Man is a special phenomenon in the world. Aristotle defined man as a social animal. K. Helvetius argued that man is an animal that has a special external organization and the ability to use tools and weapons. According to I. Kant, a person is an intelligent being who is characterized by technical abilities. V. Franklin also compared man to an animal that is capable of producing tools. It is believed that language, consciousness and society distinguishes a person in the world as a special phenomenon. These signs include features of the anatomical structure: vertical position of the body, specific structure of the limbs, complex organization of the brain. However, the most essential feature of a person is the ability to realize oneself through purposeful activity, which is focused on the creation of objects and tools that are necessary to satisfy one’s biological, social and spiritual needs. The biological always remains in a person, and conflicts and contradictions arise between the biological and the social. They appear as a contradiction between human biological needs (food, work, rest) and social needs (communication, fulfilling a moral duty, creativity). With the development of man there is a transition to social needs, which subordinated the natural side of human life. And the more a person is able to manage his biological needs, subordinate them to high aspirations or direct them to achieve social goals, the more the social predominates in a person and the more developed she herself is. But it would be a mistake to say that a person rejects any natural desires, taking into account his inclinations and inclinations, his state of health and the physical characteristics of his age. A person must be moderate and balanced, and then she will be able to take possession of the contradictory harmony of the biological and the social. Therefore, a person is called a biological being.
The history of the development of man and the world proves that the process of understanding the human phenomenon is not completed. This incompleteness is generated by the primary and most complex questions about the origin of human life. In mythology, man, by his origin, is a derivative phenomenon from a specific state of existence of nature. The religious point of origin of human life is based on emphasizing the act of divine creation.
Man is a biosocial being, which is the highest level of development of living organisms on earth, which is capable of creating objects and grievances of the world, cognizing and transforming it and its own existence into personal interests. The problem of interaction between the social and biological in humans is the most important. Man creates himself. When entering life, each person draws on the experience of previous generations. The assimilation of social and historically composed forms of activity is the main condition and decisive mechanism for the individual development of a person.
Each person is a unique individual, she creates herself, at the same time transforming the world and the people around her. A person’s inner world is the result of her interaction with the environment, reflecting the external world in her opinions. With the help of knowledge about a person’s individual characteristics and ancestral relationships (or properties transmitted by genus), a person can manage his body, effectively influence his physical condition, and be able to work and rest wisely. The relationship between biological, physical and spiritual principles in man suggests that the most interesting object of study is man.
Incredible facts
When we watch movies about superheroes, we sometimes imagine what it would be like if we had some kind of superpower.
In fact, there are people in the world who have extraordinary, almost superhuman abilities.
People with superpowers
1. Liv Tou Lin – human magnet
Liv Tou Lin from Malaysia is a true human magnet with the ability to attract metal objects to her body. He can hold up to 36 kg of metal objects on your body ov. Also, with the help of this ability, he was able to pull a car. Liv himself discovered his gift at the age of 60, when instruments simply began to stick to his body.
When scientists from the University of Technology Malaysia studied the man, they discovered that there was no magnetic field in his body. They explained his abilities by saying that there is a high level of friction on his skin, which creates a suction effect.
2. Zhou Ting-Jue – generates heat with palms
Zhou Ting-Jue, an 89-year-old master of kung fu, tai chi and qigong, can generate enormous amounts of heat using only his hands. The warmth that he Generates through palms, can heat water to boiling point. He is also able to shift his body weight from his legs to his chest, allowing him to stand on a piece of paper without falling through it.
Zhou Ting-Jue is also a healer and claims to be able to dissolve tumors, heal severe, chronic injuries, and cure incurable diseases. He has treated the Dalai Lama, Olympic athletes, celebrities and political figures.
3. Harold Williams is a polyglot who speaks 58 languages
Harold Williams is one of the most famous polyglots in history. He was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1876 and was interested in languages from childhood.
Over the course of his life, he mastered 58 languages, including English, Old Irish, Russian, Czech, Albanian, Serbian, Romanian, Swedish, Basque, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Coptic, Egyptian, Hittite and others.
He used his knowledge of languages in diplomacy and was able to communicate in his native language with all representatives of the League of Nations delegations.
4. Michel Litoto - The Man Who Ate a Plane
Michel Litoteau was a French artist who had an amazing ability eat everything from glass to metal. He was even nicknamed "Mr. Omnivore."
Between 1959 and 1997 he ate about 9 tons of metal. Michel Litoto could eat inorganic objects without much harm to the digestive system due to the very thick walls of the stomach and intestines.
When he ate an item, he usually broke it into pieces and swallowed it with water and mineral oil. He could also eat an entire Cessna 150 airplane, which took him two years to eat.
5. Stephen Wiltshire - human camera
Stephen Wiltshire was an autistic artist who could draw any landscape from memory after seeing it just once. He amazed many with his ability to paint a very complex, accurate and detailed picture of an entire city from memory, which he briefly visited by helicopter.
Thus, he drew a panoramic drawing of Tokyo, Rome and New York. The latter is presented in the form of a giant billboard at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
6. Dean Karnasis – ultramarathoner
Dean Karnasis is a marathon runner who was able to run continuously for 3 days without stopping or sleeping.
Every person’s body has a lactate threshold, beyond which we feel muscle fatigue after intense physical activity. Dean, apparently, had the ability to not go beyond this threshold for a long time.
He was able to complete one of the toughest endurance tests - the South Pole Marathon at -25 °C without snowshoes. Also in 2006, he ran a marathon across 50 states in 50 consecutive days.
Human superpowers
7. Shakuntala Devi – human computer
Shakuntala Devi had phenomenal mathematical abilities. From the age of 3, her father taught her card tricks, and she easily surpassed her father in card memory.
The girl demonstrated her mathematical abilities at street performances and at school. She became famous all over the world and her achievement was even recorded in the Guinness Book of Records when she multiplied 13-digit numbers (7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779) and gave the answer (18,947,668,177,995,426,773,730 ) after 28 seconds.
Her achievements also include:
- In 1977 at the University of Dallas she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating the UNIVAC 1101 computer, which took 62 seconds for this task.
- In 1988, psychology professor Arthur Jensen decided to test her abilities and asked take the cube root of 61,629,875 and the 7th root of 170,859,375. Jensen said Devi gave the answer (395 and 15, respectively) before he wrote the numbers down in his notebook.
- During a trip to Europe, at the BBC and then at the University of Rome, she was told that she had made a mistake in the calculations, but later those who checked her admitted the error in their work.
8. Veronica Seider – eagle vision
Veronica Seider, who was born in West Germany in 1951, has an extraordinary vision that is 20 times better than that of an ordinary person. While studying at the University of Stuttgart, her vision attracted the attention of others.
The girl could see people 1.6 km away, while with normal vision a person has difficulty seeing details at a distance of 6 meters. Veronica's vision has been compared to a telescope, as she sees the elements that make up the colors on a color TV screen.
9. Daniel Kish - the blind man who learned to see like a bat
Daniel Kish was born with a form of retinal cancer called retinoblastoma. To save his life, doctors removed both of his eyeballs, and he became blind at the age of 13 months.
Daniel started using echolocation technique at the age of 2 years. Using echolocation, he learned to detect buildings at a distance of 300 meters, a tree at a distance of 9 meters and a person at a distance of 2 meters.
Also, with this ability, he can distinguish a truck from a car and an SUV. Daniel is the President of World Access for the Blind and has taught echolocation to at least 500 children.
10. Wim Hof – Iceman
Dutchman Wim Hof has an amazing ability tolerate very low temperatures. He climbed to the 6.7 km summit of Everest wearing only shorts and boots. He did not reach the very top only because of a leg injury.
His achievements also include:
Hof set a Guinness record immersed in ice for 1 hour 13 minutes 48 seconds.
· In February 2009 Hof climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro in two days wearing only shorts. That same year, he ran a 42,195m marathon in the Arctic Circle in Finland wearing shorts in 5 hours 25 minutes.
· In 2010, Hof broke the record, immersed in ice for 1 hour 44 minutes.
· In 2011, Hof broke another record, remaining immersed in ice for 1 hour 52 minutes and 42 seconds. In September of the same year, he ran a marathon in the Namib Desert without water.
11. Stig Severinsen - amphibian man
Stig Severinsen, a diver from Denmark, holds the record for holding his breath underwater.
Usually people begin to catch air after a few minutes of being under water. A Dane can hold his breath for 22 minutes underwater. Severinsen started swimming at the age of 6. He became champion 4 times in a row at the ages of 9, 10, 11 and 12 years old. He also played underwater hockey for the Spanish national team.
His achievements also include:
· In March 2010, Severinsen set a record, swim 72 meters under the ice only wearing goggles and swimming trunks.
· In April 2010, after inhaling pure oxygen, held my breath for 20 minutes 10 seconds in a pool with sharks.
· In May 2012 he set a record, holding your breath for 22 minutes in a pool filled with water cooled to -1 C.
· In April 2013, Severinsen set two new records: “longest breath-hold underwater swim” when he swam 152 meters in 2 minutes 11 seconds in a wetsuit and fins, and another record of 76.2 meters in only swimming trunks.
12. Isao Machii - the fastest modern samurai
Japanese Iaido master Isao Machiya, who calls himself a modern samurai, can cut a flying bullet. His achievement was captured on camera and the video was slowed down 250 times so viewers could see the movement of his sword.
Isao Machiya also holds Guinness World Records for "most number of katana strikes on a mat", "fastest 1000 sword strikes in a martial art", "most number of sword strikes on a straw mat in 3 minutes", and "fastest tennis chop". ball (820 km/h) with a sword."
13. Norman Gary - Bee Manager
Beekeeper Norman Gary can manage thousands of bees, hold them on yourself and control them.
Thanks to his abilities, he was able to work in a number of films, including The X-Files, Invasion of the Bee Girls, Leonard 6 and a number of TV series.
14. Lawrence Kim Peake – Megasavant
American Kim Peak was the only savant in the world who could read two pages of a book at the same time with each eye. He also had an exceptional memory.
He is the prototype of the main character in the film "Rain Man".
According to his father, Kim began memorizing things when he was just 16 to 20 months old. He could read a book in an hour and remember everything he read.
15. Masutatsu Oyama
Masutatsu Oyama is a Korean karate master who spent most of his life in Japan, who was able fight live bulls with bare hands.
He hosted bullfighting shows and defeated 52 bulls in his lifetime. Of these, he killed three bulls at once with one blow.
The name itself speaks for itself. Just a phenomenon. But that's the whole phenomenon.
First of all only phenomenon. Don't look here explanation- that's just introduction to explanation peace. To establish around a person, taken as the center, a natural order that connects the subsequent with the previous, to discover among the elements of the universe not a system of ontological causal connections, but an empirical law of recurrence, expressing their sequential occurrence over time - this is what, and only this, I tried to do.
Of course, beyond this initial scientific generalization, the field remains wide open for deeper theoretical constructions in the field of philosophy and theology. I consciously tried not to enter into these depths of existence under any circumstances. At the most, based on experimental data, I have ascertained with some certainty the general direction of development (towards unity) and noted in appropriate places the breaks that may be required for reasons of a higher order in the further development of philosophical and religious thought.
P. de Chardin
This work expresses the desire see And show what a person becomes and demands when viewed entirely within the framework of phenomena.
Why strive to see? And why specifically direct your gaze to a person?
See. We can say that this is the whole life, if not ultimately, then, in any case, essentially. To exist more fully is to unite more and more: this is the summary and conclusion of this work. But, as will be shown, unity increases only on the basis of an increase in consciousness, that is, vision. This is undoubtedly why the history of living nature comes down to the creation - in the depths of space, in which more and more can be distinguished - of ever more perfect eyes. Is not the perfection of an animal, the superiority of a thinking being, measured by the power of penetration and the synthetic power of their gaze? Striving to see more and better is not a whim, not curiosity, not a luxury. See or perish. Everything that is a constituent element of the universe is placed in this position by the mysterious gift of existence. And this, therefore, is the same, but on a higher level, the position of man.
But if it is really so vital and pleasant to know, then why still pay our attention primarily to the person? Isn't the person described enough - to the point of boredom? And isn’t science attractive precisely because it directs our gaze to objects on which we can finally take a break from ourselves?
We are forced to consider man as the key of the universe for two reasons, which make him the center of the world.
First of all, subjectively, for ourselves, we inevitably - perspective center. Due to naivety, apparently inevitable in the first period, science initially imagined that it could observe phenomena in itself as they occur independently of us. Instinctively, physicists and naturalists at first acted as if their view fell on the world from above, and their consciousness penetrated into it, without being affected by it or changing it. They now begin to realize that even their most objective observations are entirely imbued with accepted premises, as well as forms or habits of thinking developed in the course of the historical development of scientific research.
Having reached the extreme point in their analyzes, they no longer really know whether the structure they comprehend constitutes the essence of the matter under study or a reflection of their own thoughts. And at the same time, they notice - as the opposite result of their discoveries - that they themselves are completely intertwined in the web of connections that they hoped to throw on things from the outside, that they are caught in their own network. Metamorphism and endomorphism, a geologist would say. Object and subject are intertwined and mutually transformed in the act of cognition. Willy-nilly, a person again comes to himself and considers himself in everything he sees.
This is bondage, which, however, is immediately compensated by some unique greatness.
The fact that the observer, wherever he goes, carries with him the center of the terrain he passes through, is a rather banal and, one might say, phenomenon independent of him. But what happens to a person walking if he accidentally finds himself at a naturally advantageous point (the intersection of roads or valleys), from where not only views, but also things themselves diverge in different directions? Then the subjective point of view coincides with the objective arrangement of things, and perception acquires its fullness. The area is deciphered and illuminated. The man sees.
This seems to be the advantage of human cognition.
You don’t have to be human to notice how objects and forces are arranged in a “circle” around you. All animals perceive this the same way as we do. But only man occupies a position in nature in which this convergence of lines is not just visible, but structural. The following pages will be devoted to the proof and study of this phenomenon. Due to the quality and biological properties of thought, we find ourselves at a unique point, at a node that dominates an entire section of the cosmos that is currently open to our experience. The center of perspective is a person, at the same time design center universe. Therefore, all science should ultimately be reduced to it. And this is as necessary as it is beneficial. If truly to see is to exist more fully, then let us consider a person - and we will live more fully.
And for this we will properly adapt our eyes. From the very beginning of his existence, man has been a spectacle for himself. In fact, he has been looking only at himself for decades. However, it is just beginning to acquire a scientific view of its significance in the physics of the world. Let us not be surprised at the slowness of this awakening. Often the hardest thing to notice is exactly what should be “catchy.” It is not for nothing that a child needs education in order to separate from each other the images that besiege his newly opened retina. In order for a person to fully discover a person, he needed a whole series of “feelings”, the gradual acquisition of which (this will be discussed later) fills and articulates the very history of the struggle of the spirit.
The feeling of spatial immensity in the great and the small, dividing and delimiting the circles of objects surrounding us within the boundless sphere.
A feeling of depth that diligently pushes into infinity, into boundless times, events that some force like gravity constantly strives to compress for us into a thin sheet of the past.
A sense of quantity that discovers and, without flinching, appreciates the terrifying multitude of material or living elements participating in the slightest transformation of the universe.
A sense of proportion, which - for better or worse - captures the difference in physical scale, distinguishing in size and rhythm an atom from a nebula, a tiny from a huge one.
A sense of quality or novelty, which, without disturbing the physical unity of the world, distinguishes in nature the absolute stages of improvement and growth.
A sense of movement, capable of perceiving an irresistible development hidden by the greatest slowness, extreme fermentation under the veil of peace, something new that has crept into the core of the monotonous repetition of the same thing.
Finally, a sense of the organic, which, beneath the surface succession of events and groups, reveals physical connections and structural unity.
Without these qualities of our gaze, a person will endlessly remain for us, no matter how hard they try to teach us to see, what he still remains for many people - a random object in a disunited world. On the contrary, one has only to get rid of the triple illusion of insignificance, plurality and immobility, and man easily occupies the central place we proclaim - the pinnacle (at the moment) of anthropogenesis, which itself crowns cosmogenesis.
In a huge collection of amazing human phenomena, there are genetic anomalies that are completely incomprehensible to science...Chicken Man.
In 1986, the doctor Dietmar Müller discovered in the local history museum of the small town of Waldenburg a freak preserved in alcohol from an 18th-century cabinet of curiosities: among other exhibits, an underdeveloped fetus of a human chicken was kept.
Intrigued, Dr. Muller began excavating the archives and found out the following.
In 1735, in the Saxon town of Tauha, the couple Andreas and Johanna Sophia Schmidt were to have their fourth child.
The mother was 28 years old, the father 38. In the eighth month, Johanna-Sophia had a premature birth. When the child was born, the parents were horrified. He looked more like a chicken than a man. There were three healthy, normal children growing up in the family, and suddenly such a freak!
The doctor Gottlieb Friederici from Leipzig immortalized the child’s deformed body for posterity and placed it in a jar of alcohol, and then described in detail the unique case in a treatise called “The Rarest Human Monster” in Latin. The detailed description of the fetus was completed by the doctor’s phrase: “Future generations of physicians, who will know more than us, will unravel this mystery of nature.”
However, even after 250 years, the mystery of the strange chicken man has not been solved. X-rays and computer programs made by Dr. Muller did not clarify the reasons for the birth of the freak.
Members of the Syndrome Club (Berlin), where prominent experts on anomalies in the human body gather, could not find a reasonable explanation for this. The list of anatomical anomalies in this case is enormous: the fetus has a greatly enlarged liver, a clover-shaped skull, no ears, a tiny lower jaw, unusually long fingers and toes, nails more like claws, and, finally, an unprecedentedly sized heart.
Scientists in Berlin and Heidelberg engaged in gene analysis have so far only managed to establish the sex of the human chicken. It's a girl. At one time, Gottlieb Friederici made a mistake when he decided that this was a boy.
"Waterproof" Indians.
The Amazonian jungle is home to an amazing tribe of “waterproof” Takeira Indians. Experts believe that people living far from civilization have developed a special coating on their skin that allows them to survive in humid forests. Water simply flows off them, and you can pour tons of water on them, but your skin and hair will remain completely dry - this has been tested dozens of times.
In 1988, the French doctor Jacques Tolborn, while traveling along the Harua River in a canoe, first discovered the “waterproof” tribe. The doctor was forced to stop in an Indian village due to heavy rain. Tolborn noticed that, despite the heavy rain, people continued to calmly go about their usual activities: hunting, fishing, doing housework, and their hair and bodies remained dry all this time.
Dr. Tolborn began studying Indian skin to find out how it resists moisture. The scientist said that the time will come when it will be possible to treat umbrellas, raincoats and any clothing with this substance - and not be afraid of any downpours.
The phenomenon of the third eye.
Chinese ophthalmologists examined a 25-year-old resident of Fujian province, who was naturally endowed with three eyes.
The phenomenon (the third of those described in science) was discovered by Dr. Zheng Yichsun, who conducted a preventive examination of several groups of disabled people.
The young man’s extra eye, whose name has not been disclosed, is located on the left temple and does not differ in appearance from the other two. There is a pupil, an eyelid, an eyebrow, and a lacrimal gland. But the eye itself is blind. According to his relatives, the young man has had poor vision since birth.
A snake man with inhuman blood.
Terrarium employee Singh-Abu noted that he suffered the cobra bite surprisingly easily and did not even feel a burning sensation. Having repeated the dangerous experiment with the viper, he became convinced that he didn’t care about snake venom. The smart Singh-Abu began to earn a lot of money by wandering naked among the reptiles swarming in a glass cage, where he was bitten several times by the most dangerous snakes.
Doctors paid attention to him and took blood for analysis. They soon discovered that the cobra's venom disintegrates in it and turns into a nutritional component. Further study of the blood led doctors to complete confusion, since it did not belong to any of the currently existing groups, and its composition and properties have no analogues on Earth.
The natural question is: what is it? Another “mistake of nature” or a manifestation of an equally mysterious gene memory? Then whose blood is this, which has nothing in common with human blood?
"Diamond" tears of Hanuma.
In North Africa, from Casablanca to Cairo, no one is giving information about Hanuma out of fear for her fate.
From birth until her first acquaintance with raw onions, the girl Hanuma did not shed a single tear: the cheerful and easy-going child simply had no reason to cry. And when one day, while helping her mother, she suddenly began to cry over a peeled onion, the parents were literally dumbfounded: tears as hard as rice grains literally began to fall from the girl’s eyes, rather than dripping.
Frightened by the machinations of the shaitan, the father and mother swore not to tell anyone about the misfortune that had happened. The parents were silent for many years. But then my father, a jeweler by profession, began to study Hanuma’s tears. He soon discovered that they were quite hard, easy to cut and completely transparent. They play in the sun and give such shine that not every diamond is capable of. The tears went into action. Jewelry made from them was in great demand. The father kept the secret as best he could until the tears fell into the hands of an inquisitive man, who determined that the “diamonds” were plastic obtained by an unknown method.
Scientists learned about the phenomenal incident and still cannot solve the mystery of Hanuma’s tears. The girl says that tears do not bother her; they only harden on her eyelashes, but do not stick to them or to her skin and do not harm her vision at all. And the girl cries only because of the onions.
Clock man.
In California, 42-year-old Frank White was observed at a research center. This is a unique person: he has never had a watch, he knows exactly what time it is and determines the time to the nearest second. Frank White can be woken up at night and he will tell the time as if he had a chronometer in his head. Electrical engineer White was sent to the center, entering which he determined with accuracy that the wall clock in the hall was fast by 52 seconds. And he turned out to be right.
Accurate determination of time, according to Frank White, occurs spontaneously, without any effort on his part. He never wore a wristwatch, but he always arrived exactly on time. "This man may well give doctors a new clue to understanding human internal time cycles," says Dr. William Schecter.
The mystery of synchronous diseases.
Englishwoman Leslie Curtis and her 63-year-old father have an amazing ability: no matter where they are, they simultaneously fall ill with the same disease. The first time this happened was when Leslie was still little. Mr. Curtis fell ill with tuberculosis, and soon Leslie also began to cough. Doctors gave her a similar diagnosis. Of course, the girl could just get infected...
However, Mrs. Curtis began to notice other coincidences. If, for example, Leslie fell at school, then her father would get a bruise in the same place. When she fell ill with some childhood illness, his temperature would rise.
This unusual feature continued after Leslie got married and had children.
According to Leslie Curtis, her father has a very sensitive stomach, and sometimes her mother calls her, asking about her health. After all, the mother knows that if her daughter has a stomach ache, then the father begins to suffer from the same thing. Headaches for father and daughter begin at the same time... Doctors have not yet found an explanation for this dependence. They believe that perhaps this is a subtle connection between biofields.
Glowing girl.
Nguyen Thi Nga lived in the small Vietnamese village of An Theong, Hoan An County, in Binh Dinh Province. At first, no special events took place in the village. Nguyen herself was no different - an ordinary girl, she studied at school, helped her parents, and with her friends collected lemons and oranges from the surrounding plantations.
But one day she went to bed, and a bright glow began to emanate from her body. A large halo surrounded the head, and golden-yellow rays diverged from the arms, legs and torso in different directions. The next morning, Nguyen's frightened parents took her to local healers. They performed some manipulations, but everything was in vain.
Then the parents took their daughter to a hospital in Saigon. There Nguyen was examined, but no abnormalities were found in her health. Soon the girl was examined by the well-known healer Thang. She told him that this glow did not bring her any concern; she was only worried about the incomprehensible fact itself.
The healer found out that the incident happened on the second day of the new year according to the lunar calendar, and, according to legend, this was considered the most favorable time for the grace of the Almighty. The girl turned out to be marked by Heaven.
Nguyen regained her peace of mind. But the glow remained. Just like a mystery...
Human phenomenon
Thank you for downloading the book from the free electronic library http://filosoff.org/ Enjoy reading! Blavatsky E. P. The phenomenon of man. SOUL, SPIRIT, BODY. Sir! Allow a humble Theosophist to appear for the first time on the pages of your newspaper and say a few words in defense of our beliefs. In the issue of December 21st last month, one of your correspondents, Mr. Croucher, makes the following bold statements: If Theosophists had fully comprehended the nature of soul and spirit and their relationship with the body, they would have realized that once the soul leaves the body, it cannot return. Maybe. The spirit may depart, but once the soul departs, it departs forever. This statement is so vague and ambiguous that if by the term "soul" he does not mean a vital principle, I can only suppose that he falls into the common error of calling the astral body the spirit and the immortal essence the "soul." We, Theosophists, act vice versa, as Colonel Olcott has already said about this. In addition to unfoundedly accusing us of ignorance, Mr. Croucher expresses the idea (characteristic of him) that the problem that has occupied the minds of metaphysicians of all ages has in our time already been solved. It is difficult to imagine that Theosophists or anyone else "fully" penetrated into the nature of the soul and spirit and their relationship with the body. Such an achievement is characteristic only of Omniscience; We, Theosophists, following the path paved by the footsteps of the ancient sages in the quicksand of exoteric philosophy, can only hope to approach the absolute truth. It is very doubtful whether Mr. Croucher will achieve more, even if he is an "inspired medium" who has gained experience "through constant seances with one of the best mediums" of your country. Let us leave it to time and spiritualistic philosophy to decide our dispute. When some Oedipus of this or the next century solves the eternal riddle of the sphinx-man, all modern dogmas, even those beloved by spiritualists, will disappear, like the monster of Thebes, according to legend, threw itself into the sea from a cliff, disappearing forever. As recently as February 18, 1876, your learned correspondent "M.A. (Oxon)" *, in the article "Soul and Spirit" pointed out the confusion in these terms, often found in other authors. Since things are no better today, I would like to take this opportunity to show Mr. Croucher and other spiritualists, whose representative he may be considered, how they have misunderstood Colonel Olcott and the views of the New York Theosophists. Colonel Olcott did not state or in any way imply that the immortal spirit leaves the body for mediumistic manifestations. And yet Mr. Croucher is sure that this is so, for the word "spirit" for him means the inner, astral man, or double. Olcott said the following: Mediumistic physical phenomena are produced not by pure spirits, but by “souls” - incarnate or disembodied, and usually with the help of elementals. Any thinking reader understands that by placing the word “souls” in quotation marks, the author thereby emphasizes his understanding of it in an unusual sense. As a theosophist he might have expressed himself more precisely and more philosophically: "astral spirit", "astral man", or double. Therefore, criticism here is completely inappropriate. I am amazed at such indiscriminate denunciation on such shaky grounds. In the end, our president is only putting forward the idea of a human triad, as did the ancient and eastern philosophers and their worthy disciple Paul, who believed that the bodily substance, flesh and blood, is saturated with the psyche - the soul, or the astral body, thanks to which life is maintained in it. This doctrine - that man is a triad: spirit, or nous (nous), soul and body - was taught by the apostle of the pagans much more widely and clearly than by his Christian followers (see 1 Thess. 5, 23). But, apparently forgetting or not bothering to study “thoroughly” the transcendental views of the ancient philosophers and Christian apostles on this subject, Mr. Croucher considers the soul (psyche) as spirit (nous) and vice versa. Buddhists, distinguishing three essences in a person (which are considered as a single whole on the path to nirvana), also divide the soul into several parts, giving each of them and their functions a special name. This way they avoid confusion. The ancient Greeks did the same, believing that the psyche is bios - physical life and at the same time thumos - the nature of passions and desires; Moreover, animals possess only the lowest ability of the soul - instinct. The soul-psyche is itself a union, a consensus, or a union of bios - physical vital forces, epithumia - natural drives and phrenos, mens - that is, mind. Perhaps animus should be included here too. The latter consists of an ethereal substance that fills the entire universe and comes from the soul of the world - Anima Mundi, or the Buddhist Svabhavat, which is not spirit; although intangible and intangible, yet, in comparison with spirit, or pure abstraction, it is objective matter. Owing to its complex nature, the soul can descend and become so closely united with the physical essence that all moral influence on it from the higher life ceases. On the other hand, it may become so closely united with the nous or spirit that it begins to share its power; in this case, its “carrier,” a physical person, becomes a god even during his earthly life. Until the soul merges with the spirit - either during earthly life or after physical death - the individual person does not become immortal as an entity. The psyche sooner or later disintegrates. A person can gain “the whole world”, but lose his “soul”. Paul, who preached anastasis - the continuous existence of individual spiritual life after death, said that the corruptible is clothed with the incorruptible. The spiritual body is, of course, not one of those bodies, visible and tangible larvae, which appear at seances and are erroneously called "materialized spirits." When metanoia, the full development of spiritual life, raises the spiritual body from the physical (the disembodied, corruptible astral man, which Olcott calls the “soul”), it becomes, in strict accordance with the progress achieved, more and more an abstraction for the bodily senses. It can influence, inspire and even communicate with people subjectively; it can be felt, and in those rare cases when the clairvoyant is absolutely pure and his consciousness is clear, even seen with the spiritual eye (this is the eye of the purified psyche - the soul). But how can it manifest itself objectively? You will soon see that applying the term “spirit” to the materialized eidols of your “form manifestations” is completely unacceptable, and something must definitely be done to change the situation, because scientists have already begun to discuss this topic. At best, these phenomena are, if not what the Greeks called phantasma, then phasma, that is, ghosts. Among scientists, thinkers, and especially among our modern savants, the physical principle is more or less permeated with the material, and what is of the spirit “they consider foolishness and cannot understand” (1 Cor. 2:14). It turns out that Plato was right in his own way when he despised land surveying, geometry and arithmetic, because they all ignored higher ideas. Plutarch taught that at the moment of death Proserpina separates the body and the perfect soul, and then the soul becomes a free and independent demon (daimon). After this, the righteous undergo a second dissolution: Demeter separates the psyche from the nous, or pneuma. The first disintegrates over time into ethereal particles, hence the inevitable dissolution and subsequent destruction of man, who after death is a purely psychic entity. The latter, nous, ascends to its highest divine power and gradually becomes the purest, divine Spirit. Kalila, like all Eastern philosophers, despised the purely psychic nature of the soul. It is this accumulation of the coarsest particles of the soul, the mesmeric secretions of human nature, saturated with all earthly desires and passions, vices, shortcomings and weaknesses, forming the astral body (which can become objective under certain circumstances), that Buddhists call skandhas (groups), and Colonel Olcott for convenience dubbed "soul". Buddhists and Brahmins teach that a person cannot achieve individuality until he is freed from the last of these skandhas - the ultimate particle of earthly vice. Hence their doctrine of metempsychosis, so ridiculed and completely misunderstood by our greatest Orientalists. Even physicists teach that the particles that make up the physical body are, in the process of evolution, transformed by nature into many different lower physical forms. Why then is it considered unphilosophical and unscientific by the Buddhists that the semi-material scandhas of the astral man (his ego, up to the final purification) go towards the evolution of small astral forms (which, of course, are part of the purely physical bodies of animals), as soon as he throws them into your progress towards nirvana? Therefore, we can say that while a disembodied person sheds a particle of these skandhas, a part of him incarnates in the bodies of plants and animals. And if he, a disembodied astral person, is so material that Demeter cannot find the slightest spark of pneuma to elevate it to “divine power,” then the personality, so to speak, gradually disintegrates and goes into evolutionary processing, or, as it is Hindus allegorically explain that he spends millennia in the bodies of unclean animals. Here we see how, in perfect agreement with each other, the ancient Greeks and Hindu philosophers, modern Eastern schools and theosophists line up on one side; on the other, a brilliant army of “inspired mediums” and “spiritual guides” stands in complete disorder. And although among the latter there are not even two who agree with each other on what is true and what is not, they all unanimously deny any of the philosophical teachings, no matter what we cite! All this does not mean that I or any of the real Theosophists underestimate the true spiritual phenomena and philosophy, that we believe less in the possibility of communication between pure mortals and pure spirits than between vicious people and vicious spirits or between virtuous people and vicious spirits under unfavorable conditions. Occultism is the quintessence of spiritualism, while modern, popular spiritualism I can only characterize as falsified, unconscious magic. We will even say that all famous and remarkable personalities, all the greatest geniuses: poets, artists, sculptors, musicians, who have ever selflessly worked to realize their highest ideals - they were all spiritually inspired; not mediums (as many spiritualists call them), these passive instruments in the hands of the drivers who control them, but embodied, enlightened souls consciously working in cooperation with pure disembodied human and incarnate higher planetary Spirits for the improvement and spiritualization of humanity. We believe that everything in material life is intimately connected with spiritual factors. As regards psychic phenomena and mediumship, we believe that only when the passive medium changes, or rather develops into a conscious mediator, only then will he be able to distinguish between good and bad spirits. We do believe, and also know, that while man is incarnate (save the highest Adepts), he cannot compete in power with the pure disembodied spirits, who, freed from all their skandhas, become subjective to the physical senses; nevertheless, it can equal and even far exceed, in the field of phenomena, both mental and physical, the average “spirit” of modern mediumship. Following this, you will see that we are more spiritualists, in the true sense of the word, than the so-called
