A Story of Agapit Pechersky by Anastasia Novykh (reading strategies book .txt) 📕

is banished from this man’s heart and remains in the external towards the person forever. And that owing to the Baptism a man is able to free himself from all the sins and abstain from backsliding to it in what follows. Can it really be so?”
“No, of course not. Undoubtedly, Baptism, has force. But for an ordinary person it is but an impetus towards his spiritual awakening. However, it does not rid him of his Animal nature, which is named ‘satan’ in Christianity. Man remains in Animal body. Mind of man – is Animal’s mind. And there is no way to throw that away into the exterior or to get rid of it completely. Assuming like that is equivalent to reasoning like a person, who is driving a car and tries to convince himself that he is just flying.
“Even Bodhisattvas, when being born in a human body, are liable to trials of Animal nature and all the human temptations. For instance, take Jesus, God’s Son, born in a human body. He did not escape this lot. For forty days did he have to struggle with ‘satan,’ that is, simply speaking, he underwent his personal Armageddon. He subdued Animal’s mind to his Spiritual Nature, ‘chaining up’ his Animal nature. And even despite that it had been ‘barking’ and ‘whining’ for the whole life, making itself felt. Because even though Jesus was the Great Soul, still he was in a human body. And there is no escaping it. Such is the Law. Such is the human nature.”
Kostya uttered to this, smiling: “I recall myself being baptized in the middle school. The priest asked us something, and we answered all together. Then he told us to turn to the West, blow and spit on satan with all might. This I remembered well, because I gathered all my saliva and did my best...”
We laughed, and Sensei explained: “This was one of the Baptism rituals – banning of evil spirits and renunciation of satan.”
“Well, I do understand that,” smiled Kostya, imitating Nikolai Andreevich’s reasoning. “But why did we need to spit?”
“By this spittle, as it is believed, a Christian shows that he is not afraid of satan and his crafty designs, because God gives this person the necessary protection,” explained Sensei. “In short, man shows his utter contempt for satan.”
“Why, such a queer culture – sheer Middle Ages,” chuckled Kostya.
“Culture has nothing to do with it. People do not change, you know. They remain the same like in the past.”
“And why did we turn to the West?”
“The thing is that the Orthodox Eastern Church has always associated the West with forces, opposing God. When a person turns to the West during this ritual, as churchmen believe, the baptized renounces satan directly, declaring it to him, so-to-say right in the ‘face’. After that the person turns to the altar on the East. This side is considered to be linking man to God.”
“Well, taking into account that Shambala is located somewhere there, they may be right,” remarked Volodya, and after a pause said in a bass: “And about the West, perhaps, as well.”
“The priest used to say prayers in Old Church Slavonic,” Kostya went into reminiscences. “Although half of what he said was obscure. Then he aspersed us with water, oiled us with something. Ah! He also sheared locks from our hair, and we wrapped them in wax cookies and dipped them in water. Why should it be so complicated, anyway?”
“You’ll understand when you grow up,” Victor put in.
Sensei smiled with a tinge of sadness and uttered: “You see, even such a rite is merely a show for some, and life rethinking for others.”
Kostya grew quiet after these words, and Nikolai Andreevich seized an opportunity to address Sensei with a story about his patient.
“So, during that conversation, he mentioned that only the baptized person will go to heaven, while the unbaptized one will never get there. That other sacraments have no effect on the unbaptized. Such person supposedly must neither be prayed for, nor commemorated during his life as well as after his death. He must not be even given a requiem service. And after baptism, allegedly, all these are allowed to be made. Looks like an unbaptized person does not exist for the Church at all?”
Sensei listened to Nikolai Andreevich attentively and then softly replied: “How shall I put it?.. For the church of this particular religion, perhaps, he does not exist. But for God – all people are His children! Starting from the eighth day, right after soul settles in a human body, he becomes His ‘child,’ a little human – with a small letter. But it is only up to the person himself – his will and his choice – that he can become a Human from the capital letter and come to God as a mature creation.”
“Does man’s soul settle in the body on the eighth day?” asked Ruslan.
“Yes.”
“And before that... What is that child before that?”
“Just a living organism, such as any other little animal,” replied Sensei. “And again, regarding this question we encounter that the knowledge was lost, and only mere traditions remain from times immemorial. By the way, echoes of the knowledge that soul comes on the eighth day from birth has been kept in Rus up till now. The child’s name was often given depending on the saint being honored on the eighth day of child’s life. And, by the way, earlier it was not the birth day that was celebrated, but the name day – the memory day of the saint, in honor of whom this person was named, – lest the person should glorify his pride, yet remember why people come to this world and whose name he bears... On the whole the tradition of giving a name to a child goes back to the Old Testament times...”
“It looks like nowadays we celebrate the birth of our Animal nature?!” Eugene made a discovery for himself. “So, now I get it why people stuff themselves and drink so much on their birthdays, like piglets. And they want presents – large and expensive too! So that’s where all our piggish essence reveals!”
Everyone laughed.
“No, we ought to abandon these scandalous practices,” continued the guy. “That’s it, Stas, next birthday I’ll come a week later and bring no gifts with me, except for a sole candle. For presents only harm thy soul, whilst feeding your Animal more and more, year by year awaking the appetite of a big swine...”
Stas did not hesitate to respond with a more constructive suggestion regarding Eugene’s birthday. His friend immediately replied him with a joke. And their clownery creased up laughing the whole party. Later, when everyone calmed down, Nikolai Andreevich continued his reflections aloud.
“Indeed, there’re mere formalities and no knowledge anywhere you look at. That’s it, our so called ‘progress’... Now, I do understand, for example, from psychological view-point that baptism – if it is an adult who is christened – helps him gain self-confidence, asserts himself in a sense, protects him at least in such a way from his own fears. It turns him to the good, obliges to live according to the universal moral criteria. That’s all understandable. But why do they separate the ones christened and ones not-christened so categorically? What if a person is born in a family where parents belong to different religions? They actually push a person into an inner conflict with their restrictions and categorical frames.”
“Well, what do you want? Religious leaders are people too... As the saying goes, one cannot get to heaven of one religion without getting to hell of the rest.”
“Oh, my,” drawled Nikolai Andreevich. “Everyone wants to eat, as they say.”
“Exactly,“ Volodya said in a bass. “Everybody wants to drive another’s sheep into his own flock.”
Everybody laughed. And Sensei uttered: “Well, but for jokes. Despite all the religious trumpery, the rites of sanctifying with water are rather important to an ordinary person, because they stimulate him to take the first step towards God. All those rites with their appearance, confusion, incomprehensibility, bring the person into a kind of trance. By the way, the person who administers the ceremony and the participants in fact equally enter this state. And if the thoughts of all those being there are really concentrated on prayers to God – not on deliberation of material problems – it will engender spiritual force that each of the participants will receive in the form of an inner surge of their agathodaemon. That’s splendid for ordinary people! At least that’ll turn their attention to the fact that material being is not the only one existing, and that in fact they are born not for the sake of becoming lifelong slaves of their own Ego.
“In other words, through the rite a person finds hope, which gives him an impulse towards faith. While the principal sacrament arises from his own faith. Do you see the difference? If power of faith and will is enough for a spiritual person to change his state of consciousness and work on spiritual practices, an ordinary man lacks elementary belief in his own power. He needs spectacular, mass involvement to draw him away from material being and persuade him just for five minutes that there are higher values.”
“Why five minutes?” asked Ruslan.
“Because after all those impressions and positive splashes he comes home, and there are all sorts of problems of material being. So his consciousness returns to its habitual flow. If only he were clever enough to change himself for the better spiritual side with his own willpower. But, alas, he shifts all his inner problems onto the external ones.”
“Does that mean pure knowledge doesn’t impress people?!” Nikolai Andreevich drew his unexpected conclusion.
“Absolutely right, howsoever paradoxical it may sound,” agreed Sensei. “Pure knowledge doesn’t impress people. It is too difficult for them to understand it due to its simplicity. There are no visual shows, bright impressions, emotional-stressing experiences, you know. And what do people strive for first of all? Bread and circuses, for it corresponds to most people’s estimation of the savor of life.
“People complicate their lives themselves. And that is true not only for ordinary people, living with their worldly concerns. There are some individuals who try to follow spiritual path, take first steps on finding initial knowledge. But instead of sincere self-cultivation and practicing of this knowledge in aspiration to learn the essence and move on, they spend years looking at the exterior form and attaching importance only to the fact of possessing it.”
“What do you mean?” Yura didn’t understand.
“Well, it is just the same as, for example, a man having a chocolate, instead of simply eating it up, goes to America to learn for five years how to unwrap the outer cover at first. Then he goes to Japan and studies unwrapping the foil as many years again. Then he travels to North, to the Chukchis, to learn how to bite the chocolate properly. After that he spends five years both in England and France, learning how to estimate the chocolate’s taste in his mouth appropriately. At last, he comes home, takes his chocolate and eats it up in two minutes. And then he realizes that it’s not quite what he has been expecting and preparing with such a pomposity for. Could it be like that – to eat the chocolate in two minutes, and that’s all? Could he have spent years of his life merely to come to such a simple thing? That kind of reaction is natural, because in truth he was just wasting time. But one doesn’t have to go far to acquire knowledge. Just look inside yourself and realize, who you are and what you want in this life.”
Sensei kept silence and raked a fallen ember up to the fire with a stick. A