A Person and Spiritual reality

Time mercilessly sweeps away everything superficial from its path, everything without profound foundation in the economic and cultural life of society, its spiritual needs. But only superficial…

         For a thousand years of our civilization’s history, substantial changes in the human worldview system led to their alienation, evolution from Nature as a part of Space. Becoming alienated, they turned out to be defenseless against plenty of its manifestations. Left to themselves, the man could only derive power from himself. Now for the sake of protection from Nature, “conquests” would start later, the man crates the “second” reality, the world of things, capable of saturating growing ego, but leading to mechanical comfort and spiritual restrictions. And yet a fundamental characteristic of the most ancient aesthetic systems, whether in the civilizations of Sumer, Egypt, or ancient Etruria, was the absence of the subjective factor of the personal standard. The essence of art was determined by clan, tribal necessity, by what was to functionally fit into the system of the moral and physical survival of one or another group. The ancient people didn’t know the culture in its modern meaning, as it, a restrained part of the societal being, style of its existence, was not in any sense aware of itself as such. Awareness began with its disappearance. For when spirituality ceases to be fused with its bearer, objectification occurs. That is designation. A part is only realized when it detaches from the whole. Thus, a parishioner, unlike a tourist, does not admire the temple in vain because he visits it on a daily basis. The ancients, obeying what was higher and stronger than them, sought and found their place in the eternal values, creating something tremendous because it corresponded to the universe! But time, existing in the human dimension of the connection of events, has shifted these reference points...

         With time, the sense of proportionality of reality has been disrupted. The unspeakable thought-form is replaced by speculative rationalistic abstractions, which increasingly encompass being. Spiritual practice, displaced by object reality, is more and more expressed by that reality. In its totality, the material vision of the world created illusions. A thought that was previously in harmony with space and all of its dimensions, lost the capacity for self-development. Spirituality is being replaced by technocratic and, in the masses, by consumerist thinking, and the further we go, the more it is done. Remember, the great Teachers and Masters rarely resorted to writing, considering it safe to use oral Knowledge, for it was accessible only to the wise!

         Hereinafter, the attempts to create new paths and methods of learning, corresponding to the new forms and essence of the reality, from the relativity of knowledge and skepticism in philosophy led to rationalistic subjectivism in life, alienating the mind from a spiritual, eternal, and extralogical basis.

         Thinking, passing through the vicious circle of skepticism, has led to a reassessment of abstract moral values in favor of a more specific legal equivalent. On the basis of prideful self-obsession were born the claims that law and state were man-made and, that therefore the social order should exist according to man's mind and will. That’s how moral and philosophical platform for the most powerful to proclaim "their own" justice. The diligent disciples of the Greeks, the Roman jurists developed these subtle conclusions and put them into the sanctuaries. 

         Christian doctrine, having revealed to man the only God and morally refuted the " judicial" paganism of the Italians, soon began to elaborate theological provisions within the framework of the new faith. On the basis of an insufficiently conceptual-logical system of thinking, based on an intimate perception, the Christian symbolism emerged. After the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity and the prayerful veneration of Christ's mother, called the Virgin Mary, the image of the Old Testament Trinity began to take shape, which theologically has been the cause for centuries of fierce debates. The following wisdom of the scholastics, characterized by the impeccability and depth of formal logic, did not contain the sacrament of communication between the first Christians, addressed to the spiritual substance of man; it was knowledge of forms without essences! Constantly leading to a dead end with abstract statements, the scholastics did not realize that they were drifting further and further away from real knowledge and true religiousness. Universal egoism was a hindrance to a common, intelligible language. Another’s opinion was only considered right if it coincided with one's own. However, communication on spiritual matters through language also proved its inconsistency. The lost understanding of the relativity of language could have provided the key to more precise formulas, helping to find principles as close to objective knowledge as possible. However, mechanical thinking was already firmly rooted. The multilingual and multi-voiced noise of medieval thought was a projection of the subject reality created by the late antique world. Later, the mutual dependence of the arrogant "creator" on the object he created increasingly contributed to the grinding of both.

         Compared with the spiritual "theoretical" experience of Europe, the spiritual practice in Russia looks very convincing, especially the life of Abbot Sergius in relief. Without engaging in theories and projects, Sergius of Radonezh and his entourage gave the world a special model of service to God and man, based on the teaching of everyday life, the simplicity and clarity of his own life in its close connection with Nature as a manifestation of the divine will. "Hold on to the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved," the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov later wrote about this. 

         Preaching, for all its merits, is an appeal to the human soul through the mind and a humanly partial feeling. It cannot carry the entire truth in it. Truth is pervasive everywhere, for all is Creation; Truth is not contained in words that are a sliver of human consciousness since it is not limited to "Meaning". Christ's words to men were not speech, as they were directed "within" that one reality which words cannot express, because it is not identical with an external form, constrained by a limitation of meaning, especially with an everyday communication on the level of words. The mystery of the Master's words, directed toward the spiritual substance, affected the material substance only insofar as the material substance contributed to the realization of the spiritual. 

         Nevertheless, the experience of material comfort took people far away from the spiritual foundation. The feeling of truth, in essence, ceases to be the reality, having gone too far into the depths of the human soul. Its way “up” has only become possible through overcoming subject psychology. As early as in Dionysius the Areopagite it is written: "The concept of God is acquired through denial, partly through affirmation. Man must come to the knowledge of God through total denial. Hence, the higher the knowledge of God goes, the more silent it becomes. This is how the mystical stillness occurs: what enters into darkness most clearly shines. In this way, God, who is not himself known, is apprehended through the elimination of all knowledge, and man is united with Him through his best part. However, what was clear to the enlightened consciousness of Christians in the first century, was not understood by the odious minds of the Middle Ages. 

         In comparison with the previous futile attempts to conceptualize Logos, the need for a tangible " bodily" form of the concept of God that escapes the consciousness of man became more and more urgent. The reproduction of the " dissimilar" by the " similar," of the material by the spiritual, was intended by the clergy to make it easier for man to "see" the image of God. A compromise was needed to help man move away from object consciousness and objectified sensations. The icon and the temples became such a compromise. The creation of the image is a phenomenon designed to be an intermediate "instance," a mediator between man and God. "The icon is the essence the visible of the invisible and without figure, but bodily depicted because of the weakness of our understanding," wrote John Damascene. The icon was based on the "living water" of Christ's speeches. So, did the icon become a pictorial projection of His metaphors?

         Whatever the case, His depictions are spilled out and corrected in complex theological definitions. The Council of 787 approved the image of Christ "not in the form of the Lamb, but according to the human form. The "general" theory of the image, which had developed by the fifth and sixth centuries, continues to be corrected and, during the period of iconoclasm, denied.

         The icon couldn’t be left beyond aesthetic categories. It was the aesthetic virtues in deeply spiritual action that were elevated to unprecedented artistic levels in the Old Russian icon, which had adopted its basic principles from the Byzantine icon. Being called upon to wake the sleeping soul and to appeal to the Byzantine eclectic consciousness, the icon for sensible Europeans was an intermediary point of convergence between the human spirit and God, the icon could not be like that for Russians, precisely because their consciousness was different! Both icons and temples were perceived by the Russians as final symbols, accepted with trust; they were given a certain significance coming from ancient perceptions. A different consciousness of the Russians presupposed a different perception of Scripture. Having a more holistic perception of the world than the Byzantines, understanding that you cannot get to God through a mental analysis, the ordinary people did not really focus on the meaning of words and texts.

         Icons that were considered miraculous were revered and became increasingly popular among the people. At the same time, having descended from the walls of temples into everyday life and becoming a household, the icon, as people got used to it and in close connection with stable pre-Christian traditions, turned into a fetish, which was not renewed. A regular man attributed to the icon the ability to heal, to protect from adversity. However, if the icon did not fulfill its "duties", it could become a useless object. There are known cases where the icon was thrown into a burning house because it did not save the house from fire after prayer. This every day "iconoclasm", without "any" philosophies or justifications, undoubtedly had a pagan basis, for the fact of the subject matter, the iconography of the image reminded the layman of the ancient symbols.

         At the same time, in Orthodox Russia, the "material" ownership of the icon was not in such strong contradiction with the spiritual beginning, as it was with the Christians of Central Europe. For Europeans, after the separation of the Churches, the "subjectivity" of images passed into the realm of consciousness, from which it was miraculously transformed into the materialism of the worldview. The Middle Ages proved to be a long period during which the spiritual and aesthetic accumulations of previous pre-Christian civilizations were dispersed. The Renaissance was the last era to contain the relative wholeness of aesthetics and worldview. After the Renaissance, history raced through the souls of men at increasing speed. Mannerism, without much delay, was replaced by the luxurious art of the Baroque, then by an even more sophisticated Rococo. Short periods of stabilization and integrity of taste "no longer make the weather". Longing for the former classical integrity leads to emotional romanticism and neoclassicism. These processes were just as intense in science and philosophy: both eventually bowed to the banners of pragmatism. By the second half of the nineteenth century, art, as a philosophy, was breaking up into a multitude of rapidly changing currents, upon which Malevich's Black Square and the concepts of totalitarianism came crashing down at the beginning of the twentieth century.

         Yet even long before the middle of the 19th century, there were no more global philosophical and aesthetic concepts, since for centuries the very integrity of the Christian worldview, shredded into a great variety of independent confessions claiming to be the only true interpretation of God's Word, had been in question. 

         Utilitarian mentality, becoming predominant, has naturally led to the shredding of spiritual values, leaving the creative element more and more often to existential forms of expression, now exclusively self-expression.

         The subjectivism of creative vision adopts a self-sufficient form. At the same time, this subjectivism was, paradoxically, the rebellion of a deceived, deep-rooted spirituality that had been left with no other opportunity to express itself! Actively manifested in a subjective form which was more natural in existing social relations, the spiritual categories became different, not commensurate with the original ones.

         Van Gogh's paintings are a vivid example of subjective experience... Filled with revelations of another essence, true human drama, and despair, the deep passion of a great soul, they absorbed many of the contradictions of a sharply subjective vision of the world, typical of the era. The whole life and work of the artist was a kind of procession to Calvary. His selfless, truly evangelical sincerity, relying on personal qualities, notwithstanding the strain of the struggle against the impenetrability of the worldview of the spiritually pharisaical "God's flock", was crucified! The singularity of the artist's vision of the world is an unconscious consequence of the subconscious rebellion, which rejected the routinely imposed urban joys.

         Van Gogh's work, as well as that of his contemporaries: Gauguin and Vrubel, was an escape from the "second" reality, in an attempt to preserve the primary purity of human spiritual energy. But their doom, with few exceptions, was obvious, just as the defeat of any solitary rebellion is obvious, for there is a great truth known since the Assyrian times to all but the geniuses: "Do not untie the rope that has been knotted and do not knit new knots unnecessarily.

         And a drop of water reflects the sun. But torn away from the ocean, it ceases to be the ocean and is mercilessly burned by the scorching rays. The drop that preserves itself in its integrity is not subject to destruction!