FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION
STAVROPOL STATE UNIVERSITY
Life after life. Scientific and mythological aspects
Completed by a 2nd year student
MBHF dep. "Chemistry"
Bogatko Maya Alexandrovna
Stavropol 2010
Introduction
1. Mythological ideas about "life after life"
1.1 General representations cultures
1.2 Celtic mythology
1.3 Shamanic and Roman myths
1.4 Egyptian mythology
1.5 Myths of the Russian people
2. Scientific aspect"life after life":
2.1 Eight proofs for the existence of the soul and its immortality
2.2 Prof. A.V. Gnezdilov that death is not the end of life
2.3 General information collected through scientific research
2.4 Michael Newton's research into hypnotherapy
Bibliography
Introduction
Life after death is of the greatest interest to all, and not so much because each of us must inevitably die in his own time, but because all of us, with the exception of perhaps the youngest, have had to bury people dear to us. In view of this, all information concerning posthumous life, should certainly be of interest to every person. The first thought should be reduced to the question: can there be true information about the afterlife existence at all?
There are many theories developed by various religious systems meanwhile, even the most faithful followers of these religions hardly believe in them, because most of them still talk about death as something "terrible" and see some terrible secret in it.
What is death like? Humanity has been asking this question since its inception. With some caution, I can say that this topic is perhaps the most serious attitude in all people, regardless of their emotional type or belonging to one or another social group.
However, despite this interest, there is no doubt that it is very difficult for most of us to talk about death. This is due to at least two reasons. One of them is mainly psychological or cultural in nature. The very topic of death is taboo. We feel, at least subconsciously, that when confronted with death in any form, even indirectly, we inevitably face the prospect of our own death, the picture of our death, as it were, approaches us and becomes more real and conceivable.
Talking about death from a psychological point of view can be seen as an indirect approach to death, only on a different level. Undoubtedly, many people perceive any talk about death as something that in their minds causes such real image death, that they begin to feel the nearness of their own demise. To save themselves from such psychological trauma, they decide to simply avoid such conversations as much as possible.
Another reason why it is difficult to talk about death is somewhat more complicated, because it is rooted in the very nature of our language. Basically, the words that make up human language refer to things that we know about through our physical sensations, while death is something that lies beyond our conscious experience, because most of us have never experienced it.
Based on this fear, a person tries to explain death as a transitional form of the soul from one state to another. The very theme of immortality always arouses interest, searches philosopher's stone and the Nectar of Immortality have eclipsed the minds of many scientists and thinkers throughout history. So, is it possible to give a reasonable answer to the question: "Is there life after death?".
1. MYTHOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT "LIFE AFTER LIFE"
1.1 General representations of cultures
THE UPPER AND LOWER WORLDS. In the mythological model of the world, one of the main oppositions (along with right and left, male and female, day and night, good and evil, etc.), which correlates with the main elements (elements) of the universe.
The lower earthly world of people is opposed to the heavenly world of gods and spirits and, already as the upper world, to the underworld, the afterlife, as well as the water element, the primary ocean, on which the earth rests: thus, in the myths of the Ainu, deities are called pamui (“one who covers”), the earth is Kanna mosiri (“upper world”), under it is the netherworld Teine, connected with the water element, the mosiri bow. For cosmogonic myths the motives of raising the sky above the earth (or the earth from the bottom of the primary ocean) are characteristic. Movements from the upper world to the lower one and vice versa form the basis of numerous mythological motives: gods (cultural heroes) descend to earth along the world tree).
The inversion of the properties of the upper, heavenly or earthly world marks belonging to the lower, hostile to people and gods, the average common idea of the afterlife, in which the dead walk upside down (sorcerers also move in African beliefs).
According to biblical tradition, demons led by Satan were cast down from heaven to hell (such is the origin and evil spirits on the ground). Accordingly, in eschatological myths, the demons and the dead of the underworld rise up against heaven and the world of people, on the day of the death of the world, the top and bottom change places. The reversal of the relationship between top and bottom, associated with mythologized characters such as carnival or carnival, ritual modeling of chaos, carnival (mummers) images of death, evil spirits, etc., were called upon during calendar holidays to contribute to the strengthening of cosmic order.
The central figure of Shamanic myths is a shaman who mediates between people and spirits. He has special helper spirits at his disposal, often in the form of birds, fish or land animals, symbols of various spheres of the universe. Shamanic cosmologies are characterized by a three-term division of the universe into the upper, middle and lower worlds, each of which is divided into several tiers. These worlds are connected by a world tree or a cosmic river: its source corresponds to the upper world, and its mouth corresponds to the lower one, located in the north.
The positive, light beginning is identified with the top, the sky and the south, and the negative, dark one is identified with the bottom, the world of the dead and the north. The upper world is inhabited good spirits and deities (often led by the supreme deity), the underworld - harmful, as well as the souls of the dead, the middle world - people and host spirits.
ROMANS: The Romans in ancient times did not have such well-defined ideas about the afterlife that the Greeks had. Ideas about the kingdom of Dis (Dis pater), or Pluto (Hades), and his wife Proserpina (Persephone) were brought to Rome from Greece. In ancient times, the Roman believed that the goddess of death Mors takes away the life of a dying person, the god Tsekul closes his eyes, and the god Viduus wrests the soul from the body. The gods of Anna (di manes) receive the deceased in the grave. These gods were sacrificed during burial at the grave. The Roman honored his dead ancestors as the gods (di parentum), keeping his house together with the penates and lares, and celebrated festivities in their honor in the month of February. Thanatos (Tanat) is the god of death. Unlike his brother Hypnos, he brought mortals a cruel and eternal sleep - death. Depicted with huge black wings, with a sword in his hands and in a black cloak. Tanat flew to the bed of the dying man and cut off a strand of hair from his head with a sword in order to tear out his soul.
1.4 Egyptian mythology
That (Jhuti) is one of the oldest Egyptian gods. He began to be depicted in the guise of a man with the head of an ibis, his sacred bird; less often - in the form of a baboon. He compiled a code of laws of Upper and Lower Egypt; he is an indispensable participant in any court. In the Underworld at the Judgment of Osiris, Thoth writes down the verdicts of the Court. The silver boat of Thoth - the Moon - transports the souls of the dead through the night sky to the other world - beyond the horizon.
The most detailed information about the Underworld and the underground journey of Ra in the Boat of Eternity is contained - along with the "Book of Day and Night" and "The Book of Gates. Here Ra is represented as floating in the Boat.
Resurrection and journey through the Duat
An amulet depicting a scarab was placed on the heart of the deceased - this ensured the resurrection. Numerous amulets were wrapped in mummies, laid out in a coffin and installed in the tomb, in the burial chamber. To prevent the deceased from suffocating in the Duat, where there is no air, wooden figures of Shu were also placed in the coffin.
Everyone took part in the resurrection of the deceased earthly gods associated with childbearing: Isis, Hathor, Renenut, Bes, Taurt, Meshent, Heket and others; in addition, the amulets of the Eye of Wadjet contributed to the second birth.
Having resurrected, the Egyptian found himself in front of the first gate of the "House of Osiris-Heptiamenti", which was guarded by a guard named "He who watches the fire." There was also a gatekeeper - "The Goth, who bows his face to the earth, [having] many forms", as well as the herald - "The voicing".
Having passed the first gate, the deceased met two winding paths separated by a lake of fire.
In order to facilitate the journey of the deceased, the gods created arits in the Duat - havens where one could rest and gain strength. But not everyone could enter such an arit, but only those who knew the magic words and the names of the demons that stand guard at the entrance. Having passed all the gates and leaving fourteen hills behind, the deceased reached the Great Hall of the Two Truths.
Before crossing the threshold of the Great Hall, the deceased turned to the gods, pronouncing the “Confession of Denial”. The goddess of good fortune, Renenut, and the soul of Ba of the deceased Egyptian. They testified to the character of the deceased and told the gods what good and bad deeds he had done in life. Isis, Nephthys, Selket and Nut defended the deceased before the judges. After that, the gods began to weigh the heart on the Scales of Truth: they put the heart on one bowl, and the feather of the goddess Maat on the other. If the arrow of the scales deviated, the deceased was considered a sinner, but if the scales remained in balance, the deceased was recognized as justified.
The deceased kissed the threshold, called it (the threshold) by name, pronounced the names of the guards aloud, and finally entered the Great Hall, where Osiris, the lord of the dead, sat on the path.
This was the end of the Judgment, and the Egyptian went to the place of eternal bliss - to the Fields of Ialu.
In the Fields of Ialu, "Fields of Reeds", the same life awaited the deceased, which he led on earth, only she was happier and better. The deceased did not know a lack of anything. Seven Hathor, Neperi, Nepit, Selket and other deities provided him with food, made his afterlife arable land fertile, bringing a rich harvest, and his livestock fat and prolific. So that the deceased could enjoy the rest and he would not have to work the fields and graze cattle himself, ushabti - wooden or clay figurines of people - were placed in the tomb.
The surviving texts and tomb inscriptions speak exclusively of the acquittals of the Afterlife Court: the Egyptian built and finished the tomb during his lifetime and, of course, depicted himself justified and blissful in the Fields of Ialu. In all texts, the main attention is paid to the external action of the Court - the enumeration of the names of demons and guardians, magic spells. It now seems that for the justification of the deceased, it was enough to know all these names and spells and correctly observe the prescribed rites. The idea of afterlife retribution for sins in the religion of Egypt arose late and was not particularly popular. "The description of various punishments as a result of the Afterlife Judgment is contained in three texts from the time of the New Kingdom: the book "Amduat", in the composition about the Underworld, which does not have an Egyptian name, known in science as the "Book of Gates", and, finally, in the "Book of Caves" .
There are various punishments for sins. First of all, this is the deprivation of the deceased burial. Already in the book "Amduat" (XVI century BC) it is said that the drowned, who found a grave in the waters of the Nile, are pulled by deities to the bank of the underground Nile, where they are buried, thus gaining everything necessary for eternal life but they are not sinners. Similar views can be traced in later compositions. The same book "Amduat" speaks of sinners from whom the eight gods rip off the burial shrouds and expose "enemies sentenced to punishment in the Duat."
Condemned sinners are deprived of everything that is necessary for eternal life, deprived of the warmth and light that the god Ra radiates every night, appearing in the Underworld - light and warmth are intended for the righteous. For sinners, only dark chaos awaits. They are deprived of any possibility of communication with the gods.
A very common punishment for sinners in the Underworld is binding and imprisonment. So, in the "Book of Gates" it is said that the villains are bound from behind in order to be beheaded and cease to exist. "In the Book of Caves, the underworld is described as a prison from which sinners cannot leave. The most terrible punishment for a sinner in the other world was considered the final destruction of everything his beings are not only bodies, but also souls and shadows.The souls of sinners, in the view of the Egyptians, existed independently of the body in an inverted position - upside down; they could not reunite with the body in order to live a full afterlife righteous dead man, and therefore they were faced with complete and final destruction. One of the methods of such destruction was the decapitation of the deceased, as well as burning.
1.5 Myths of the Russian people
SOUL: The Slavs, like all other nations, already in pagan times had the concept of the soul - a certain substance that is inside a person and provides him with life. The souls of unborn people are kept by God, but where exactly is not known. God puts the soul into a person even in the womb, and immediately after that the child begins to move in the mother's body. The ancient Slavs represented the soul as an independent living being, which, according to different views, is located in a person in the heart, in the chest, in the abdomen, in the liver, in the blood, in the throat, under the right arm. During life, the soul is fed by steam from the food that a person eats. When the soul leaves the body forever, the person dies. The body decays in the earth, and the soul, being immortal, moves to the afterlife. Death itself is perceived as the separation of the soul from the body, as the Russian spiritual verse tells:
As the soul parted with the body,
Parted, did not stretch,
It did not stretch, it turned back:
“Forgive me, farewell, the body is white.
How do you, the earth, go to the earth,
And how do you, bones, lie in a coffin,
And how can I, my soul, answer me?
The path of the soul to the "other" world
The death of a person is the transition of the soul from this world, where it was "a guest", to another world - "home", "for eternal life". Many customs are associated with the concept of a coffin as a permanent home for a person: cut a small window on the side of the head of the deceased or put an icon in the corner of the coffin. Unfinished work during life was also placed in the coffin - unwoven bast shoes or untied socks - so that the deceased could finish it behind the coffin. According to ancient ideas, a person continued to lead his ordinary life even after the grave, retained his habits. The period between the death of a person and the hour when his soul finds a new home in the "other" world lasts forty days and is called the transition. For all forty days, she does not belong to either “that” or this world.
According to ancient beliefs that existed among other peoples, the afterlife is separated from the human by a water barrier - a river or sea. Later, under the influence of the book tradition, the ancient pagan ideas about water turned into the idea of a fiery river. It flows around the earth from all sides, so there is no way to avoid it for the righteous or the sinners. In many East Slavic beliefs, Saint Nicholas transports souls across the river to the afterlife. This is told in the Ukrainian legend.
The Lord God sits with the saints at the dinner table, and St. Nicholas is not. Finally, he appears.
Why are you late for dinner? the Lord asks.
I was on the seas, on a ferry - I transported seven hundred souls, - Nikolai answers.
If, according to one idea, a fiery river separates world of the dead from the world of the living, then according to others, later, it separates heaven and hell. In a Russian spiritual verse describing the coming of the end of the world, it says:
Then the sinners will be separated from the righteous:
Righteous souls will be taken to the east side
And sinful souls will be taken to the western side.
Between them will flow the fiery river Zion.
In pagan times, they believed in one more way, besides crossing the river, the way to the "other" world - a tree. The tree was considered a temporary refuge for the soul - until the burial of the body. A bird sitting on top of a tree was represented as a soul heading to heaven. In some places they even hung ropes on grave trees to help the soul ascend to heaven.
What happens after the funeral? Most often, they believed that after burial and until the fortieth day, the soul goes through ordeals (torments), after which it comes to God for judgment, where they decide where to place it - in heaven or hell. At this time, the soul is led along various deep ravines, abysses, mountains. Torturing her and showing her her sins and bad deeds. Often the ordeals of the soul are presented as climbing a ladder of nine, twelve or forty steps. On the ninth day after death, the soul is led to God for prostration and shown to her paradise, through which she walks until the twentieth day. On the twentieth day, she again comes to bow to God, and they lead her to show hell, through which she wanders until the fortieth day - the day of God's judgment on the soul, on which He decides where to send her - to heaven or hell. new soul in the “other” world, previously deceased relatives and neighbors meet. Sometimes dead relatives and friends come right to the bed of the dying person, and he sees them next to him. Here is how it is said in the Polissya bylichka:
I had an aunt across the river. Many of her brothers were buried, but her nephew was also buried. We came to her. She didn’t get up for a long time, but then she got up, drank a cup of tea: “It’s not good,” she says, “the brothers are standing around me, they say: “Dunyushka, get dressed, come with us.” In the morning and died.
Where the soul of a deceased person resides: in the afterlife or in his grave, they imagined differently. In some places, it was believed that the soul flies to the "other" world, and only the perishable body remains in the grave; in others, the souls of the dead dwell in the graves.
HOW AN OTHER WORLD WORKS: the world of the dead and the world of the living in the minds of the people have their permanent features. It's not just two around the world- they are opposite to each other, just as life and death, light and darkness, day and night, space and chaos, white and black, right and left are opposite. The world of the living is a world of order. It has time and calendar. In the other world there is no time, no calendar, no light, no life. There reigns complete silence- no barking of dogs, cock crows, human voices, ringing of bells are heard. Popular beliefs retained two types of ideas about the "device" underworld: ancient, pagan and later, Christian. According to the first, the world is divided into two parts - the world of the living and the world of the dead, not divided into heaven and hell, that is, the abode of the souls of both the righteous and sinners.
The Christian Church strictly condemns suicides and deprives them of proper burial, since they voluntarily deprived themselves of God-given life. But the church rightly does not consider the one who died as a result of an accident to be guilty. From the point of view of a pagan, death as a result of suicide and death as a result of an accident is equally “wrong” death, because in both cases a person has not lived his life span, which means that he cannot go to another world and becomes a "mortgage" dead man, dangerous to the living.
The oldest Slavic ideas about the other world have been preserved in beliefs about Iria - a mythical underground or overseas country where the souls of the dead fly away. The way there lies through the water, in particular, through the whirlpool, whirlpool. In the fall, birds, insects fly to the iriya, and snakes crawl away, and in the spring they return from there. The keys to the iria are kept by the cuckoo, so she is the first to fly there and the last of the birds returns in the spring, she also carries tired birds on her wings. Ukrainians distinguished bird and snake iry. The bird's iry is located somewhere on warm waters, and the serpentine one is "in the Russian land." Snake Iriy is a large pit located in the forest, where they hibernate, intertwining into one large ball. It was believed that in autumn the cranes carry away sinful souls to Iriy, and in the spring they bring the souls of children from there, who will be born in spring and summer.
There are also different ideas about where “that” light is. According to some beliefs, it is located on the ground (most often not on its edge) and is separated from the world of living people by some natural barriers - impenetrable mountains, deep ravines or rivers. According to others, probably later, paradise is in heaven or on a high mountain, and hell is on earth. Paradise surrounded by a fence, which has a gate. According to some beliefs, you need to climb a steep and impregnable glass (or crystal) mountain as smooth as an egg to the "other" world. It can be easier to do this for someone who, during his lifetime, did not throw away cut nails, but put them in a special bag - after death, the saved nails will grow back, and a person will overcome the mountain without much difficulty.
The entrance to the underworld is guarded by the Serpent. According to the Old Believers, at the end of the world, the apostles Peter and Paul will stand at the gates of paradise and let sinless people go there, and a snake will lie down at the gates of hell, and sinners will go down to hell at its sting .. What torment the soul will undergo depends on the sin for which she is condemned: the one who during his lifetime was sneaky is hung up in hell by his tongue; those who sold diluted milk are forced to separate the milk from the water; for those who played cards, the devils drive needles into their palms; before the one who stole the meat, there are pieces of wormy meat; the devil drags the drunkard over the nails. Special torments are intended for murderers, suicides, women who kill their children, and witches who take milk from other people's cows.
2. SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF "AFTER LIFE"
2.1 Eight proofs for the existence of the soul and its immortality
1st proof. The body is subject to constant change in all its parts. In the body of a person who has reached the age of twenty, there is no longer any of those particles that made up it 20 years ago. But despite this, the soul retains its personality, that is, it knows that it is the same as it was twenty years ago. But if the soul remains the same at the time when the body changes completely, then it follows that the soul is a being different from the body, that it is not material, and continues to exist, despite the perfect change that has taken place in the body with which it is united. . After death, the decomposition of the body is more rapid, before death it is slower, more gradual, less noticeable; but for the soul it is one and the same, that is, the soul exists without the body with which it was previously united.
2nd proof. If matter were endowed with the ability to think, then every particle of matter would have to think, and we would feel that there are as many thinking beings in us as there are particles of matter in our body. We, however, feel quite the opposite; we feel that the thinking principle in us is always the same. With age and increase in the body, a person does not acquire more thinking abilities.
3rd proof. Thought cannot be produced by any human art. Let them arrange, prepare, put substances into thousands of different forms - not a single spark of thought will ever flare up, will not flare up, even if we have exhausted all possible mixtures of matter and subjected it to all the laws of chemistry, physics and mechanics.
4th proof. All matter occupies space; but we feel that the principle that thinks in us has no space; The unity and variety of thoughts that strike the soul testify that it has no extension, and therefore is not matter. If the soul were matter, then every sensation would either affect the whole soul or only one part of this soul. If it struck the whole soul, then there would be something in the nature of unity, but the unity is not clear, and there would be no diversity. If every sensation affected one known part of the soul, there would be diversity, but not unity.
5th proof. If the soul were material, then it would be possible to act upon it and make it desire what it does not desire, just as one can force a human hand to make a certain movement. Meanwhile, no tyrant can triumph over the will good man and force him to commit a crime through the most terrible torments. If the soul were material, like the body, then the despot would subdue and exhaust the soul, just as one subdues and exhausts the body. Will cannot be broken like matter.
6th proof. However, the proof of everyday experience may serve to affirm that the soul is immaterial; it is the struggle of the soul against the body, sensuality, passions. When strong passions agitate us, when strong movements of sensuality and the flesh attract us to evil, the soul moderates them, wins. Therefore, it has a completely different nature. Imagine a man whose inclinations lead to all excesses and who, however, with the help of divine grace, is a model of prudence, and you will agree that external objects of matter do not have an irresistible power over him - and this would be inevitable if the soul did not different from matter.
7th proof. If everything were material in us, then the feelings would be almost the same in all people, because of their bodily similarity. At the sight of a picture, at the hearing of a song, at the news of misfortune, people would experience the same feelings of delight or pleasure or sadness, as they experience the same physical sensations when a fire burns them, when a stone falls and hurts them.
8th proof. From the materiality of the soul it would also follow that judgment, reflection, conscience, conception would not serve anything in man; sensation would be everything. And we know, however, that reflection has often destroyed the dangerous action of sensibility, that conscience often condemns the work to which sensuality leads a person, that for the sake of duty and virtue, he restrains himself from this feeling. This would not be possible if the soul were material, like the body.
2.2 Prof. A.V. Gnezdilov that death is not the end of life
A.V. Gnezdilov, Professor of the Research Psychoneurological Institute named after A.I. V.M. Bekhtereva, Head of the Department of Geriatric Psychiatry, Doctor of Medical Sciences:
Death is not the end. It's just a change in states of consciousness. And many times I had the opportunity to make sure that consciousness does not disappear after death. That there is a completely different world that operates according to other laws, superphysical, beyond the limits of our understanding. In it, time and space are surmountable. I have enough experience as a psychiatrist to be responsible for my words and to distinguish hallucinations from reality
I was asked to see a young woman. She went into cardiac arrest during surgery. She shared with me strange experiences.
At first, after the introduction of anesthesia, she was not aware of anything, then she felt some kind of push. And suddenly she found herself in a dimly lit operating room. Through the fog I saw my body and the surgeons who were bending over it. Someone shouted, “Her heart stopped! Get started immediately!" And then she was terribly frightened, because she realized that this is HER body and HER heart! And she did not even warn her mother and daughter that she would have an operation! Anxiety about loved ones immediately brought her home. Daughter Masha played with a doll. Mom knitted. There was a knock on the door, a neighbor came in, in her hands was a dress with polka dots. The neighbor said: "This is for Mashenka." The girl rushed forward. Got the table. Dropped a cup, old. Grandma threw up her hands. The neighbor said it was lucky. The broken cup was picked up. They searched for a spoon for a long time - it turned out to be under the carpet. Seeing this peaceful picture, the woman calmed down, immediately transferred back to the operating room. And I heard that my heart started up, they say, we continue the operation, let's hurry, otherwise there may be a second stop! ..
Naturally, I became interested, went to her house, asked relatives. Everything came together down to the smallest detail: both with the dress and with the spoon... Everything matched one to one!
*** - Once I saw in a dream my patient - as if he came to me after death. He thanked me for my care and support ... And then he says: “How strange - this world is as real as my world. I'm not scared. I am surprised. I didn't expect that." I wake up, I think: “No, we saw each other yesterday - everything was in order!” And when he came to work, he found out that he had died that night. Although nothing foreshadowed his imminent departure.
2.3 General information collected through scientific research
One of the pioneers in this field was Emmanuel Swedenborg, who was born in 1688. One of the leading scientists of his time, he wrote 150 essays in seventeen scientific fields.
In his 490-page book A History of the Supernatural ( History of the Paranormal, 1977) writer Brian Inglis refers to Immanuel Kant, the great rationalist philosopher who studied Swedenborg's work. Despite the fact that Kant was an objective skeptic, he understood that the evidence for the existence of life after death, given by Swedenborg, was on the whole indisputable and numerous. Inglis quotes Kant: “... Doubting each of them individually, I firmly believe in their totality” (Inglis 1977: 132).
The world-famous psychiatrist who had a huge impact on science, Carl Gustav Jung, recognized that metapsychic phenomena can be explained much better with the hypothesis of the existence of the soul than with any other hypothesis.
The phenomenon of electronic voices. Colin Smith published a book, Voices from the Tapes, which contains four-page photographs of participants in Bender's later experiments. They were carried out under strictly controlled conditions. In one case, the PEG experiments were carried out in a soundproof studio in order to exclude the appearance of random radio signals. Within 27 minutes, about 200 votes were recorded. Ronald Maxwell, The Sunday Mirror correspondent who oversaw the test, wrote a sensational three-page article with photographs that clearly confirmed the reality of what was happening. He was delighted that the electronic engineers invited by the newspaper as experts confirmed that the votes were genuine and that there was no fraud or deception during the experiment.
The Scholes experiments prove the existence of life after death. Schole is a small village in Norfolk, in the north of England. Using it as a base, several experimenters of the Scholes group obtained brilliant proof of the existence of life after death as a result of experiments carried out in England, the USA, Ireland and Spain. One of the most amazing phenomena observed during the Scholes experiments was the materialized lights that swirled around the room, making bizarre pirouettes. Sometimes they emitted rays and passed through solid objects. When the light touched people, they clearly felt it, and, entering the human body, it healed this body.
In the process of contact with the other world, one of its representatives introduced himself as Kingsley Fairbridge. According to information from the spiritual group, Kingsley Fairbridge was born in South Africa, studied at Oxford in England and then moved to Australia. There he founded the Fairbridge farmer's schools, where poor children were taught the trade. Unfortunately, he was not physically strong and died quite early. The Scholes Group published the information received in its latest bulletin. As a result, the researchers were contacted by Kingsley's daughter, who lives in Australia. When the Scholes group sent her a copy of the photograph materialized from the other world, she confirmed the accuracy of the information and that it was her father, Kingsley Fairbridge, who was depicted very clearly in the photograph.
Quantum physics and life after death The British scientist Ron Pearson in his article "The Physics of Survival After Death" shows that survival after death is a natural part of the physical picture of the world.
Since the survival of consciousness after death is a natural and fundamental part of physics, one can hope that attempts to discredit all evidence for survival will soon come to an end.
Oliver Lodge, one of the greatest physicists of all time, recognized the existence of life after death and used his scientific gifts to prove it. He was one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research. Dr. Amit Goswami describes an experiment conducted by Aspect, Delibard and Roger which, he argues, experimentally disproved the notion of matter as the only reality. In this experiment, an atom emits two photons moving in opposite directions. It turns out that somehow the behavior of one of the photons affects the other at large distances without any signal exchange. That is, they act on each other instantly.
Life after death: Let us imagine, first of all, an indistinguishable colorless person, neither particularly good nor particularly bad. Since a person does not change after death, colorlessness will remain his hallmark; neither special suffering nor special joy awaits him, and it is very possible that his whole astral life will flow gray and boring. If during his earthly life he did not develop any reasonable interests in himself, if he had no ideas other than gossip or what is called sports, nothing but his business ventures or his own gain, it is very likely that time will stretch for him. very tedious, since all these things are no longer available to him. If we take a person who possessed strong desires of a lower material nature, such that can only be satisfied on the physical plane, the afterlife of such a person will be even more painful. Now consider the case of a higher type man who had more reasonable interests on earth. Imagine the state of a person when all the need for compulsory labor ends, when there is no longer any need to earn money, since the astral body does not need food, or clothing, or an apartment. For the first time since childhood, such a person becomes free and has the opportunity to do just what he likes, can devote all his time to his favorite pastime, if it is such that it can be realized without physical matter. Let us suppose that the greatest pleasure of such a man was music; on the astral plane he can listen to the greatest musical compositions possible on earth, and under these new conditions he will hear much more in them than he heard on earth. Before a person who loved art, the beauty of forms and colors, all the charm of the upper world spreads out; he only has to choose. If he knew how to enjoy the beauties of nature, this pleasure will increase immeasurably, since he can freely move from place to place, admiring the wonders of nature. If he had an attraction to science or history, all the libraries and laboratories of the world are at his service; in addition, in all the above cases there is another positive side - this is the absence of any fatigue.
From the point of view of researchers, the most important messages transmitted by the Higher Mind in different countries to us, the inhabitants of the Earth, over the past few decades, constantly contain the following information: At the time of death, we take with us all our mind with all its experience, our character and our ethereal(spiritual) body, which is a duplicate, a repetition of the earthly body. There is no "heaven above" or "hell below": the location of the other world does not differ from the earthly one: these spheres interpenetrate each other - from the highest vibrations to the lowest. Ordinary reasonable people are met by their relatives - soul mates connect. The higher mind informs us that in life after death, a person's appearance can become what it was in his best years. Everyone can continue to improve spiritually in life after death in order to move to a higher level and enter the realms of even greater beauty.
2.4 Michael Newton's research into hypnotherapy
Dr. Michael Newton, a certified hypnotherapist of the highest category, began to regress his patients into the past in order to awaken their memories of previous lives, he unexpectedly made a discovery of tremendous importance: the spiritual world can be "looked at" through the mind of subjects who are immersed in hypnosis. state of superconsciousness; and in this altered state of consciousness, patients are able to talk about what their soul did between lives on Earth.
Death and abandonment: in the practice of a doctor, there were many patients who, under hypnosis, told him about their past lives. Some retained the influence of that life. Here is 1 case: the patient came with a complaint of pain in the throat throughout his life, it turned out that in past life he describes the circumstances of his death in the body of a young woman named Sally, who was killed by the Kiowa Indians during an attack on a settler's train in 1866. Dr. N: Do you experience pain from an arrow? SUBJECT: Yes... the tip ripped my throat... I'm dying. I'm choking... bleeding... Will (husband) is holding me... the pain is terrible... I'm leaving... anyway, it's over. Dr. N: Okay, Sally, you accepted the fact that you were killed by these Indians. Can you describe to me the feeling you experienced at the moment of death? SUBJECT: It's like... some... force... pushing me out of my body. Dr. N: Pushes you out? How? SUBJECT: I'm being pushed out of the top of my head<…>Dr. N: Is it an unpleasant feeling? SUBJECT: No! It's so wonderful to feel free and without any pain, but... I'm... disoriented... I didn't intend to die... and not on what happens on earth with his body).
Contrary to what some people believe, souls often show little interest in what happens to their bodies after they have physically died. This is not a manifestation of cruelty towards the situation and the people they left on Earth, but simply a sense of relief that these souls experience at the end of their terrible death. They want to quickly go to the beautiful spirit world.
However, there are many such souls who wish to linger in the place where death overtook them for several earth days - usually before the funeral.
Gateway to the spirit world. This particular Subject, having passed through the experience of death and through the tunnel, continues to adapt quite calmly in his mind to his incorporeal state, while being carried further and further into the spiritual world. This patient's first impressions, after the initial sensation of uncertainty, speak of a sense of well-being present there. This is usually experienced by all Subjects.
Dr. N: You are now leaving your body. You see how you are moving further and further away from the place where you died, further and further from the surface of the Earth. Tell me what you are experiencing right now. SUBJECT: At first... it was very bright... close to Earth... now it's a little darker because I entered the tunnel. Dr. N: Describe this tunnel to me. SUBJECT: It's... an empty, dark passage... and at the other end is a small circle of light. Dr. N: Okay, what's next for you? SUBJECT: I feel a pull... a gentle pull... I think I should move through this tunnel... and I'm moving on. Now it is not dark here, but rather gloomy, because the bright circle of light grows and approaches. It's as if... (Patient trails off) Dr. N: Go on. SUBJECT: I'm called forward... Dr. N: Let the circle of light increase in front of you at the end of the tunnel, and you continue to explain what is happening to you. SUBJECT: The circle of light becomes very large, and... I left the tunnel. Here... subdued brightness... light mist. I seep through it. Dr. N: After you came out of the tunnel, what else did you experience in your mind - apart from the fact that there is no absolute visual clarity? SUBJECT:(lowers voice) It's so... peaceful... so calm... I'm in the soul world... Dr. N: Do you have any other impressions as a soul at the moment? SUBJECT: Thought! I feel... the power of thought around me. I... Dr. N: Relax completely and let your impressions come easily as you tell me exactly what is happening to you. Please continue. SUBJECT: Well, it's hard to put into words. I feel... thoughts of love... brotherhood... sympathy... and all this is combined with... premonition... as if others... are waiting for me. Dr. N: Do you feel safe or a little scared? SUBJECT: I'm not scared. When I was in the tunnel, I was more... disoriented. Yes, I feel safe... I am aware of thoughts... cares... support. It's strange, but around me there is also an understanding of who I am and why I am here now. Dr. N: Do you see any manifestations of this? SUBJECT:(in an undertone) No, I feel it - the harmony of thought is everywhere. Dr. N: You mentioned the appearance of a cloudy substance around you immediately after exiting the tunnel. Are you in the sky above the Earth? SUBJECT:(pause) No, not like that, but I seem to be floating in clouds that are different from Earth. Dr. N: Can you see the earth at all? Is it under you? SUBJECT: Maybe there is, but I haven't seen her since I entered the tunnel. Dr. N: Do you feel that you are still connected to the Earth - perhaps through another space? SUBJECT: There is a possibility - yes. In my mind, the Earth seems close... and I still feel connected to the Earth... but I know I'm in a different space. Dr. N: What else can you tell me about your current whereabouts? SUBJECT: It's a little still here... gloomy... but I'm moving on and away from here.
Intermediate zone. All souls, regardless of their experience, eventually arrive at the central "staging post" of the spirit world, the intermediate zone. The speed of movement of the soul after death depends on its spiritual maturity. After the soul leaves the place of attitudinal orientation and enters into this space of the spirit world, there seems to be no other route for the soul to take. It is obvious that a large number of returning souls are spiritually transported here in droves.
Sometimes souls are led to this area by their guides (creatures in charge of moving home). This is especially true for young souls. Others are guided here by an invisible force that draws them into this intermediate zone and on to the creatures that await them. Apparently, it is the Guide of a particular soul who decides whether other beings should accompany her or not. In most cases, the reason is not in a hurry, however, at this stage of their journey, the souls do not sit back. The feelings we experience during this period depend on our state of mind after each lifetime.
The meeting and the passage of souls are actually two phases. The intermediate zone is not some kind of permanent camp. Souls come here, are collected and then sent to their final destinations. One of the patients described this transitional zone as something like "the central hub of a huge wheel, and we are transported from the center along the spokes in a certain direction to our assigned place."
The most remarkable feature of the spiritual world is the constant sense of the presence of a powerful mental force that brings everything into incredible, supernatural harmony. Subjects say it is a place of pure thought.
Thought takes many forms. At this moment of their return, the souls begin to feel, to anticipate the upcoming meeting with the brethren awaiting them. Suddenly, the person who is invoked appears in the mind of the soul. This telepathic communication of spiritual beings through energy is a form of invisible contact, although the energy forms that are actually nearby are of course more directly connected. My Subjects' reports agree on modes of travel, routes, and final destination, but what each individual sees as they follow their path is personal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Moidi Raidon psychologist, philosopher "Life after life", Moscow, 2004.
2. Osipov Alexei Ilyich "Posthumous death of the soul."
3. E. Levkievskaya "Myths of the Russian people", Moscow 2000
4. Victor James Zammit "Life after death" Gatchina 2006
5. Rak Ivan Vladimirovich “Myths ancient egypt”, St. Petersburg 1993
7. Encyclopedia "Mythology of the Ancient World".
8. Charles Lethbeater "Life after death"
The problem of life and death is connected with the experiences of a person of his own stay in the world. The dual (biological and social) nature of a person determines that he is born, as it were, twice. At the beginning as a biological being (individual), and then as a social being (personality). Therefore, philosophers and death are considered not only as a natural, but also as a social phenomenon.
Death generally means the natural end of every living being. However, unlike other living beings, man is aware of his mortality. At the same time, the awareness or comprehension of death occurs in different ways. The question of death becomes for a person the subject of his spiritual dimension, personal and religious experience associated with such existentials as fear, love, faith, hope, guilt, etc.
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, on the contrary, called for moderate enjoyment of life, without fear of death. He argued that death has nothing to do with us: when we live, then there is no death yet, and when death has come, then we are no more.
And according to the teachings of the French philosopher Montaigne, in order to overcome the fear of death or to endure it more easily, one must get used to it, thinking about it constantly. Focusing on the problem of death stimulates the search for the meaning of life, which makes death less scary, because finding the meaning of life, a person goes (theoretically) beyond its boundaries.
An example of a calm and wise attitude to the problem of life and death can be the words of the Indian philosopher Mahatma Gandhi: “We do not know what is better - to live or die. Therefore, we should not overly admire life, nor tremble at the thought of death. We must treat both of them equally. This is an ideal option.” The problem of life and death is philosophically connected with the idea of gaining immortality. As compensation for the fear of death, a dream was born of people about an immortal soul, remaining after the decomposition of the body and moving into other beings or gaining eternal life in God, in hell or in paradise. The real immortality of a person, according to many thinkers, is that a person dies physically, but does not die socially, spiritually. He remains in his affairs, children, the results of creativity, the memory of people.
The meaning of life is not given to man from outside. He must be found. The very search for meaning makes life meaningful. In philosophy, there are various concepts of the meaning of life:
Hedonism (to live is to enjoy).
Asceticism (to live means to renounce the world, torturing the flesh for the sake of atonement for sins, etc.).
Eudemonism (to live means to strive for happiness as a person's destiny).
Ethics of duty (to live means to sacrifice oneself in the name of serving the ideal).
Utilitarianism (to live means to benefit from everything).
Pragmatism (to live means to strive for success, following the principle “the end justifies the means”).
The meaning of life is a personal choice of each individual. It consists in the self-realization of the potential of the individual, in the choice of not only values generally accepted in society, but also those that are determined by the individual qualities of a person, his personal life.
Introduction
Since ancient times, man has asked himself the question of what is the essence of human existence. Many philosophers and thinkers tried to answer why a person lives, why he came into this world, why he dies and what happens to him after death.
The orientation of Greek thinkers to man and his mind is closely connected with the fundamental setting of the entire Greek culture - with the call for self-knowledge. The saying "Know thyself", carved on the pillar at the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, was one of the leading ideas at the turning points of history.
For Socrates, the meaning of human life lies in philosophizing, in constant self-knowledge, in the eternal search for oneself through testing. Overcoming ignorance involves the search for what is good and evil, beautiful and ugly, truth and error. According to Plato, happiness (bliss) is possible only in the afterlife, when the immortal soul - the ideal essence in man - is freed from the fetters of the mortal body. The nature of man, according to Plato, is determined by his soul, more precisely, by soul and body, but with the primacy of the soul over the body, the divine immortal principle over the mortal, bodily. According to the teachings of Plato, the human soul consists of three parts: the first of them expresses the ideal - reasonable ability, the second - lustful-volitional, the third - instinctive-affective. Depending on which of these parts prevails, the fate of a person, the direction of his activity, the meaning of his life depends.
When asked what a person should dream about, Antisthenes said: "About dying happy." “He who wants to be immortal,” he said, “must lead a pious and righteous life.” "States perish when they cease to distinguish the bad from the good."
Unlike Slavic paganism (whose main ideological dominants were the anthropomorphization of nature and the naturalization of man) and the Hellenic type of culture (where the heroized man was the measure of all things), Christianity adopted by Russia dictated a qualitatively different concept of man. The basis of all foundations and the measure of all things has become the highest spiritual substantial principle.
Through the realization of one's smallness, sinfulness, even insignificance before the absoluteness of the ideal and in striving for it, a person received the prospect of spiritual development, his consciousness becomes dynamically directed towards moral perfection. Conscience, moral purity, the desire to do good, to perform spiritual feats becomes the core of personal self-consciousness, the behavior of the best representatives of the Russian people, the guarantors of its social development. Means of moral, spiritual development, the struggle of the individual against its suppression on different stages medieval history of Rus' were different - from the desire for spiritual self-deepening in the spirit of Nil Sorsky to the rebellious protest of Archpriest Avvakum in defense of folk traditions from their conscious destruction from above.
The problem of man occupies one of the central places in the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. French materialists contrasted their understanding of man with religious and philosophical anthropology, resolutely rejected the dualistic interpretation of human nature as a combination of bodily, material substance and an immaterial, immortal soul. As for the deist philosophers, Rousseau allowed the immortality of the soul and the afterlife retribution, while Voltaire denied that the soul is immortal, and about the fact that “divine justice” is possible in the afterlife, he preferred to maintain “reverent silence”.
In the interpretation of human nature, Voltaire opposed Pascal, rejecting not only his dualism, but also the main idea of the philosopher that man is one of the weakest and most insignificant creatures in nature, a kind of “thinking reed”. People are not as pathetic and not as evil as Pascal believed, Voltaire emphasizes. Pascal's idea of the loneliness and abandonment of people, he opposes his thesis about man as a social being striving to form "cultural communities". Voltaire does not accept Pascal's condemnation of human passions and selfishness. “Love for yourself”, other inclinations and passions are, according to Voltaire, the root cause of all human deeds, the impulse that unites people, leads to the formation of prosperous cities and great states.
The striving for a consistently materialistic solution to the problem of man was vividly expressed in the writings of La Mettrie, Diderot and Helvetius. The leitmotif of their philosophical anthropology is the position of the material unity of man, the closest dependence of the "capabilities of the soul", all mental processes, from sensation to thinking, from the nervous system and brain, from the state of "bodily substance". In accordance with this point of view, the death of the body was considered as the reason for the cessation of all mental activity of a person, as a natural and logical completion of earthly life, the only possible and real one.
Chapter 1. Man in search of the meaning of life.
Unlike animal instincts do not dictate to man what he needs, and unlike the man of yesterday, traditions do not dictate to today's man what he should. Knowing neither what he needs nor what he owes, man has lost a clear idea of what he wants. As a result, he either wants what others want (conformity), or does what others want him to (totalitarianism).
Meaning must be found, but cannot be created. You can only create a subjective meaning, a simple sense of meaning, or nonsense. Meaning not only must, but can be found, and in the search for meaning a person is guided by his conscience. In a word, conscience is the organ of meaning. It can be defined as the ability to discover the one and only meaning that lies in any situation. Meaning is every time also the concrete meaning of a concrete situation. It is always a “requirement of the moment”, which is always addressed to a specific person. And just as each individual situation is unique, so is each individual person.
Every day and every hour offers a new meaning, and a different meaning awaits each person. There is a meaning for everyone, and for everyone there is a special meaning. From all this it follows that meaning must change both from situation to situation and from person to person. However, the meaning is omnipresent. There is no such person for whom life would not keep some business ready, and there is no such situation in which life would not give us the opportunity to find meaning.
A person not only seeks meaning by virtue of his desire for meaning, but also finds it, namely in three ways. First, he can see meaning in action, in creating something. Secondly, he sees the point in experiencing something, and finally, he sees the point in loving someone. But even in a hopeless situation, in front of which he is helpless, he is able to see the meaning.
There are no situations in life that are truly meaningless. This can be explained by the fact that the negative aspects of human existence that seem to us - in particular, the tragic triad, which includes suffering, guilt and death - can also be transformed into something positive, into an achievement, if approached from the right position and with an adequate installation.
Realizing meaning, a person realizes himself. Realizing the meaning contained in suffering, we realize the most human in a person. We mature, we grow, we outgrow ourselves. It is where we are helpless and without hope, being unable to change the situation - it is there that we are called, we feel the need to change ourselves.
There is a definition that says that meanings and values are nothing but reactive formations and defense mechanisms. But are meanings and values as relative and subjective as they are supposed to be? Meaning is relative insofar as it refers to a specific person involved in a particular situation. We can say that the meaning changes, firstly, from person to person and, secondly, from one day to another, even from hour to hour. Of course, it is preferable to talk about the uniqueness, and not about the relativity of meanings. Uniqueness, however, is a quality not only of a situation, but of life as a whole, since life is a string of unique situations. Man is unique both in essence and in existence. In the ultimate analysis no one can be replaced - due to the uniqueness of each human being. And the life of each person is unique in that no one can repeat it. There is no such thing as a universal meaning to life, only the unique meanings of individual situations. However, among them there are those that have something in common, and, therefore, there are meanings that are inherent in people of a particular society, and even more than that, meanings that are shared by many people throughout history. These meanings are what is meant by values. Thus, values can be defined as universals of meaning that crystallize in typical situations faced by a society or even all of humanity.
The possession of values makes it easier for a person to find meaning, at least in typical situations, it eliminates decision making. But, unfortunately, he has to pay the price for this relief, because, unlike the unique meanings that permeate unique situations, it may turn out that two values are in conflict with each other. And the contradictions of values are reflected in the human soul in the form of value conflicts.
The impression that two values contradict each other is the consequence of missing a whole dimension. What is this dimension? This is a hierarchical order of values. According to Max Scheller, evaluation implicitly implies a preference for one value over another. The rank of a value is experienced along with the value itself. In other words, the experience of a certain value includes the experience that it is superior to some other value. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that there is no place for value conflicts. However, the experience of a hierarchical order of values does not relieve a person from making decisions.
Inclinations push a person, values attract. A person is always free to accept or reject the value that is offered to him by the situation. This is also true of the hierarchical order of values that are conveyed by moral and ethical traditions and norms. They must pass the test of a person's conscience - unless he refuses to obey his conscience and does not drown out her voice.
Meaning is what is meant by the person who asks the question, or by the situation, which also implies a question that requires an answer. Of course, a person is free to answer the questions that life asks him. But this freedom should not be confused with arbitrariness. It must be understood in terms of responsibility. A person is responsible for the correct answer to the question, for finding the true meaning of the situation. And meaning is something that needs to be found rather than given, discovered rather than invented.
Meanings cannot be given arbitrarily, but must be found responsibly. Meaning must be sought with the help of conscience. Indeed, conscience guides a person in his search for meaning. Conscience can be defined as a person's intuitive ability to find meaning in a situation. In addition to being intuitive, conscience is a creative faculty. Conscience also has the ability to detect unique meanings that are contrary to accepted values. A lively, clear and precise conscience is the only thing that gives a person the opportunity to resist the effects of an existential vacuum - conformism and totalitarianism.
Chapter 2. Death.
What is Death?
What is death? Death, cessation of the life of the organism, its death. In unicellular organisms (for example, protozoa), the death of an individual manifests itself in the form of division, leading to the cessation of the existence of this individual and the emergence of two new ones instead. The death of warm-blooded animals and humans is associated with the cessation, primarily of respiration and blood circulation. There are 2 main stages of death: clinical death and the biological, or true, following it, - irreversible cessation of physiological processes in cells and tissues.
Realizing the inevitability of death, people did not get tired of looking for ways to resist it. Man comes into this world to live, not to die. Human life is the highest value, it is our being. That's all we have. Therefore, the task today cannot be more important than to preserve it, to extend it for the maximum achievable period.
But Man, together with the entire animal world, is forced to obey its laws, which determine the inevitability of death. Death is a necessary moment of life. But why should a person obey her. We have violated so many conceivable and unthinkable laws of nature, we take from it much more than it can give us. Then why don't we take more of her life?!
But on the other hand, why do we need it?
Yang Zhu considered the limit of human life to be 100 years, and it reaches one in a thousand, and even then not always. Categorically denying the possibility of personal immortality, he said that a long life is of no use to a person. “Sorrow and joy in the affairs of this world in olden times were the same as they are now; the order and chaos of change and change in olden times were the same as they are now. If a person has already heard once, if he has already gone through all this, then even a hundred years will seem to him a sufficient period for him to be extremely tired of everything: does a long life seem all the more bitter to him? (2, p. 137). If a person has not fulfilled his purpose in his long life, it will not be worthy and correct, even if he lives for thousands of years.
Death is good.
We must not forget also that there are moments when we can say that Death is good!
M. Montaigne admits that only God and religion promise immortality: neither nature nor reason say a word about it. Why immortality, because death is not only deliverance from diseases, it is deliverance from all kinds of suffering.
From scientifically objective positions - detached from our personal experiences and fears - death appears as a regulator and organizer of life. All organisms, in a favorable environment, multiply exponentially. This powerful "pressure of life" would very quickly turn the earth's biosphere into a swarming clot of organisms. Fortunately, some generations free up the arena of life for others. Only in such a scheme is the guarantee of the evolution of organisms.
Death is a completely natural phenomenon, it has played a useful and necessary role in the course of long biological evolution. Indeed, without death, which gave the fullest and most serious significance to the fact of the survival of the fittest, and thus made possible the progress of organic species, man would never have appeared at all.
Alas, each of us, living, longs not only for knowledge, but also for consolation, understanding the blessing of death for the triumph of biological evolution hardly helps us to joyfully expect the end of our priceless - for us! - and the only forever of centuries of personal life ...
The problem of death becomes central to Freud. And the central problem is precisely the problem of death, which is inextricably linked with the problem of time. The problem of immortality is secondary and has usually been misunderstood. Death is the deepest and most significant fact of life, elevating the very last of mortals above the ordinary and vulgarity of life.
Only the fact of death raises in depth the question of the meaning of life. Life in this world has meaning precisely because there is death.(3) Meaning is connected with the end. And if there were no end, i.e. if there was a bad infinity of life, then there would be no meaning in life. Death - the ultimate horror and ultimate evil - turns out to be the only way out of a bad time into eternity, and immortal and eternal life turns out to be achievable only through death.
Life is noble only because there is death in it, there is an end, indicating that a person is destined for another, higher life. In infinite time, the meaning is never revealed, the meaning lies in eternity. But between life in time and life in eternity lies an abyss, through which the transition is possible only through death, through the horror of the break. Death is not only the meaninglessness of life in this world, its perishability, but also a sign coming from the depths, indicating the existence of a higher meaning of life.
The living, not the dead, suffer when death has done its work. The dead can no longer suffer; and we can even praise death when it puts an end to extreme physical pain or sad mental decline. However, it is wrong to speak of death as a "reward" because true reward, like true punishment, requires the conscious experience of the fact. There may come a moment in every man's life when death will be more effective for his chief purposes than life; once what he stands for will become clearer and more convincing through his death than if he had acted in any other way.
The social significance of death also has its positive aspects. After all, death makes close to us the common concerns and the common fate of all people everywhere. It unites us with deeply felt emotions of the heart and dramatically emphasizes the equality of our final destinies. The universality of death reminds us of the essential brotherhood of man that exists despite all the violent divisions and conflicts recorded in history as well as in contemporary affairs.
Indifference.
Death has a positive meaning. But death is at the same time the most terrible and the only evil. Every evil can be reduced to death. There is no other evil but death and murder.
At all times, people have sought salvation from the inevitable mistress of death. And this consists not only in the search for the immortality of the body or soul, but also in a certain "indifference" to death. This is the basis of the principle of the "beautiful life" of Epicurus.
Epicurus formulates this principle as follows: “accustom yourself to the idea that death has nothing to do with us. Everything good and bad consists in sensation, and death is the deprivation of sensation. Therefore, the correct knowledge that death has nothing to do with us makes the mortality of life delightful, not because it adds an unlimited amount of time to it, but because it takes away the thirst for immortality. (2, p.144)
Conclusion: “... he is stupid who says that he is afraid of death, not because it causes suffering when it comes, but because it causes suffering when it comes: after all, if something does not disturb the presence, then it is in vain to grieve when it just yet to be expected. Thus, the most terrible of evils, death has nothing to do with us, since when we exist, death is not yet present; and when death is present, then we do not exist. Thus, death has nothing to do with either the living or the dead, since for some it does not exist. (2, p.144)
He contrasts his attitude towards death with the attitude towards it of the “people of the crowd”, who either seek to avoid death as the greatest evil, or, on the contrary, crave it, seeing in it a means of “rest from the evils of life”. Epicurus says: "The sage does not deviate from life, but he is not afraid of unlife, because life does not interfere with him, and unlife does not seem to be some kind of evil." (2, p.145)
The paradox of death.
Freud argues that the goal towards which all life strives is death. The paradox of death is that death is the most terrible evil, which frightens man most of all, and through this evil the way out to eternal life, or one of the ways out, is revealed. Our life is filled with such paradoxes. The bad infinity of life would just make a man a finite being.
The paradox of death has not only an ethical, but also an aesthetic expression in the world. Death is ugly, and it is the ultimate ugliness, decay, loss of face, loss of any form and face, the triumph of the lower elements of the material world. And death is beautiful, it ennobles the last of mortals and puts it on the same level with the very first, it defeats the ugliness of vulgarity and everyday life. Death is the ultimate evil, nobler than life in this world. The beauty, the charm of the past is connected with the ennobling fact of death. It is death that purifies the past and places the seal of eternity on it. In death there is not only decay, but also purification. Nothing corrupted, decomposed and corruptible can stand the test of death. This test can only endure forever. The moral paradox of life and death can be expressed in the ethical imperative: treat the living as if they were dying, treat the dead as if they were alive, i.e. always remember death as the mystery of life, and in life and in death always affirm eternal life.
Tragic is the death of personality in man, because personality is an eternal idea. A person is not born from a father and mother, a person is created by the Higher power.
Materialism, positivism, etc. the teachings come to terms with death, legitimize death and at the same time try to forget about it, arranging life on the graves of the dead. The Stoic or Buddhist attitude towards death is powerless in front of it and means the victory of death, but it is nobler than generic theories that completely forget about death. A mental, and not a spiritual, attitude to death is always sad and melancholic, it always contains the sadness of a memory that has no power to resurrect. Only a spiritual attitude towards death is victorious. Only Christianity knows victory over death. Christianity teaches not so much about natural immortality, which does not involve any struggle, but about the resurrection, which involves the struggle of spiritual, grace-filled forces with deadly forces. The doctrine of resurrection proceeds from the tragic fact of death and signifies victory over it, which is not found in any doctrine of immortality, nor in Orphism, nor in Plato, nor in Theosophy. Only Christianity looks directly into the eyes of death, recognizes both the tragedy of death and the meaning of death, and at the same time does not reconcile with death and conquers it. Man is both mortal and immortal, he belongs to the deadly time and eternity, he is both a spiritual being and a natural being. Death is a terrible tragedy, and death through death is conquered by resurrection. But death is conquered not by natural, but by supernatural forces.
The horror of death is not only the horror of the death of the individual, but also the horror of the death of the world. There is a personal Apocalypse and a global Apocalypse. Apocalypse is a revelation about the death of the world, although death is not the last word in it. Mortal is not only man, not only peoples and cultures, but all mankind as a whole, and the whole world, all creation.
Chapter 3. In search of immortality.
The problem of immortality.
The problem of immortality is the main, most important problem of human life. All religions, beginning with the rudimentary religious beliefs of savages, have been built in relation to death. Man is a being placed before death throughout his life, and not only in the last hour of life. Man is waging a twofold struggle: for life and for immortality.
Strong suffering always raises the question of death and immortality. But every deepening of life raises the same question. Many types of religious and philosophical teachings about the victory over the horror of death and the achievement of real or illusory immortality: the spiritualistic doctrine of the immortality of the soul; the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls; the mystical-pantheistic doctrine of merging with the Divine; idealistic doctrine of the immortality of ideas and values; the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the whole person; blunting the acuteness of the problem of death through merging with collective life on earth and through the possibility of earthly happiness.
The spiritualistic doctrine of the immortality of the soul promises immortality only to a part of a person, and not to a whole person. The doctrine of reincarnation still less gives immortality to a whole person, it presupposes his decomposition into separate elements and the plunge of a person into a cosmic cycle, leaving him at the mercy of time. Man can pass into a non-human kind of existence. The doctrine of merging with the deity does not mean the immortality of the individual, but only the immortality of impersonal ideas and values. The idealistic doctrine also does not mean the immortality of the individual, but only the immortality of impersonal ideas and values. Turning away from the theme of immortality through an appeal to the future happiness of mankind speaks of the insolubility of this topic and of hostility towards its formulation. Only the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the whole person answers the question, but many difficulties are associated with it.
Even now, there is a fairly widespread opinion, which has long acquired the power of prejudice, that the idea of the immortality of the soul is inherent in people from the very beginning. Its spread was facilitated by the considerable efforts of theologians. Science is not yet clear about the origin of the idea of immortality. However, one thing can be considered proven: only after a certain time did people have the idea that only their mythical ancestors, and especially those who later became gods, possess immortality, while other people either lost this property or never had it. This is evidenced by the oldest oral traditions and written monuments, in particular Sumero-Babylonian and Biblical.
As for the idea of personal immortality, it was the result of a religiously optimistic solution to the question of the death and immortality of man.
The essence of any religion, as noted by Yu. Everyday life on which it depends whether he achieves the desired result or fails. (2, p.78)
The impotence of people in the face of real death made them believe in the immortality of the soul.
Virtually immortal.
The long-standing dream of people about personal immortality, an indefinitely long and happy life, like many of their other innermost aspirations, has only relatively recently begun to acquire real prerequisites for its practical implementation.
The immortality of the body is the central theme of the works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky. He believed that over time, a person will definitely take up the transformation of his body. Practical immortality, from the point of view of Tsiolkovsky, is achievable, in particular, because there is no mysterious soul in the body. Our body is known. Although it is very complex, it is still a machine. And death “is damage to the machine, just as the stop of the clock cannot be without breaking or deforming any parts, so is the stop of life. There is no machine that stops working without a reason; so the human one stops, not because the soul has flown out of it, but because it has deteriorated. The body is destroyed, the brain is destroyed, and there is no life; matter is dispersed throughout the universe, and life disappears forever. (2, p.165) Naturalists also believed that the soul is a symbol of immortality, and if there is no soul, then no immortality is possible.
Tsiolkovsky emphasizes that the life of an organism "should not be short, so that the creature could achieve high development and bear abundant fruits during it." (2, p.166) Although he makes a reservation that scientists are looking for the continuation of life and even achieve physical immortality, but this is still unrealistic. It is much more realistic to hope that science will reach a certain elongation sooner or later.
Tsiolkovsky was one of the first to declare the existence of an extraterrestrial higher mind, which most likely has already achieved that practical immortality or is approaching it, in contrast to the imperfect earthly mind, which is still only in its infancy. Tsiolkovsky explained the absence of clear evidence of the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization by the unpreparedness of mankind for contact with this mind.
In addition, it is quite obvious that the current nature of penetration into space, when people are forced to stay outside the earth for a relatively short time and necessarily return to their native planet, will undergo a qualitative change in the future: the creation of space settlements, the settlement of the planets of the solar system and circumstellar space, distant luminaries with the need will cause new population dynamics, require a different length of human life. Practical steps in this direction have actually already been taken. Research in the field of human anabiosis has begun.
“Well, where is the true beginning of life, where is the primitive citizen of the universe?”
"Of course it's an atom, or a more primal unknown part of it." (2, p.170)
Even organic life, all beings, everything around us consists of atoms, they were in the beginning, and they will always be.
To designate a person programmed (genetically and socially) for practical immortality, the concept of Homo immortalis was proposed - an immortal person, most qualitatively expressing the difference from modern man - Homo sapiens.
Practical immortality is in no way consistent with the change of generations in biological and social evolution. Roughly speaking, Immortality will not allow us to develop. But there is also a possibility that Personal practical immortality, which implies the cessation of generational change as a factor of development in its current sense, should not only become an obstacle to spiritual progress, but, on the contrary, be a powerful impetus for the movement of mankind forward, allowing maximum use of the creative potential of people, the inexhaustible uniqueness of each of them without colossal and irrational costs for the reproduction of new generations, to explore outer space. Consequently, even today we can talk about the objective need to pose and solve the problem of human immortality in a new way. It is now up to science, and, above all, biology and medicine.
Conclusion.
Among all the things that a person is proud of, his mind occupies an unsurpassed value. It is he who allows him to know that there is such a thing as death, and to reflect on its meaning. Animals cannot do this; they do not realize or foresee that the day will come and they will perish. Animals do not face the problem of death or the tragedy of death. They do not argue about the resurrection and eternal life. Only people can argue about it, which they do. The conclusion from such a dispute is most often that this life is everything. The truth about death frees us from both humiliating fear and gullible optimism. It frees us from self-flattery and self-deception. People not only can bear this truth about death, they can rise above it, to much nobler thoughts and actions than those centered around eternal self-preservation.
The dream of people about personal immortality was born in the mists of time. It had both religious-pessimistic (when only gods were considered immortal) and religious-optimistic forms (when people believed in an eternal afterlife). But time passed, and faith dried up. Man increasingly renounced the gods, and now there are hosts of those who do not believe in either gods or posthumous eternal bliss. They crave earthly joys, and it can be said that the struggle against premature deaths, for a long and happy life(if not for himself, then at least for his descendants) is the main goal of all historical development humanity.
Knowing that immortality is an illusion frees us from any kind of concern about death. This knowledge makes death unimportant in a sense, it frees up all our energy and time for the fulfillment and expansion of happy opportunities on this earth. This knowledge brings strength, depth and maturity to a person, it makes possible a simple, understandable and inspiring philosophy of life.
From birth to death, we can live our lives, work for what we hold dear, and enjoy it. We can give meaning to our actions and fill our days on earth with meaning and scope that even our end, death, cannot destroy.
In conclusion, I would like to quote J. Bernal: “Now we are forced to accept death, but there is no need to do it with pious humility, perceiving it as something predetermined and inevitable from the ages... No matter how inevitable and necessary it was in the early stages of organic evolution, it is quite clear that it does no more useful work in human society… We realized that death is by no means inevitable in principle, and we must take care to find ways to delay or avoid it.” (2, Page 3)
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… The emptiness of the world is the beginning of the touch of its core. On the surface air ends and the surface itself ends. The subtle sweetness of the core, and the core is a shift into the Infinite. To see from the void, having reached the end of thought. There is "that" which is beyond thought. Thought is always a boundary, always a struggle and a contradiction. Thought is motion equal to zero. The visible world is an illusion of form. Why an illusion, because the form at every moment is not equal to itself. It is always a covering, but not even as a consequence. Dogmas, stencils and stereotypes are the nourishment of the form.
To keep the consciousness within the limits of the form is to extinguish it. Thought can only outline, but, how not to think over the reality. From the point of lack of connection with anyone, anything, the Presence is born as the freedom to create.
Freedom is based where the alternation ends, the change of being and non-being. And, of course, freedom is the end of a thought bound by reason.
In the beginning, there was unbearable fatigue arising from “quantum jumps” of consciousness, immobility with the insinuating exultation of the Transition, with its smell and sound… beyond the threshold of soundlessness.
Was it worth getting involved in this world, overgrowing it, in order to break out of it, in order to come to only one thing - a break with it, an exit from it.
That which changes ceases to be itself - is not life!
But life is not immutability. It does not open in the space-time categories. I stopped worrying about everything that was on my lips.
Pain and joy cease to excite me, because the inner “I” does not suffer and does not experience opposites, it is OUTSIDE of this, not above this, but OUTSIDE. Likewise, the opinions of narrow-minded fans from the movements of "light", the warm-water mob of "collective squalor that does not break off from the roofs", no longer plow the surface of my perception. It has long been said about such people: “If you are not cold and not hot, then I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
Strangely, our existence is limited to only one planet, enclosed within the evolution of thought, and does not reach the Whole in any way.
It has long been said that our material form does not fully correspond to the tasks of evolution, the spirit cannot be fully realized in it. But all isolation is disintegration and denial. We got into the whirlpool of monsters of our own thought forms. We are fatally dependent on matter. And fatigue from this life is a foreshadowing of awakening.
We are “victims” of the influence of the worlds on us only because we passively register the fact of their influence and do not know how to consciously interact with them.
The secret of life is only in the relations between the Worlds. And the development of our astronomy, astrology and parapsychology is only the fact of our turning our backs on the Universe. But our true, inner Self is created from the composition of the Whole - the Metagalactic interdimensional structure. The mistake is that we cognize the Universe only in relation to the form, but not from the authenticity of its own quality, contained in ourselves. The immeasurable Unity of the Universe is the Lord.
Get rid of the visible - touch the irresistible breath of life. And when you begin to feel it in everything unknown, interlimiting, bordering on the death of form, quality, then all the usual actions are incredibly difficult. Then the pillars of physical light will be incredible pounds of screening veil.
We are incomparably poor in relation to the Universe. We are constantly looking for new possibilities of matter, while we only need to learn to get rid of it, to move from physical existence to psycho-spiritual.
Live disidentified with your own physical body. Live like cosmic fires.
But all spiritual appearances on the physical plane are a dream, a complete opposite or reverse reflection of the manifestations of the Spirit.
Most of those who are active on this plane are no longer on that plane!
Their inversely proportional activity here blocked their paths of evolution there. They have broken the fluid connection with the Soul - the inner Image-design of the Spirit and live, sometimes very "successfully" (in the material sense, of course) as a biological substance, form or clot, a patch of matter. But everything that does not have the conductivity or transparency of the Unity is dirt or slag, and must be removed from the system of the Whole.
Well, what can you do if I'm not interested in the relationship of wives and husbands, fathers and children, people and animals, but interesting, that is. relations are real only with one's inner self, with its darkness, more transparent than dense light. These relations are the only ones NOT conditioned by anything, because they are unconditional, and are not limited by the thought-reason of the form. And these Relationships are the irresistible ESSENCE of life.
Yes, my Soul is no longer responsible for the personality, because it is impossible to be responsible for what is already NOT!
This world is still mechanically revolving around the Sun, but has already decayed in the captivity of form. The lot has become scarce. The world is moving towards Pralaya. But the inertia of form also ends. Radical changes in consciousness are not yet action. Only the unconscious is connected or one with the Superconscient.
The outer world ends for those who have become the Soul.
This phase of human evolution - as the lowest point of "diving" - meets with pre-life. The plasticity and harmony of internal spaces shuns everything external. Responding to the “reality” of the day is NOT to be! Because it's turned inside out. I want Existence, BEING, but not the POISON of fluidity!
The only Reality on Earth is Shambhala! (Because it is neutral with respect to us: the lunatic asylum of the end of the Kali Yuga, which dragged on, however.) And the invulnerable authenticity of the liberated intuition, standing on the paradoxes of Novelty.
No, God has never been here yet, for He is the manifested humanity, about which we still know nothing, because we are not, for to be him is not to be external. But all the time, external shadow people….
Something within us is likened to the cosmic Fire, which invariably destroys us for the purposes of the second Birth.
There is only one will - the will of the inner Self - the true one, it is illogical, it looks at us from the mirror, everything else is temporary. This will is realized as self-knowledge, which is not consciousness or knowledge. This is the non-verbal sweetness of the Source, accessible to the one unity of the Soul. It is not measurable and fundamentally consistent, because irreplaceable by anything.
Self-knowledge equals not-knowing. Self-consciousness, unequal to awareness.
But only indecomposable, impersonal quality, not endowed with attributes, free from polarities. Only non-movement, non-action brings closer to it - the reality of the Essence. The essence of "I" is reality, everything else is decay.
What an unbearable pity that we understand only the familiar and only what is contained within the boundaries of thinking. But we think only in terms of boundaries. Stencil thinking in its essence is monotony, uniformity of its very, thinking, mechanism. The whole mental process of Homo sapiens is only a repeatedly mediated semi-analogy of reality, the sum of our mechanical ideas about the world. But the world is not what we think of it.
So, I tend to listen only to the inner "I" - and this is true communication, everything else is foam on the water. And this is not isolation, but opening into the only real, true and ONE world. There are no concepts in it: “I” - “not-I”, because this is the end of thought. The eternally existing does not include the concept of "one" and "all", concrete and universal, individual and conciliar, temporal and a priori, it is GIVEN, a GIVEN. And givenness is higher than any unity, because it does not know diversity. Everything and nothing are one and the same. The given knows no effort. Effort leads to addiction. We are in relation to it, given, - the opposite reflection. The path to it is the path of paradoxes. After Zen, only J. Krishnamurti adequately expressed it; expressed it in words. And this GIVEN is spontaneous. When Krishnamurti declared that "life is transcendental spontaneity," he revealed the very basis and law of life.
Something is generated with the help of something, but it is not equal to the impulse from which it was repelled.
All physical actions are equal to ZERO, but peace is only equal to MOVEMENT, because, starting from it, we reach the inner Self, free from polarities: movement-non-movement. "Reality is the Void, but it is not empty."
Silence shortens the distance. There is one freedom - freedom from the role. The role is again generated by thinking.
God is the negation of God. For each subsequent is not already the previous one.
Any society or organization is already a crystallization of life or ideas - isolation from life and violence against the life principle. And every teaching is a distance from the Truth. For the Truth cannot be TEACHED! All stories are NOT about Her!
Stop talking about what you're becoming.
Only internally “I” is co-naturally with Her. Truth is his habitat. But only in this case, on the inner planes, the environment and "I" are merged and mutually dissolved by their own impulse. It turns out that real life- this is life from the opposite, it does NOT come from consciousness, it is not conditioned by reason and consciousness, it does not know even the shadow of violence. Does not tolerate conventions and literalness. But there is a jump into the Abyss and it requires courage from us.
But there is no choice: "if you want to know God, know yourself." And then the words of the Prince of Denmark will be fulfilled: “and he turned his eyes with pupils into the soul, and there it is dark”, or - shallowly, because “there is a soul - a dessert plate: everything is empty, smooth, clean and small.” And most importantly, such souls, or little souls, always know what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is not right, what is possible and what is not, for they are warm, gray - “in a world where the blackest is SER”!
…or maybe abandon the path of incarnations altogether, then the Givenness will come… .
Introduction
Since ancient times, man has asked himself the question of what is the essence of human existence. Many philosophers and thinkers tried to answer why a person lives, why he came into this world, why he dies and what happens to him after death.
The orientation of Greek thinkers to man and his mind is closely connected with the fundamental setting of the entire Greek culture - with the call for self-knowledge. The saying "Know thyself", carved on the pillar at the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, was one of the leading ideas at the turning points of history.
For Socrates, the meaning of human life lies in philosophizing, in constant self-knowledge, in the eternal search for oneself through testing. Overcoming ignorance involves the search for what is good and evil, beautiful and ugly, truth and error. According to Plato, happiness (bliss) is possible only in the afterlife, when the immortal soul - the ideal essence in man - is freed from the fetters of the mortal body. The nature of man, according to Plato, is determined by his soul, more precisely, by soul and body, but with the primacy of the soul over the body, the divine immortal principle over the mortal, bodily. According to the teachings of Plato, the human soul consists of three parts: the first of them expresses the ideal - reasonable ability, the second - lustful-volitional, the third - instinctive-affective. Depending on which of these parts prevails, the fate of a person, the direction of his activity, the meaning of his life depends.
When asked what a person should dream about, Antisthenes said: "About dying happy." “He who wants to be immortal,” he said, “must lead a pious and righteous life.” "States perish when they cease to distinguish the bad from the good."
Unlike Slavic paganism (whose main ideological dominants were the anthropomorphization of nature and the naturalization of man) and the Hellenic type of culture (where the heroized man was the measure of all things), Christianity adopted by Russia dictated a qualitatively different concept of man. The basis of all foundations and the measure of all things has become the highest spiritual substantial principle.
Through the realization of one's smallness, sinfulness, even insignificance before the absoluteness of the ideal and in striving for it, a person received the prospect of spiritual development, his consciousness becomes dynamically directed towards moral perfection. Conscience, moral purity, the desire to do good, to perform spiritual feats becomes the core of personal self-consciousness, the behavior of the best representatives of the Russian people, the guarantors of its social development. The means of moral, spiritual formation, the struggle of the individual against its suppression at different stages of the medieval history of Rus' were different - from the desire for spiritual self-deepening in the spirit of Nil Sorsky to the rebellious protest of Archpriest Avvakum in defense of folk traditions from their conscious destruction from above.
The problem of man occupies one of the central places in the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. French materialists contrasted their understanding of man with religious and philosophical anthropology, resolutely rejected the dualistic interpretation of human nature as a combination of bodily, material substance and an immaterial, immortal soul. As for the deist philosophers, Rousseau allowed the immortality of the soul and the afterlife retribution, while Voltaire denied that the soul is immortal, and about the fact that “divine justice” is possible in the afterlife, he preferred to maintain “reverent silence”.
In the interpretation of human nature, Voltaire opposed Pascal, rejecting not only his dualism, but also the main idea of the philosopher that man is one of the weakest and most insignificant creatures in nature, a kind of “thinking reed”. People are not as pathetic and not as evil as Pascal believed, Voltaire emphasizes. Pascal's idea of the loneliness and abandonment of people, he opposes his thesis about man as a social being striving to form "cultural communities". Voltaire does not accept Pascal's condemnation of human passions and selfishness. “Love for yourself”, other inclinations and passions are, according to Voltaire, the root cause of all human deeds, the impulse that unites people, leads to the formation of prosperous cities and great states.
The striving for a consistently materialistic solution to the problem of man was vividly expressed in the writings of La Mettrie, Diderot and Helvetius. The leitmotif of their philosophical anthropology is the position of the material unity of man, the closest dependence of the "capabilities of the soul", all mental processes, from sensation to thinking, from the nervous system and brain, from the state of "bodily substance". In accordance with this point of view, the death of the body was considered as the reason for the cessation of all mental activity of a person, as a natural and logical completion of earthly life, the only possible and real one.
Chapter 1. Man in search of the meaning of life.
Unlike animal instincts do not dictate to man what he needs, and unlike the man of yesterday, traditions do not dictate to today's man what he should. Knowing neither what he needs nor what he owes, man has lost a clear idea of what he wants. As a result, he either wants what others want (conformity), or does what others want him to (totalitarianism).
Meaning must be found, but cannot be created. You can only create a subjective meaning, a simple sense of meaning, or nonsense. Meaning not only must, but can be found, and in the search for meaning a person is guided by his conscience. In a word, conscience is the organ of meaning. It can be defined as the ability to discover the one and only meaning that lies in any situation. Meaning is every time also the concrete meaning of a concrete situation. It is always a “requirement of the moment”, which is always addressed to a specific person. And just as each individual situation is unique, so is each individual person.
Every day and every hour offers a new meaning, and a different meaning awaits each person. There is a meaning for everyone, and for everyone there is a special meaning. From all this it follows that meaning must change both from situation to situation and from person to person. However, the meaning is omnipresent. There is no such person for whom life would not keep some business ready, and there is no such situation in which life would not give us the opportunity to find meaning.
A person not only seeks meaning by virtue of his desire for meaning, but also finds it, namely in three ways. First, he can see meaning in action, in creating something. Secondly, he sees the point in experiencing something, and finally, he sees the point in loving someone. But even in a hopeless situation, in front of which he is helpless, he is able to see the meaning.
There are no situations in life that are truly meaningless. This can be explained by the fact that the negative aspects of human existence that seem to us - in particular, the tragic triad, which includes suffering, guilt and death - can also be transformed into something positive, into an achievement, if approached from the right position and with an adequate installation.
Realizing meaning, a person realizes himself. Realizing the meaning contained in suffering, we realize the most human in a person. We mature, we grow, we outgrow ourselves. It is where we are helpless and without hope, being unable to change the situation - it is there that we are called, we feel the need to change ourselves.
There is a definition that says that meanings and values are nothing but reactive formations and defense mechanisms. But are meanings and values as relative and subjective as they are supposed to be? Meaning is relative insofar as it refers to a specific person involved in a particular situation. We can say that the meaning changes, firstly, from person to person and, secondly, from one day to another, even from hour to hour. Of course, it is preferable to talk about the uniqueness, and not about the relativity of meanings. Uniqueness, however, is a quality not only of a situation, but of life as a whole, since life is a string of unique situations. Man is unique both in essence and in existence. In the ultimate analysis no one can be replaced - due to the uniqueness of each human being. And the life of each person is unique in that no one can repeat it. There is no such thing as a universal meaning to life, only the unique meanings of individual situations. However, among them there are those that have something in common, and, therefore, there are meanings that are inherent in people of a particular society, and even more than that, meanings that are shared by many people throughout history. These meanings are what is meant by values. Thus, values can be defined as universals of meaning that crystallize in typical situations faced by a society or even all of humanity.
The possession of values makes it easier for a person to find meaning, at least in typical situations, it eliminates decision making. But, unfortunately, he has to pay the price for this relief, because, unlike the unique meanings that permeate unique situations, it may turn out that two values are in conflict with each other. And the contradictions of values are reflected in the human soul in the form of value conflicts.
The impression that two values contradict each other is the consequence of missing a whole dimension. What is this dimension? This is a hierarchical order of values. According to Max Scheller, evaluation implicitly implies a preference for one value over another. The rank of a value is experienced along with the value itself. In other words, the experience of a certain value includes the experience that it is superior to some other value. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that there is no place for value conflicts. However, the experience of a hierarchical order of values does not relieve a person from making decisions.
Inclinations push a person, values attract. A person is always free to accept or reject the value that is offered to him by the situation. This is also true of the hierarchical order of values that are conveyed by moral and ethical traditions and norms. They must pass the test of a person's conscience - unless he refuses to obey his conscience and does not drown out her voice.
Meaning is what is meant by the person who asks the question, or by the situation, which also implies a question that requires an answer. Of course, a person is free to answer the questions that life asks him. But this freedom should not be confused with arbitrariness. It must be understood in terms of responsibility. A person is responsible for the correct answer to the question, for finding the true meaning of the situation. And meaning is something that needs to be found rather than given, discovered rather than invented.
Meanings cannot be given arbitrarily, but must be found responsibly. Meaning must be sought with the help of conscience. Indeed, conscience guides a person in his search for meaning. Conscience can be defined as a person's intuitive ability to find meaning in a situation. In addition to being intuitive, conscience is a creative faculty. Conscience also has the ability to detect unique meanings that are contrary to accepted values. A lively, clear and precise conscience is the only thing that gives a person the opportunity to resist the effects of an existential vacuum - conformism and totalitarianism.
