C h a p t e r  III.   G a m e s  w i t h  d e a t h.

From Igor Kalinauskas book "Games of I"
Translation by I. Shpigelman and B. Macdonald, 2006

The teacher of our social teachers used to say: "Doubt everything" (K. Marx). But the teacher of our spiritual teachers said: Doubt is the greatest sin. (Jesus Christ).

However, Christ's statement somehow does not reach many. A man says: "Yes, it was said by Christ, yes, I should think about it, it may be so." But to doubt everything - this is understood immediately, because we were raised in such a World. "Doubt everything" is an axiom learned at the mother's knees. No doubt, we must doubt everything, must we not?

The true faith

The problem of taking own "I", own self-consciousness beyond the boundaries of one's incarnation, beyond oneself as article, this is, above all, the problem of faith. What is faith? To come to faith? To believe? In the Russian language, and possibly, in the other languages, there is a whole bouquet of actions: to believe, to confide, to come to faith, to check with faith, to have faith.

It is very important to try and hear the believers, the people to whom this total experience of transformation just happened, and they came to faith. There was always only a handful of such people on Earth, and nowadays maybe even less than before. No one is asking now if a person truly has faith, or if he does not. It is sufficient to pass through the rite, to be initiated into a certain confession, and to belong to this concession's Us.

Then this Us is declared a collegiality given from the above with all its divine hierarchy, and so a man without faith, but formally belonging to a Us confession, now sort of has faith. Sort of. This lie, a very intricate lie where the social Us of some confession substituted the truly religious community of faith. And as soon as the question of faith arises - this lie has something to do with each of us.

We know that the majority does not have faith, the majority only sort of have faith that is, it somewhat trusts the church, or science, or family, or tradition, and thus, sort of has faith. The act of faith, the act of transformation, the comprehension does not happen.

In one of his books, Rajneesh tells a wonderful parable.

An old women heard in the church during the sermon: "And if thy faith is true, tell thee to mountain: go, and the mountain will go". So, when she returned home, she came to the window which view was occupied by the nearby mountain, stepped on the stool, opened the window, closed her eyes, and loudly exclaimed: "Go, mountain!" When she opened her eyes back, and saw that the mountain was still in its place, she sighed with relief, and concluded: "It figures, I knew that it wouldn't work!"

Let us see how this manifests itself in the relations between people. The true faith - where there is no need for logical explanations - I have faith, I came to faith you. Sort of faith - it is a logical conclusion: I trust you because you have never deceived me to the extent that I could discover by myself; or - I believe you because you have not done anything bad to me, that is in my own definition of good and bad.

The World view

The World is such and such; the man is made in such and such a manner; the nature is such - this is the set of all definitions in regard with the World view. Is it a question of faith? No, not of faith, but of coming to faith, question of trust. By trusting one's ancestors, "elders", tradition, culture, science, a man joins this or another World view. Especially, if the facts that are described in this view do not worry him personally. So, this is not a question of faith. It is a question of trust.

The World view upon which the text that you are reading is based - the World without such-ness, the permeable World, the World of incarnating Spirit - is not an exception. You can trust this World view, you can explain it, you can believe into it. It is possible to see the world like this, it is possible to explain it in this manner, or, it is possible to be in such a World.

• Before faith, there exists one of many possible holistic World views.
• With faith, there exists one of possible ways of experiencing the unity with the World.
• After faith, there exists a different life, being in the World, savoring the Existence.

Practice outside of incarnation

In order to look at oneself, to look at the whole World as on an incarnation, one must have the experience of being outside of this incarnation. Without such experience the incarnation will remain an intellectual construct, that may be trusted or not, that may be interesting, fascinating, but one cannot have faith into an intellectual construct. It is impossible to have faith without personal experience.

Therefore in all serious spiritual traditions there exists practical training, it is a mandatory aspect, and without practice neither comprehension nor transformation is possible.

There are millions of techniques and all of them are of equal value, not one is better than another. The essence is the same - a man must acquire, if he is really interested and aspired, personal experience of living outside of incarnation. Otherwise, whatever he says, whatever he imagines, nothing will really happen, except for the development of the resources of consciousness in the field of reflections on out-of-limit things. The latter is not bad at all, but it does not have anything to do with the question of faith and with the question of realization and the relations between self-awareness and incarnation.

The principal question

In order to start practicing - any practice, indeed, it is necessary to join to some concept, to any concept that asserts that such a practice is necessary. This concept must maintain that beyond the boundaries of accessible to us reality there is something, and to paint another World view, that is to help a man to find a motive, to be carried away, to be fascinated, to wish it.

The principal question is the question of death. The death of the physical body, the decay of material incarnation, that leads to the destruction of subjectivity. Either the subject, the "I" does not disappear with the disappearance of the material carrier, that is, "I" is immortal, or "I" is destroyed together with the material incarnation. If "I" is destroyed, then a certain set of concepts on the subject of how to live, why to live, for what to live is important, if "I" is immortal - a different set altogether is required.

However elaborated concepts would be offered for consideration, still, everything is reduced to a fundamental, existential question: either there is immortal soul, or - there is not.

Is it possible to elude the answer to this question and at the same time to live a full life, to be in this World? Is it possible to postpone the answer? Yes. By two ways. The first, particularly material way is to lead a healthy life. There exists a whole cult of healthy ways of life, an immeasurable number of theories about what is healthy and what is not, sometimes quite contradictory. A lot of people try to postpone the decision on existence or non-existence of an immortal Soul, by having faith in a healthy way of living.

It is also possible to postpone the answer, by alluding that the question is not actual, until a man discovers one's own Spirit. And, it is possible, with the same kind of energy that people use to rush for the fight for health, to rush for the quest for this Spirit in order to connect to it, in order to obtain personal experience. And then try to ask this Spirit, in person, if he is going to disappear or not. But only the minority makes such choice. The majority simply wants to believe that there will be something after this life, something absolutely guaranteed.

On the quest for faith

When a man searches for the answer on the question of inter-relations of incarnation and Spirit, of death and life, he mobilizes all of his inner energies. Then the expression "Death is the best teacher" should be taken literally.

There is not so much of these inner energies as it may seem. For those who have come to faith, the inner energies increase. But for those who are still searching for faith, there is not so much of the energies, because the very process of living, what we call humdrum, life or karma, takes its toll. There is not much difference in calling it life or calling it karma. Although, if you call it life, at least you can do something with it, but when you call it karma, well, there is not anything that can be done, is there?

The inner and outer worlds of a thinking man, of the one who is trying to find his own Faith, instead of simply living on trusting the authorities, these worlds become more complicated. For only in the creative tension of the inner and outer worlds, may comprehension happen.

If with the death of the body everything ends, then "how" do I want to live through a given to me small period of time? Then the question "why?" is not relevant at all. It so happens, that I was born and I want to live as long as I can - this is the basic motivation. Twist around with your brain as you want, rationalize as much as you can, but, with a deep, total faith that life is limited by birth and death, and that the unique, inimitable "I" did not exist as subject before birth and will seize to exist after death - everything that can be wished for - to live as long as possible, and as well as possible. And then all scenarios are built based upon this motivation.

If there will be something after this, and there was something before, then there emerges a very different basic motivation - "why" to live, it is the most important - "why?", the meaning, the comprehension. Certain work must be performed before "I" will have learned such a lesson in one's own immortality.

Now, if there was not anything before the birth, but there is a chance to earn life after death, then the question "what?" becomes the main one. What to do in order to earn?!

There is not any other version for a man.

If, however, a man tries to ignore the main question of his existence in the World, then the more chaos, the better. Then Brownian motion, then - chaos, and this chaos serves as a base for constructing all concepts for explanations. So, there are only two possibilities: either chaos, or structuring. And the structuring is only possible based upon "why?", upon "what?" and upon "how?". It follows from above, that having determined which question is the main one for some tradition, it is possible to define which answer gives such a tradition on the main question of Human life.

The tradition, on which this book is based, considers the question "why?" the most important one. It follows then, that this tradition accepts that there was something before birth, and there will be something after death. If the main question is "what to do?" then such tradition accepts that there was nothing before birth, but after death, under certain conditions, something may still be. If some tradition or concept considers "how?" its main question, it is clear that for its followers there is nothing either before birth or after death; thus, with necessity, it forms a hedonistic position, where pleasure is essential. But as wise Buddha noticed, where there is pleasure, there is the suffering of losing this pleasure.

On the rational level we may choose, or, to put it more precisely, sort of choose between these alternatives, or, we may try them all in turn, or, even try them all at once - for the fullness of chaos. But the essence will not change - on the deepest level, on the level of existence the question of death is fundamental. And there are only the possible answers. One may open one's consciousness for this, or not open it, the fact itself remains, and there is no escape from this fact.

So, what is the conclusion? The conclusion is quite simple: the first endeavor, that must be made by a man, that considers himself a spiritual seeker, is the endeavor of finding his faith on the level of those three versions of the answer - why? what? how?. It is necessary to accept one of those positions, at least on the level of trust, on the level of logical self-persuasion. And, having accepted it, it is necessary to live, for quite a long period of time with precise, consistent accord with this position.

What does it mean, self-realization in accordance with an accepted position? It means to decide for oneself, what kind of practice is required.

Any, even not so elaborated psycho-technological practice leads to the situation that the intensity of living increases. There arises a contradiction between the subjective experience of time and conventional time that exists on the outer, social activity. So it may happen that certain parts of our incarnation may get tired of living and crumble even before the failure of our physical body. And in this case the problem of health is swayed into an altogether different direction. Now it is more important to look after one's psycho-energetics and consciousness, because there is a big chance that these two will get tired sooner than the physical body.

The practice leads to the situation where the question of death is moved from the context of physical death into the context of death or, lack of death for the Spirit.

But is the question justifiable, when it is turned toward the Spirit? It is indeed. For we do not possess knowledge if the Spirit existed before our birth. Each one found out about Spirit's existence only when one found it. We cannot even tell for sure if the Spirit existed before we discovered for ourself that such-ness may have a master. And we cannot predict if the Spirit will exist after death. But we can have faith. And start the game with Death.