1 В гостях у американских эзотериков На англ. яз

Yuriy Gorbunov


Part 1. American Esotericists



Chapter 1. Washington Museums

I had thought that I had come to USA as a guest of my daughter, upon her invitation. But it turned out I came to meet American esotericists in San Diego, at a conference for theosophists and esotericists. But that happened later. At first...
From Stevensville where my daughter and her husband  were living to Washington DC, by car along the highway, takes roughly 40 minutes. On the very first Sunday we went to view the capital city sights. In general, we had arranged to visit the quarter of the White House, the Congress Building, the Capitol and Lincoln;s memorial. It was a warm winter;s day. Washingtonians and tourists strolled through the park, over the hill with the obelisk-tower built in honour of George Washington, and beside the pond.
The two largest Museums, of American History and Natural History together with the National Art Gallery, were located close to each other on one street. To examine them, we of course began with the last of these. A monumental building, comfortable, spacious and beautiful, somehow reminding us of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, with fine exhibitions of pictures by American artists and French impressionists that I would not describe. It is a special object of discussion. But it doesn;t come under my subject. I mention the art gallery first because just then was opened an exhibition of ancient Chinese art, which had only just come to America from the People;s Republic of China. At first I couldn;t understand why in the gallery there were many Americans of Chinese nationality. Naturally, they were coming to look at that, which they had never been able to look at before. They came so to breathe in the air of their ancient great culture, to take in its energy, which permeates the material culture of any people.
I had first felt a similar energy in the Cairo National Museum to which I had been repeatedly, while working for a few years as an interpreter in Egypt in the sixties. Black stone statues of Egyptian pharaohs and lords suppress with their might and grandeur, the small man coming back to look upon the ancient Egyptian discoveries. You can yourself experience the awesome energy of this culture, when you stand beside the mummies, lying in stone sarcophagi, when you think of the past grandeur of the pharaohs, when all of a sudden you begin to reflect on the meaning of existence and the preservation not only of the human spirit, but also of the flesh. The bodies of the pharaohs are so wonderfully preserved, despite the passing of thousands of years. As previously, they influence people with their unusually energetic power, literally binding the psyche of contemporary man. Not all visitors endure such pressure. Some collapse in fainting. Others totally refuse to as much as enter that hall. Truly, the sight is not for weak-nerved or impressionable people.
It seemed to me, as a specialist in Oriental studies that God himself wished me to attentively inspect the Chinese antiquities in the National Gallery, as I was familiar with illustrations in volumes on historical paintings, which I had studied when I worked out and read a course of lectures to university students on the history of Oriental Arts. With great pleasure, I learned that I was knowledgeable about these old acquaintances, which now appeared to me in all their original splendour. I could not hold back my delight, and began quietly to tell my associates about the principles of Chinese aesthetics.
In this way, in distant America, on my first day;s stay, I suddenly once again came across the Orient, a study of which I have dedicated my whole life.
On that January Sunday, it had not yet entered my head, that that meeting with these antiquities from China was not accidental, and there would be several more "accidents", before I finally understood about the true purpose and task for my arrival in America.
It seems to us, that we understand about the era in which we are fated to live. Also, that we correctly understand the causes of current events. However, regarding the past it is not so. In India, the people have known this for a long time. There, there is established a tradition of calling the world in which we live, "maya", that is, illusion. Our brain is ineffective in helping to orient ourselves to the world of things and dense matter. We recall, how it is just a few centuries back, when disciples were burnt on fires, just because they had proven that Earth circles around the Sun, and not the other way round.
That is the way our brain works. It is constantly deceiving us. If we do not learn to relate to it critically, we will never catch the true cause of happenings. These causes lie beyond the limits of our physical world. Only just a few thinkers, before, as also now, go beyond the limits of this illusory world. However people in mockery call them "mystics", "esotericists" or "occultists". People think of them as being a little crazy, not wishing to believe in their strange and seemingly incredible explanations of arrangements in the world. In the same way, we do not wish to go beyond the limits of our illusions, beyond the limits of dense matter and our odd habits, which make us so like "our lesser brothers", but not like the prophets and initiates who expiate the sins of our mistakes. Over the centuries it is just the coverings for our planet which change – the biosphere, the sphere of technology and the sphere of information, but not human being as such. It remains just as it always has been, whether 2,000 or 40,000 years ago. We read of myths and legends of Gods and past heroes. Their passions and deeds seem to us so close and understandable. We are very much like them.
With the mystic it is all clear: it is somehow beyond the mind and non-material, it is inexact and indefinite thinking. For the majority of people it is somewhat mysterious and dangerous. As they write in the dictionaries, it is a religious practice, the aim of which is to experience ecstasy through direct union with God, the Absolute, and the Cosmos. Atheists regard it as unnecessary, a ridiculous diversion, as "opium for the people". The Soviets mercilessly suppressed occult knowledge. To write about the Ageless Wisdom was forbidden.
What a surprise I received, when in the middle 80;s I succeeded in meeting (apparently also by accident) with workers for the publishing house for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in one of the Moscow clubs. The audience was showering the publishers with questions. Particularly often it was asked, "Why don;t they publish books on astrology and other occult sciences?" It was not the questions, which struck me. Rather, what struck me was that many of those present, or so it seemed, studied and knew about the "frivolous companion to astronomy", occult sciences, and probably had access to samizdat (underground) esoteric literature. After the crash of the Bolshevist experiment, enterprising publishers made a fortune through publishing such literature. After a few years they had re-published practically all that had been published in the Russian language prior to 1917, not buying rights, and then they began the translation of esoteric literature from foreign languages. Not used to being spoiled by occultism and theosophy, the most thirsting readership in the world never lacked the money for such literature. The "forbidden fruit" seemed to them sweet. I also sold off part of my sizable library, in order to acquire books on Agni Yoga, theosophy and comparative religion. My passion for theosophy led me firstly to a conference in Dnepropetrovsk, and then to America.