From the Book - Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave
From Chapter 3 The Immortality of Our Soul
“Intimately and inseparably connected with the truth of the existence of God, there is also another truth: that of the spiritual quality and immortality of the human soul. The proofs of this immorality are based on two things: first on the existence of God and on His qualities; and, second, on the longings and demands of the human soul itself.
The first proof is as follows. Undoubtedly, there is God. He manifests Himself to man not only in his soul but also in the visible nature and through His immediate revelations. He is a just and all-holly Being. He has put in the human soul a desire of the good and a revulsion from evil. Thus many people do their utmost to accomplish good deeds, and as they do so they willingly undertake difficult acts of self-sacrifice, as did the ancient Christian martyrs. But frequently it so happens that sinners enjoy well-being during their life on earth while those who are upright and good suffer until they die; and the good suffer, for the most part because of sinners.
If there did not exist another life, in which every man’s actions are to find recompense, then God would not be just and holy. He would be unmerciful toward the upright and indulgent towards sinners. This, however, can not even be imagined. Therefore, since God is holy and just, there must be another life, in which both sinners and good people will receive recompense that is their due.
The other proof of immortality is this. God has put in mans’ mind a longing for truth; in his will, a longing for what is good; in his heart, a longing for blessedness. But man’s mind is not satisfied with the knowledge which he acquires on earth, for he sees that this knowledge is far from full and complete. His will, too, encounters many obstacles to perfecting itself and aiming at the good. And even if a man toils greatly on earth for the sake of that which is good, his heart does not find here a real happiness. Besides, rooted in man’s soul there is the thought of eternity and endlessness. His soul not only possesses the idea of a limitless Highest Being, but also actually longs for Him with all its heart and will. Man attempts by various means to make his name endure on earth; he wishes that he should be remembered as long as possible even after he has died. Such are efforts to achieve eternity. Finally, almost all nations of the earth believe in a future life. If such a life did not exist, how could the universal belief in it originate?
There is no religion that does not include in its system of tenets a belief in the immortality of the soul. There is no tribe, even among the least developed peoples, which does not hold this belief in some form or another. Some aborigines have been said to possess no faith of this kind, but such statements usually are based on nothing except the superficial observations of travelers. Ideas like that of immortality are very vague and unclear even in the souls of these very primitive people, and they are expressed buy them in languages with a very poorly developed vocabulary. It is difficult to express abstract concepts in an undeveloped language, even when such concepts can appear simple to us. Furthermore, aborigines for the most part do not like to be asked about their convictions.
After man’s death, his body, separated from the soul, returns to earth, but the soul remains whole and immortal; “Then the dust shall return to the earth as it was. And the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl 12:7).
Both divine revelation and our common sense assure us that man’s soul does not die but lives after the death of his body. Since it is different from material creation, the soul is not destroyed together with the body and is not “dispersed like empty air” (Wis 2:3), “but goes upward” (Eccl 3:21). It is only natural that the forces which kill the body, although they destroy its sensory organs, cannot put an end to the soul and annihilate its thoughts and wishes. The truth of the immortality of the soul is fully revealed in both the Old and New Testament, death is called a “gathering to one’s people” (Gen 49:33) or a “rest” (1 Kings 2:10). In the New Testament, man is generally regarded as a denizen of the future rather than of the present life, and all his hopes, all his treasures are to be sought in the future. Jesus Christ confirms this truth by His statement about God; “God is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matt 22:32).
The existence of the soul continues beyond the grave, and with the soul there continues all that to which the soul has become accustomed in its temporal life. The soul takes with it that frame of mind, those principles and tendencies which it used to have on earth. While the soul is connected with the body and forms one man with it, it is where the body is. But as soon as this union is dissolved, the location of the soul in recognizable space becomes impossible; any close connection for it to a place disappears, for location is necessary for the body but not for the spirit. Holy Scripture and our common sense convince us that the human soul is a spirit, and as such it does not need a body in order to continue existing; therefore, it can endure without the body after the body has been destroyed, Divine revelation assures us that the souls of the departed will unite with their bodies only “at (Christ’s) coming” (1 Cor 15:23), in “the resurrection of the dead” (1Cor 15:42). Consequently, until that time they remain bodiless. However, divine revelation tells us that, even after the death of its body, the soul reasons, thinks, and clearly recognizes both its own condition and the condition of others.
From the words of Jesus Christ about the death of the rich man, we see that when he was tormented after death, he understood the cause of his torment and thought about the future destiny of his brothers, who were still enjoying earthly life. “And being in torments in Hades, “ says Jesus Christ about the rich man, “he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame,’ But Abraham said, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and your there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those form there pass to us. ‘ Then he said, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my fathers house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment” (Luke 16:23-28).
What do contemporary thinkers and scientists believe about God and about the immortality of the soul? It would be difficult to recount in details all that they have stated in contradiction to the widely spread opinion that science denies both the existence of God and of eternal life, Let us rather mention the results of a questionnaire on immortality, which R, Thomsen of Chicago addressed at the beginning of the twentieth century to the scientists and thinkers of all countries, including Russia.
Of forty-seven replies, the great majority (thirty-nine) were positive and well supported, The same cannot be said about the two negative replies and the four that were evasive, while two of the people questioned gave no definite reply at all. Among the thirty-nine scientists who believed in immortality there were some of outstanding reputation, such as the chemist (William) Crookes, the psychologist (William) James, the physiologist (Charles) Richet, the biologist (Alfred Russell) Wallace, and others.
Faith and reason oppose each other only where faith is weak. If unbelievers find in teachings about God much that they cannot understand, the obvious answer to their problem is that revelation has come to us not from the domain of our knowledge and our life but from those unlimited spheres where the Highest Being lives and manifests Himself. All objections of reason to revelation will fall of their own accord, since for the most part they are founded on the unwillingness of reason to penetrate deeper into the highest revelation.
The divine knower of hearts, Christ the Savior, first showed to the world that the only source of sound social, political, and historical life is the human spirit; and the more perfect this spirit is, the more perfect will be all that it creates. If you wish that your surroundings should change, change yourself, and educate your heart. This is what Christianity teaches.
A life full of fraternal love and a kingdom of God on earth are possible, but they must be sought not in externals, not by looking around; instead, it is necessary to look inside oneself, into one’s heart. But the heart is not the domain over which science has influence; it is rather under the influence of religion.
Note that the abilities of our heart and our reason do not develop and become perfect to the highest degree to which they could possibly attain. Yet God does not leave His creatures incomplete and unfinished. Therefore; it is reasonable to think that in His wisdom, He is reserving another life for out spirits, in which man will become that which he is capable of being.
We are merely stones, the purpose of which is to construct a magnificent building. We are in an elementary school, where only the rudiments of learning can be acquired. We are only going through the childhood of that long life which bears the name of eternity. Death will only remove us from the crass earthly wrap, which is insufficient for our future existence.
An expectation of a future life, together with faith in God, forms the foundation of a well-ordered life on earth, to say nothing of a future life. It is known that nations whose faith in a future life weakened were subject to all kinds of disasters: the basis of family and social life was shaken, and they fell prey to internal struggles and enslavement by external enemies. There was a time when the entire human race, with the exception of Noah and his family, was destroyed by the deluge, sent by God’s order because the people of that time had lost their faith in God and in the immortality of their souls. Their flesh had dominated their spirits to such an extent that they forgot about their high destiny, and this is the reason why God said about them, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh” (Gen 6:3) A similar situation will prevail before the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth and the ensuing end of the world.
Even now many people are Christian in name only. Many of them even go to church, but buy candles, and pray, but they do not believe in the existence of evil spirits and hardly believe in the immortality of their own soul; or else they simply do not think about such things.
The question of immortality is the most important question in our life. Our entire life, both personal and social, is based on our attitude toward the immortality of our soul and its future life. Man’s immortality is the continuation of his life after death; that is, his soul continues to exist from his body, and this existence take place in another world, in a different form, and in different conditions. Death does not interrupt man’s existence but only changes it. Here on earth we call some people alive and others dead. But who is dead? Not human beings, surely, but only parts of them-their bodies. These bodies are buried in the ground. while the most important part of man, namely, his soul, which is the image and likeness of God, continues to live! It passes into another world and lives there.
God is not a God of the dead but a God of the living, and our earthly life is only a beginning, a preparation for the eternal and endless life. There is no people, and never has been, who do not expect a future life. This hope is inherent in the human soul.
The pagan religions offer, for the greater part, only some conjectures about the immortality of the soul. These conjectures posses a varying degree of clarity. Only Christianity has endowed the belief in immortality with complete credibility and has given it a truthful expression; and this is because Christianity if not a human teaching, but a divinely revealed truth.
This hope of eternal life, which has always existed in the human spirit and with which man has been created, was fully and completely developed by Christianity. Thus for instance, St Paul speaks about the resurrection and future life with striking force and conviction in his first epistle to the Corinthians and his epistle to the Thessalonians. For the apostles, future life became the object of a firm and unshakable conviction, since it was given to them to see with their own eyes this life beyond the grave: they saw it in the risen Christ.
The blessed faith inspired the first Christians. It brightly shone in the lives of more recent saints as well: practically before out eyes it strikingly manifested itself in the life of St Seraphim of Sarov; of the fathers (startsi) Leo, Marcarius, Ambrose, and Joseph of Optina; of Father John of Kronstadt; all of whom even here on earth had stepped, as it were, beyond the mysterious boundary of this world and lived far beyond its confines. They had a divinely granted knowledge of the future life, and the glow of this life was distinctly reflected in their faces, always joyful like the faces of children, and in their words.
They were like the Apostle Paul, who had been taken “to the third heaven” and had heard there “inexpressible words” (2 Cor 12:2 4).
Human beings who approach perfection and have achieved purity of heart, they who have “acquired the Spirit of God” (From St Seraphim’s conversation with Matovilov) even while they are still in this world, have the daring to enter the place of the Creator, and to join angels and the spirits of the saints. While they are still in their earthly bodies, they well know that they will reign with Crist; for already here on earth they have come to know the sweetness of divine illumination and the effect of God’s power. The supernatural gifts of communion with God, which the soul can receive when it is still in the body, are only an indication of those heavenly rewards which cannot even be told to man, since we possess no images or words fit for their description.
Once they had risen to the heights of spiritual elevation while still in this life, these holy men experienced a blessedness and joy which resemble the eternal heavenly joy of the life to come. Hence these men were already angels and healed all kinds of illnesses, both mental and physical. When they were praying they were transfigured and shone with the lift with which the Savior shone on Mt Tabor. The forces of nature obeyed them; men and bests, plants, water, and air did their will. Their thoughts, their visions and contemplations have been left for us in their works, and these works, illuminated from above, contain accounts of the future life, that life which begins beyond the grave. Some of these accounts are included in this book.
Death is a great and awesome mystery. The most mysterious part of it is the moment when the soul becomes separated from the body, and man passes from his bodily life into a purely spiritual life. His life used to be temporal; now it becomes eternal.
A few more moments, and man passes into eternity. How the very form of his being suddenly changes! His spirit sees itself, its own essence. He sees even the most remote objects, but not with his bodily eyes. Instead, he possesses some sort of sense that is incomprehensible to us. He speaks not in distinctly heard words but in thoughts. He feels and touches, but not with hands; rather, it is sense itself which he possesses, but no longer does he use it through his former bodily instruments.
He moves not on his feet but through the mere effort of his will. He now approaches in a moment places and things which formerly he could reach only with great effort and very slowly by covering a great expanse of space and taking a long time, No natural boundaries contain him now. Now he sees the past as clearly as he does the present. The future too is no longer so hidden as it used to be. There no longer exists the division between him and other places and times. There no longer is space, or hours, days, and years; there are no distances, either small or great. Everything flows into one moment——— eternity.
What, then, does he see and feel? Eternity, once is has opened itself to him, fills him with inexpressible dread. Its endlessness swallows his limited being. All his thoughts and feelings lose themselves in endlessness! He sees objects for which we have neither images nor names; he hears that which on earth can be expressed neither by any voice nor by any sound: his experiences and feelings cannot be expressed by us in any words whatsoever. He finds there light and darkness, but not as we know them; a light before which a bright sun would give less light than a candle does here before the sun; a darkness compared to which our darkest night would be lighter than day. He meets there beings similar to him and recognizes in them people wo also have departed from this world.
But what a change! These are no longer the faces that were known here; no longer are these bodies that used to exist on earth. These are only the souls of the departed. But these souls have now fully revealed their internal qualities, which now clothe them in an appropriate manner. By manifestations of the inner qualities of each soul, other souls recognize it. Through the force of its feelings, each tries to recognize those to whom it was near in this life'.
In eternity, our spirit meets beings very close in their nature to his, but their very approach makes him feel their infinitely greater power. Some of them come out of limitless darkness, and their whole being is made up of darkness and evil. They contain in themselves unimaginable suffering. Their every movement and action are sorrow and destruction.
These however are in the lower spheres of the spiritual world, the spheres closest to the earth. At a greater distance from it, the spirit sees a limitless sea of unintelligible light from which other beings come, even more powerful than the ones mentioned before. Their nature and their life are made up of nothing but limitless good, unfathomable perfection, and inexpressible love. Divine light fills their entire being and accompanies their every motion.
Thus a man’s spirit advances through this marvelous world. By the force of his spiritual nature and the irresistible power of attraction toward a world that is akin to him, he flies on and on to that place, or rather to that degree to which he can attain by his spiritual forces. There he is reborn, changed in a fashion marvelous to himself.
Is this the same spirit that used to live in an earthly man, a limited spirit tied to the body, scarcely noticeable under this body’s mass, entirely enslaved by the body and apparently so dependent on it that without it the spirit seemed unable to live and to develop? What has happened to it now?
Now everything that it ever contained, both the good and the bad, quickly and forcefully reveals itself. Man’s thoughts and feelings, his moral character, his passions and desires—all this now develops to an infinite extent. He can-not stop or change of overcome this development. The endlessness of eternity makes them all unending. His defects and weaknesses become unbounded evil. His evil becomes endless, his sorrows turn into unending suffering.
Do you visualize the horror of such a condition? Your soul, which now is not good but still suppresses and conceals its veil within itself, will there appear absolutely evil. Your evil feelings, to some extent controlled here, there will become ravings, unless you uproot them here. If you have some power over yourself here, there you will be able to do nothing. All that is in you will pass with you there and develop to endlessness. Mans soul, once it has separated itself from the body, continues with great force to develop in itself those qualities which it acquired during its life on earth. Consequently, the righteous are endlessly confirmed in their virtues and their reliance on God’s will, while unrepentant sinners become ever more wicked and come to hate God. By the end of the world’s history, there will be only two categories of men, both on earth and in heaven: the righteous, full of limitless love for God, and the sinners, full of hatred toward God.
What will become of you there, faithless and sinful man? If you are not good here, there you will be a dark and evil spirit, Oh, you will not recognize yourself there. Or perhaps it will be better to say that there you will recognize yourself, but recognize all too well. Your wickedness will, by its own drive, carry you toward the eternal, limitless evil, to the society of dark and evil forces. You will be unable to stop on this road or to turn back from it. You will suffer forever. What will be the cause of your sufferings? Your own ravings, caused by your own wickedness. They will give you no rest. The evil company into which you will fall will also eternally surround you and torture you endlessly.
And what of the good soul? What will happen to it? Goodness also will become revealed in its entire fullness and strength. It will develop with all the freedom which it did not have here. It will discover its entire inner worth, which here is largely hidden and is not recognized or valued. Its entire inner light, darkened here in every way; its entire blessedness, suppressed here by various sorrows—all these will now be uncovered and shine forth. And this soul, by the force of its morally developed and virtuously elevated desire, will rise to the higher spheres of that world where, in the midst of limitless light, there dwells the cause and the First Image of everything good. There in the realm of the brightest and purest beings, it too will become and angel; that is, a being as light, pure, and blessed as an angel.
It will now forever become firm in the good. No evil, either internal or external, will be able to shake or change it or to harm its blessed condition. But the soul will not live in idleness and merely enjoy its blessedness. It will act through its illuminated mind; it will contemplate and penetrate the mysteries which here it cannot understand: the mysteries of God, the creation, itself, and the eternal life.
Our condition in the future life will not be a condition of idle leisure. Instead, it will be a harmonious, complete satisfaction of all the longings and desires of our soul, which will undergo and unbroken and endless development. Man’s reason, heart and will are destined to find for themselves many worthy objects and adequate material for their development.
Finally, the transfigured and renewed world in all its beauty and diversity will attract our spiritual gaze and evoke a feeling of marvel and of veneration for Him Who has created everything by His wisdom. To this must be added the great moral satisfaction which the blessed will experience as a result of mutual proximity. Among them there will be neither envy nor hate, neither enmity nor falseness; nothing of that which now fills and constantly poisons our life on earth.
Brotherly love, a never disturbed peace, most perfect concord, the purest truth—all these will reign among the blessed inhabitants of the New Jerusalem in heaven.”
from the book Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave —Compiled by Archimandrite Panteleimon