterlife. For example, Christian church tradition places the abode of righteous souls in heaven, and the prison for the souls of sinners, where they suffer torment, in the underworld.
However, in all cases, the “kingdom of the dead” was presented as a kind of parallel reality, inhabited, unlike the world of the living, not by bodily beings, but by the souls (more precisely, spirits) of the dead (86). That is, by and large, there are two worlds - our ordinary world and the afterlife. “In my opinion, he is somewhere outside of this world,” St., who lived in the 4th century, shared his opinion. John Chrysostom in his discourses on the Epistle to the Romans (31, 3–4).
And our contemporary, the American Orthodox ascetic Seraphim Rose, spoke at greater length. In his opinion, “these places are outside the “coordinates” of our space-time system; an airliner does not fly “invisibly” through heaven, and the Earth’s satellite does not fly through the third heaven, and with the help of drilling it is impossible to reach the souls awaiting the Last Judgment in hell. They are not there, but in a space of a different kind, starting directly here, but extending, as it were, in a different direction” (87).
Thus, existence seemed split into the physical world and the spiritual world.
According to the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Death and Sleep were brothers, sons of Night, living in a country that the sun never illuminates with its rays.
“There are chambers for motionless sleep.
It does not reach there, neither ascending, nor ascending, nor descending,
The sun has been a ray for centuries: clouds and fogs are mixed
There the earth evaporates, there is a vague twilight forever.
With its song, a sentinel bird with a crest is never there
There are no dogs or geese, which are smarter than dogs.
There is no cattle, no beast, no branches under the windy breeze
They can’t make a sound, no people can be heard arguing there.
Complete peace reigns there."
Ovid reports (88).
From this we can conclude that the parallel world we are considering is devoid of ordinary life manifestations and material properties.
Researchers of ancient cults and superstitions note the contrast between the properties of the world of the dead and the world of the living. In the “other world” everything is different, “everything is the other way around” - a thing broken in the human world will be intact there, someone who died here will be alive there. Similar ideas include the image of spirits walking “knees back” (89).
According to the views of the Ainu, pokna mosir(the lower world where the dead live) everything is different than on earth ( ainu mosir- the country of the Ainu): people walk upside down, trees grow upside down, etc. (90)
This emphasizes that in another world earthly laws do not apply, and the properties of this world are opposite to the properties of our physical world.
The idea of the inversion (reversibility) of the “other world” in relation to this was also retained by later religions, in which this idea was interpreted in the spirit of the doctrine of posthumous retribution. Let's remember Jesus' Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God (in contrast to this world, which belongs to the rich and noble. - Auto.);
Blessed are those who hunger (hungry. - Auto.) now, for you will be satisfied;
Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh;
Blessed are you when people hate you (in this life. - Auto.) and when they excommunicate you and revile you<…>Rejoice in that day and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven<…>.
On the contrary, woe to you, rich people! for you have already received (here. - Auto.) your consolation. Woe to you who are now satiated! for you will hunger (you will starve in the other world. - Auto.). Woe to you who laugh now! for you will mourn and lament” (Luke 6:20–26).
It turns out that this world and this world are mirror opposites, like the world and the antiworld. Knowledge of this made it possible to give very practical recipes on how to ensure a better fate in the “other world.”
In the physical world, people’s lives are short-term, transient, because the inhabitants of this world are mortal. And in that parallel world there is no death, but there is eternal existence. You can, of course, try to get along well in this life, get from it all the pleasures that it can provide, but all this will soon pass, like a hangover or love ecstasy, and then you will have to pay for these short-term pleasures for an eternity, dragging out a miserable existence in "the afterlife". Is it not worth sacrificing the fleeting pleasures of this temporary life for the sake of eternal bliss in that one? And to do this, you must deliberately deprive yourself here of what you want to get there and, on the contrary, expose yourself to the troubles that you would like to avoid in eternal life.
Sell all your property and give the money to the poor - this way you will ensure your wealth. Leave your family and children - this will allow you not to be alone in that life and live forever surrounded by loving relatives. Put on your rags, take a beggar's bag - and go begging. Then you will never have needs and will always be dressed in fashion. Even better is to catch some nasty disease that will ensure you eternal health. If you are afraid of physical pain, ask to be flogged or drop something heavy on your leg; at worst, get your finger caught in a door. If ambition gnaws at you, if you secretly dream of fame and glory - well, try to lead a lifestyle that everyone condemns, disgrace your good name with bad deeds, and better yet, commit such vileness that your fellow citizens curse you as a traitor and expel you from the city - then surely in the next life they will honorably elect you as their ruler and erect a monument during your lifetime.
They may say that we are exaggerating, but how else can the following statements be understood:
“Truly, this is the highest asceticism when [a person] suffers from illness. He who knows this acquires the upper world” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, V, I).
“Whoever leaves houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands,<…>He will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and those who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30).
Nemo sine cruce beatus - “There is no happiness without the cross (suffering. - Author)” ( lat.).
Via cruces via lucis - “The Way of the Cross is the way of salvation” ( lat.).
Some early Christian heresiarchs, on the basis of this kind of considerations, prescribed strict asceticism, and sometimes emasculation - in anticipation of endless centuries of pleasures, others, on the contrary, recommended unbridled debauchery and all forms of crime in order to enter a new life as unshakable righteous people. It is difficult to judge the reliability of such evidence, because they were drawn from indictments, while the heretical writings themselves were usually consigned to the flames, often along with their authors.
We are interested in something else, namely, similar statements from various sources that the properties of the parallel world are completely opposite to the properties of our world. From here we draw a simple and obvious conclusion: if our world, as we reliably know, is material, then that other world, opposite to ours in everything, is immaterial.
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History of religion Zubov Andrey Borisovich
"WORLD OF THE DEAD" AND "WORLD OF THE LIVING"
"WORLD OF THE DEAD" AND "WORLD OF THE LIVING"
“They buried their dead in the ground,” wrote S. G. F. Brandon, “because they were convinced that the abode of the dead was underground... The provision of the dead with objects that they needed in this life, apparently, can be explained by the fact that “that primitive people were completely unable to imagine life after death as anything other than the life they knew here on earth.” This statement by a major religious scholar in a special work devoted to posthumous judgment in the beliefs of various peoples is noteworthy for its specificity. But in reality, it greatly stupefies the ancient man, who knew very well that the interred dead man lies where he was buried, does not use any tools and does not eat any of the food left in the grave.
The funeral rite of a prehistoric person should, at a minimum, assume that in the minds of those who performed it there was an idea of the duality of human nature, of the body decaying in the grave, and of the soul that descends into the “abode of the dead.” The soul, accordingly, needs not the material objects themselves, but their “souls.” Just as on earth a corporeal person eats material food from a clay cup and strikes an enemy with a battle axe, so in the world of souls, the soul of a deceased person is able to eat the soul of food and strike the soul of an enemy with the soul of an axe. In order for a person to “give up the spirit”, for the soul to be separated from the body, the death of the material body must necessarily occur. In order for the souls of objects to become part of the world of the deceased, they, like material objects, must also die. Hence the fairly widespread custom of later centuries - killing slaves and wives on the graves of their masters and husbands, and the tradition dating back to the Neolithic of breaking dishes and other objects from the everyday life of the living on the grave. Tearing clothes as a sign of grief for the deceased goes back, perhaps, to the same series of symbols.
But, although knowledge of the fact of the dual, or even triple (spirit, soul and body) nature of man can already be found in the earliest eras of the existence of the genus Homo, in the Middle and even in the Early Paleolithic (Sinanthropes of Zhou Koudian), it explains the entirety of the funeral ritual hardly possible. First, the body is buried, the body is given a fetal or sleeping position. This means they believe in awakening, in the rebirth of the body, which means that the ancient otherness of man is not limited by the life of the soul, but they are waiting for some miraculous moment in the future when souls are reunited with bodies and the dead wake up. Secondly, breaking funeral gifts is a rather late and not universal custom. Rather, here we are faced with a secondary rationalization of the funeral ritual. Initially, the posture that was given to the body of the deceased, and the food, and objects of labor, and weapons placed in the grave, emphasized and symbolically indicated that the deceased was alive, that death was his temporary state.
In other cultures, to mark this fact, they resorted to other symbolic series and did not accompany the burial with objects of earthly life. And the devotion to the earth, recorded from the Mousterian burials of the Neanderthals, arose not from the desire to “bring the deceased closer” to the underground abode of souls, but rather from a simple and at the same time infinitely deep conviction that Mother Earth, from which the body was taken, must be returned. And she, the Earth, when the time comes, will revive the seed of heavenly life, the Eternal Sky. And again, only secondary rationalization connected the abode of souls, the kingdom of the dead, with the underworld precisely because from ancient times the bodies of the dead were placed in the ground in anticipation of the resurrection. We will see how the heavenly, extraterrestrial and underground locations of the souls of the dead struggle and coexist in the most ancient written cultures - in Sumer, in Egypt.
Neolithic burials, in comparison with Upper Paleolithic ones, may surprise you with the poverty of grave goods. In the Proneolithic and Early Neolithic periods, the dead become part of the world of the living and therefore their lives do not need to be marked with funeral “gifts”. The skulls of the dead stand in the house next to the hearth, the bones rest near the altar. They cannot do this to those who no longer exist. The dead in that era were not only considered alive, but their lives were the most essential support for the lives of the living.
In cases where burials took place in the open air, we find a thick layer of ash on the funeral altars. In Nahal Oren it reaches half a meter. It is not clear to whom sacrifices were made at the graves of ancestors - the dead themselves or their Creator. But one thing is absolutely clear - fire sacrifices could not be made to those who live “under the ground.” Fire ascends from the earth to the sky and the object of the Natufian sacrifice (Nahal-Oren - one of the Natufian settlements of Palestine) was of a celestial nature. When ideas about the underground topography of the world of the dead took hold, sacrifices to the dead began to be made differently - the blood of sacrificial animals was supposed to saturate the earth, and the altars themselves, for example, in the Greek hero cult, were built below ground level.
Burials with ungulate horns in the hands or on the chest of the deceased (for example, Einan), and later with amulets in the form of bull heads (Sesklo, Thessaly, 6th millennium BC) certainly indicate the goal of the posthumous journey - to the Heavenly God. The expectation of a journey is indicated by the frequent discoveries of dog skeletons next to human burials (Erk el-Ahmar, Ubeid, Almiera). The dog, the hunter’s guide in this world, turns out to be a clear symbol of the right path during the transition to another existence. Dog-headed Anubis, Kerberos are a later memory of this Early Neolithic image.
Burials under the floors of houses and inside settlements, characteristic of the early Neolithic, remain common in the sacred cities of the 7th-6th millennia. In Çatal Höyük, more than five hundred burials were discovered in an excavation area of half a hectare. They were buried under the beds of residential buildings, with men under a corner bench and women along a long wall. Mellaart suggests that living men and women slept on these same benches. In addition, many burials were found in oval pits outside houses. Quite a lot of people are buried in shrines. In the sanctuary VI. 10, 32 skeletons were found, in the vulture sanctuary (VII.8) - six burials. Mellart notes that the clothes, jewelry and belongings of those buried in sanctuaries are usually much richer and more varied than those of those buried in houses and oval pits. The scientist suggests that the sanctuaries contained the remains of high priests, who during their lifetime performed sacred rites in them. It is noteworthy that there are no burials in utility yards and storage areas. This indicates that the choice of burial sites by the Çatalhüyuk people was not random. They were buried not “where it’s easier,” but where they thought it was necessary.
The location of the skeletal bones and the incompleteness of the skeletons indicate the secondary nature of the burials in Çatal Höyük, and it was impossible to do otherwise given the desire of the townspeople to live in the same houses with their deceased. A number of murals from sanctuaries show that the bodies of the dead were left outside the city on light platforms for excarnation (decay of soft tissue). The cleaned bones were then wrapped in clothes, skins or mats and buried in houses and sanctuaries. The remains were sent with ocher and cinnabar, the skulls in the neck and forehead were painted with blue or green paint. Small “gifts” were placed with the buried, but there are no figurines or ceramics in the graves of Çatal Höyük. Sometimes skulls, as at the beginning of the Neolithic, were separated from skeletons and placed openly in sanctuaries.
“Holy cities” seem to complete the tradition of the X-VIII millennia BC. Since the VI millennium, a new tendency towards the separation of the worlds of the dead and the living has become more and more noticeable. In the Hassun culture (Mesopotamia, 7th-6th millennia), the dead, as a rule, are buried outside the settlements. Only the bodies of children and teenagers continue to be buried under the floors of houses. In Byblos of the 6th millennium, only children's burials were also found under houses, in which human bones were sometimes mixed with sheep. Such burials were made in special small vessels. The almost complete absence of adult burials indicates the presence of special cemeteries.
Such “cemeteries” or transitional forms such as “houses of the dead” were soon discovered. In Byblos this is building “46-14”, under the floor of which more than 30 people are buried, in Tell al-Savan (Central Mesopotamia) – building “No. 1” of the 6th millennium, under which in pits for 30-50 cm Below the floor level there were more than a hundred secondary burials.
At the same time, the skulls of deceased relatives, which previously were often placed along the walls and around the hearth, also disappear from the interiors of homes. The same trends are noticeable in the funeral customs of the Danube Plain of the 6th millennium. Adults here are now rarely buried under houses, but usually outside settlements, in caves or in special cemeteries.
The reasons for the change in a seemingly established custom can be understood, since the changes did not extend to children. For some reason, the inhabitants of the Middle Neolithic believed that it was precisely those who died as adults who needed to be separated from their homes, interred either in cemeteries or in special “houses of the dead.” But how are children different from adults?
Like the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, the inhabitants of Neolithic settlements believed that dead children would become adults in another life. In the same Tell al-Savan, children's burials are indistinguishable from adults' graves; they do not contain special children's things. Therefore, the living were embarrassed not by age in itself, but by something only partially connected with the years of earthly life, and not with “age” in eternity. It should be noted that even today in India, the law on cremation of the dead, common to all Hindus, does not apply to children under five or six years of age and to saints. These “exceptions” are usually explained by the fact that small children are still free from sin and therefore do not defile the earth, and holy ascetics, through asceticism, have destroyed everything sinful in themselves. It is very possible that the Middle Neolithic people thought in a similar way and therefore stopped burying adults in their homes. The adults were sinners.
The concept of sin is one of the most important in most religions. Its essence is that a person willfully violates some laws established by the Creator of the world. If everything in the world - both living and non-living - naturally follows the rules that are laid down in the foundation of the universe, then a person can do this or not. He's free. This freedom is not unlimited. In some ways, like all living beings, a person instinctively obeys the natural law - he is not able to freely refuse to drink, breathe, sleep, although he can, through an effort of will, significantly limit his needs and desires. But somewhere, and in a very vast area of his actions, a person is completely free. He can do nasty things to other people, or he can help them, he is able to sacrifice himself for the sake of his neighbor, his loved one, and he can demand sacrifice for himself from other people. Each of us makes many times a day, often without noticing it, such choices between good and evil, good and bad. For the religious mind, good is not simply what people agree to regard as such. Good is an objective establishment of God to man, this is God’s will in relation to man, this is, if you like, the law prescribed to him by the Creator, following which he will certainly achieve happiness, since God is good.
On the contrary, evil is a departure from God into self-will. Contempt for the law given to man by the Creator. Since God is the only primary source of life, departure from Him is death, transformation into nothingness. Sin is such self-destruction, although from the point of view of the person committing the sin, he asserts himself, realizing the goals he has set for himself. A person cannot fully understand with his mind whether for some reason it is good and this is bad; moreover, the desire for bad things often blinds his eyes. Hence, the law is the objectified, but not explained, will of God. In many religions, it is the divine law that is the thread that leads man to his Creator, to bliss and immortality.
The separation of funeral customs and differences in the topography of burials of children and adults can most reliably be explained precisely by the consciousness of the sinfulness of an adult. But also the conviction of the sinlessness of infants. Therefore, we can assume that in the Neolithic era sin was considered the work of man himself, his free willful choice. It is clear that an infant cannot yet make such a choice and therefore remains sinless. The deceased adult begins to recognize himself as a receptacle for sins that can be transferred to the living, who continue to live in the house where he rests. After all, the idea of the mutual exchange of forces between the living and the dead several thousand years before the separation of home and cemetery had already formed the basis of human religious existence, giving rise, as we have suggested, to both sedentism and domestication. But then, in the Proto-Neolithic and Early Neolithic, this “mutual exchange” was perceived as a benefit, but now – as a harmful danger. And the dead leave the world of the living. From now on, their abode becomes a necropolis - a city of the dead, a cemetery.
It is noteworthy that around this time the sanctuary finally turns into a temple, separating from the dwelling. The living, not only the dead, but also themselves, no longer consider themselves worthy of constant standing before God and the shrine. They are sinners in their daily lives and therefore, in order not to provoke the wrath of the Divine, it is better to separate His house from their own and visit the House of God on special days in a state of purity and purity.
Is this aggravation of the experience of sin connected with the penetration of anthropomorphism into the iconography of the Creator? That is, when people were able to liken God to themselves, thereby saying that they are like God, carrying His image within themselves, they acutely felt their own imperfection, that the divine in them was suppressed by the human, the good by the evil.
Be that as it may, at this time in burials, still poor in grave goods, there is often only one deliberately placed object - a vessel of various shapes, but always small. Sometimes there are several such vessels. They are placed at the chest and arms, less often at the feet and crown of the deceased (Tell al-Sawan). In the burials of the Samara culture (Mesopotamia, 6th-5th millennium BC), a small stone figurine with a cup on its head was placed in the hands, on the chest or at the head of the deceased. J. Oates, who dedicated special work to these figurines, noticed that the decorations of the figurine and the body of the deceased, near whom it was placed, coincide. In the Ubaid culture (IV millennium), ceramic plates with cups overturned on them are found in burials.
Judging by later analogues from historical times, all these vessels and cups contained vegetable oil. Apparently, it is from the 6th-5th millennia that the custom of anointing the bodies of the dead, widespread and now widespread in many religions of the western half of the world, comes from. What did the oil symbolize?
Funeral vessel from Tell Arpaciya
The drama of the struggle with death is beautifully depicted in a burial vessel from Tell Arpacia (Mesopotamia,VImillennium). A skull was buried in it. The outer wall of the vessel is decorated with Maltese crosses and bull heads. Also depicted is a huge funeral vessel, over which two people are bending. Between their hands is a cup, apparently full of oil. The inner wall contains a scene of a battle between the deceased and death, personified by a predatory beast. There is a bull standing right there and two women with flowing hair and emphasized gender signs are holding a funeral cloth.
The hot and dry climate of the Near East quickly dries out the skin. Under the merciless rays of the sun, it cracks and begins to ooze ichor, causing severe suffering to a person. But if you rub vegetable oil into the skin, the suffering stops. The skin becomes elastic and soft again, painful cracks are quickly healed. This softening effect of the oil must have attracted the attention of ancient man. In addition, the oil feeds the fire of the lamp. A wick saturated with it burns, but does not burn out. The second quality is a beautiful image of prayer, the first is mercy. The combination of these two qualities in one substance corresponded very well to the religious feeling - prayer directed to God evokes His mercy, which softens the wounds caused by sin.
The dead are all the more in need of God's mercy. He is already powerless to correct the evil he has done in life with good deeds. Those close to the deceased can only trust in the mercy of the Creator. And therefore, vessels with healing oil are placed near the body of the deceased. Oil is a symbol of God’s healing of a person suffering from the flames of sin.
The feeling of sin, the experience of one’s own poor quality, depravity, materialized in the separation of a house with a cemetery and sanctuary, and in the widespread use of oil in funeral rites is a feature of the Neolithic. Having realized his inadequacy to the Creator, man, with new dramatic force, begins to look for ways to overcome the clearly seen gap between himself and God.
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In many religions, there is a certain intermediate state between the real world and the other world. These “intermediate zones” serve a wide variety of purposes: in some releases it is a kind of “waiting room” where a person ends up immediately after death, in others it is a place where heavenly judgment takes place. However, options are possible.
1. River of Death
Several religions have described a river separating the earthly world from the afterlife. The most famous is perhaps Styx, which is mentioned in many Greek myths. It was in this river, flowing in the kingdom of the dead of Hades, that Hephaestus tempered the sword forged for Faun. Achilles was immersed in the waters of the Styx to make him invulnerable (only the heel that his mother held was left vulnerable).
Khubur is the legendary river of Mesopotamia. Like Styx, she is directly connected with the gods, but we are not talking about invulnerability. Just as in ancient Greek legends, the dead were transported across this river by a boatman.
Shinto describes the Sanzu River, which must be crossed to reach the underworld. The Shinto version is slightly more humane than the Greek and Mesopotamian ones, as the dead could return to Earth on the seventh day, instead of finally passing on to the afterlife.
2. Hamistagan
In the Zoroastrian concept, Hamistagan is a place where the souls of those who have committed equal amounts of good and bad deeds during their lives go. In this place, in which there was neither sorrow nor joy, they waited for the day of judgment. Hamistagan is located between the center of the Earth and the "stellar sphere" and has distinctive features of both areas. Although it is not a place for punishment, the souls there suffer due to extremely cold or hot (depending on the specific location) weather.
There are also different areas for those considered devout and wicked: good people who made a few blunders were sent to the "good" part of Hamistagan. At the same time, Zoroastrians believed that all people would eventually be saved and go to heaven.
3. Abraham's bosom
The Gospel of Luke described a place called "Abraham's Bosom", where the soul of a beggar named Lazarus went after death. Some Jewish scriptures compare Abraham's womb to heaven, but Christians generally consider it to be the place where the righteous went before the resurrection of Christ.
Subsequently, the underworld was described as consisting of two parts - Gehenna and Abraham's womb, which were separated by a large gulf between them. On the one hand, the souls of wicked people were in a state of eternal torment. On the other side were the souls of the righteous, who were in almost heavenly conditions.
The New Testament said that Jesus supposedly “descended into hell,” but the exact meaning of these words has been the subject of debate among Christian theologians for many centuries. Although many modern Christian views consider this phrase a metaphor, traditional Catholic doctrine says that Jesus descended into hell to forgive the righteous there for their original sins and take them with him to heaven.
4. Bardo
Bardo is a Tibetan version of limbo, where the souls of the dead saw terrifying and peaceful scenes for 49 days. These images, which were called "mandalas of peaceful and wrathful deities", are a reflection of the fears and memories of the deceased. It is necessary that during this time the soul does not succumb to fear or temptation and realizes the illusory nature of the pictures it sees. After this, the soul could go to heaven.
5. Barzakh
Islamic Barzakh is often compared to Catholic purgatory, but there are many differences between the two. Although Barzakh is generally considered the border between this world and the next, Muslim theologians often argue about even the very basic principles of this place.
Some believe that Barzakh is an ethereal place where there is no physical pain, where food is not needed and nothing has meaning. From Barzakh, the souls of the dead can calmly observe the whole world, but cannot influence it. Others believe that staying in Barzakh depends on a person’s actions during life.
There are supposedly punishments for the souls of the wicked in Barzakh, and this place itself acts as a kind of prelude to Hell. Some traditions claim that living people can interact with those in Barzakh through dreams. The word "Barzakh" is mentioned only three times in the Qur'an and only once as an intermediate state between this world and the next.
6. Life before your eyes
Those who have been on the verge of death often claim that their whole life flashed before their eyes in just a moment. Sometimes it was the whole life from beginning to end, while others saw a few selected moments. Some claim that at this time they communicated with deceased family members or certain celestial luminous beings. Research has shown that approximately 25 percent of people see their past lives. People who have had near-death experiences have also often reported flying through a tunnel with a light at the end, or experiencing a kind of empty existence.
7. Summerland
Summerland is often called "Wiccan Heaven", although this place is actually more like a kind of in-between, limbo state. It is a place where the dead come to rest and think about their lives before their next reincarnation. Since Wicca is a decentralized religion, the specifics of Summerland may differ in different interpretations.
Some believe that a soul's previous experiences will influence its next incarnation. For example, if someone treated others poorly, then in the next life he will receive exactly the same attitude. It is believed that the next reincarnation of a person is an event that can be planned. Supposedly, the immortal soul learns more and more with each incarnation until it learns enough to reach the level of higher existence. Once the soul reaches this peak of existence, it stops in the cycle of rebirth and remains in Summerland.
8. Spiritual world and spiritual prison
The Mormon Spirit World is a place where righteous souls go to await the day of resurrection. The relationships and desires of souls are no different from the desires of people on Earth. Souls have the same form as mortals, but their spirit and body are perfect, as Mormons believe that all souls were adults before they were born into this world.
Mormons maintain that the Mormon Church is organized in the same way in the spirit world as it is on earth. The priests perform the same tasks there, even after their physical death. While the Spiritual world is for the righteous, the Spiritual prison is for sinners who did not believe in Jesus on Earth.
9. Limbo for babies
The question of where unbaptized babies go after death was of great concern to the ancient Catholic Church, since the New Testament does not say a word about this. The Church believes that original sin separates man from God and that baptism is necessary for admission to heaven. However, children are not evil and naturally should not be sent to hell. In response, several theories have been proposed.
One of them is “Limbo for Babies” - the threshold of hell, where children will not be under the care of God, but will not suffer any punishment. The idea is that the children were not sinful and do not deserve punishment, but they do not deserve to go to heaven. Modern Catholics claim that God must save unbaptized babies and take them with him to heaven.
10. Hall of Two Truths
In ancient Egyptian religion, before the soul ascended to the Kingdom of Heaven, it entered the Hall of Two Truths. There she confessed to all kinds of sins on 42 different points, after which she was assessed by the goddess of justice and truth, Maat. Sins and good deeds were weighed on special scales. If the soul was recognized as “pure,” then it went to the Field of Reeds, where there was no disease, disappointment and death, and lived as it wanted during its mortal existence. “Black” souls did not go to hell, which the ancient Egyptians simply did not have. Such souls were thrown into the abyss, where they were devoured by crocodiles.
The small chapel is located on the territory of a Buddhist temple complex in the city of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture (in the early 2000s, this area became part of Greater Tokyo). The architects not only reconstructed a forty-year-old building, they built a complex path to it, filled with traditional symbolism, but corresponding to modern ideas about the farewell ritual. Firstly, the high fences separating the buildings of the complex were removed. Secondly, the path leading from the temple and the farewell hall to the ossuary where the burials are located was made perfectly straight and planted with trees and flowers (a visual demonstration of the change of seasons and the passage of time). In this way, it was possible to clearly distinguish between the burial zone and the veneration zone. Around this path, a symbolic path of tranquility and remembrance was organized with a purifying washbasin, benches, several statues of Buddha and Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva.
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