The lack of spirituality of our society is also manifested in increased aggressiveness and in the growth of crime, in which we have already overtaken the United States, where 400 murders per week caused newspaper panic, and our average 416 per week is accepted by us as a necessary evil. When there is no faith in God, when life is limited only to the visible, then there is nothing that would restrain a person from any action for the sake of achieving a momentary desire. Without personal immortality, personal responsibility for the life lived disappears. Familiarity with culture and science adds little here, since civilized norms of relationships cover only a narrow stratum, which is unable to transfer them to the rest of society, since it has nothing more convincing to justify them than personal commitment.

Personal immortality, declared in the form of glorious deeds that remain after our death, is a very weak consolation, since only a few can boast of such "deeds", and it is clear to them that no one will remember this in the next generation. Our Soviet civilization, and this is the only way to characterize our society, devoid of Christian or any other religious culture, is oriented only towards the strong, successful, and young. Failures, illnesses and death in our lives are just some unpleasant incidents that are not provided for by the movement towards a bright future.

Hence the attitude to death as something that is better not to talk about. This inevitable and most important moment of our life is covered by the same lies that until recently camouflaged almost all aspects of existence. However, it is not customary in our country to tell the patient about the true nature of his illness. Perhaps in the first stages of a fatal disease, this is somehow justified. Relatives and friends, together with the doctor, deceive the dying man. Instead of preparing for the future life, a person finds himself in an atmosphere of deception and, accordingly, alone.

Meanwhile, as the experience of doctors shows, the last days and hours of the life of a person who knows that he is facing a transition to another life are filled with the important spiritual work of reassessing the whole life, its comprehension, discarding everything small and unnecessary, and deep communication with loved ones. We deprive millions of our compatriots of all this, leaving them to die all alone in hospital beds, like used up and no longer needed human material. This is because the idea of survival after death does not fit into the concept of our society, and we do not know how to deal with the dying.

In this respect, the 18th chapter of Dr. Kalinovsky's book is especially important, which summarizes the experience of researchers who spent many hours at the bedside of the dying. It contains simple but very important advice on how to behave in such situations. This is especially important for us, the Soviet people, who have lost all the centuries-old traditions and, of course, have not created any new ones. This advice can be accepted by both believers and non-believers. In such cases, it is important to know about the stages that a person goes through when he learns or guesses that his disease is fatal. Accordingly, with these stages, one or another attitude from relatives is necessary. All of us must know this if we no longer wish to remain civilized savages in relation to the dying, far darker and more ignorant than any Russian peasant woman 100 years ago.

The author gives very true and good advice about behavior during funerals, about the attitude towards those who have lost their loved ones, about the most tragic cases, such as the death of children. Everything connected with the funeral, with the expression of grief, should be aimed at deep healing, awareness of grief. Not to withdraw into oneself, which happens when trying to isolate the closest ones from the dying person, with the intention of alleviating his suffering. Meeting with the death of a loved one not only for adults, but also for children makes the attitude to life deeper and more serious.

Acquaintance with this book is necessary for every person. True science has never contradicted genuine faith in God. The fact that a modern person, striving to explore everything and go beyond any previously seemingly impregnable boundaries of knowledge, has the opportunity to look behind the veil of death with the help of the achievements of resuscitation, even if only for 5-10 minutes, and make sure that a new life awaits us behind this veil, is one of the greatest discoveries of the second half of the 20th century. Perhaps in the years to come we will know even more about life after death. In any case, one thing is clear – we are given a revelation from God that corresponds to our current scientific thinking. How to treat it is a matter of inner sensitivity, maturity and free choice of each of us.

It is possible that we are on the threshold of a new civilization, when this revelation will be accepted by millions of people, including in our country, who have experienced from their own bitter experience the gloomy dead ends into which people are led by a self-satisfied superficial perception of existence consisting only of soulless matter.

Humanity has been given a great historical chance to turn to the Path once again opened for it by the Almighty. How this amazing discovery will be perceived determines what the future history of our civilization will be: whether it will follow the path of further waste of natural resources, spending time and energy in search of pleasures, entertainments and murderous enmity, or whether it will realize that the earthly life of each of us is a brief but decisive stage in the eternity for which we all came into this life.

I wish all readers an open mind and heart when reading this wonderful book.

Moscow, August 1990

Priest Alexander Borisov, Ph.D. in Biology

The whole life of man, personal and social, is based on faith in the immortality of the soul. This is the highest idea, without which neither man nor nation can exist.