"With my mental sight and hearing, I recalled my meetings with Karsavin, and his voice, and his words, and our walks along the gorge between the coal embankment and the wall of the hospital barracks. And finally, the last farewell to him this morning in the morgue... What was to be written to me? Words were needed that would express the significance of Karsavin's personality and which would be words of farewell to him. This, as far as I remember, was the secret epitaph. "Lev Platonovich Karsavin, historian and religious thinker. In 1882 he was born in St. Petersburg. In 1952, while imprisoned in a regime camp, he died of milliary tuberculosis. L. P. Karsavin spoke and wrote about the Threefold One God, Who in His incomprehensibility reveals Himself to us, so that through Christ we may come to know in the Creator the Father who gives birth to us. And that God, overcoming Himself through love, suffers our sufferings with us and in us, so that we too may be in Him and in the unity of the Son of God, possess the fullness of love and freedom. And that we must recognize our very imperfection and the burden of our fate as an absolute goal. Comprehending this, we already have a share in the victory over death through death. Farewell, dear teacher. The sorrow of separation from you does not fit into words. But we, too, await our hour in the hope of being where sorrow has been transformed into eternal joy."

"A little later, after I finished writing, Šimkūnas came. I handed him a sheet of text. Šimkūnas read slowly and, apparently, weighing each word in his mind. Finally, he said that, in his opinion, what was written was, in general, what was needed.

He had a dark glass bottle in store. Having rolled the sheet with the secret epitaph into a tight roll, Šimkūnas put this roll into the bottle and tightly closed the bottle with a screw cap in front of me."

"In the act of autopsy, in this act of medical necromancy, the vial... was put into a cut corpse. From that moment on, and forever the ashes of Karsavin have a monument in it, the glass shell of which is able to resist decay and decay, preserving the words of the testimony written — not in gold letters on stone, but in ordinary ink on paper — about the man whose remains are buried in the ground of an unmarked grave."

Let us think about this story: through the gloomy grotesque of camp life, something else shines through here. In Russian philosophers, we often encounter mystical intuition that the fate of the body after death is not indifferent to the fate of a person, carries a mysterious meaning. Both Fedorov and Florensky spoke about this, but perhaps Karsavin spoke most decisively. He taught that there is no separate "soul" at all, that the personality acts as an inseparable wholeness in its entire fate, both temporary and eternal. But what does "secret epitaph" mean? The condensed formula of the philosopher's thought remained merged with his ashes; And the spiritual-bodily unity is in a sense not broken by death. In a truly inscrutable way, Karsavin's death shows confirmation of his teaching: the true death of the philosopher.

"The cemetery where Karsavin is buried is located away from the village. It consists of many mounds on which no one's names are written. Around the cemetery there is flat, monotonous tundra, formless land. Most of all there is sky. Clear blue, with transparently white clouds, envelops you on all sides with the beauty of the heavens, making up for the poverty of the earth."

S. S. Khoruzhiy

Mysticism and Its Significance in the Religiosity of the Middle Ages

Is it possible to study mysticism, to speak with understanding about "good things, which the eye has not seen, and the ear has not heard, and the heart of man has not ascended"? After all, the mystics themselves assert the inexpressibility, the "ineffability" of their experiences, although they try to describe them and make them understandable to others. It is still relatively easy to limit the realm of mysticism as the rejection of what lies beyond the limits of our ordinary, positive experience and what is accessible only to the inner eye, illumined by the flickering of divine light. But the qualitative features of mystical experience, translated into our positive language, seem completely incomprehensible. However, this is not the case. "The human psyche is so flexible, so rich in hidden possibilities, that it is able to experience what others experience. Reading the words of mystics, we understand the dissolution of the soul in God, its disappearance in the ineffable, we empathize with how it sinks into absolute being, just as "a drop of water sinks into the sea, like a ray of sunlight sinks into the general mass of light." We understand the subsidence, the freezing of life in mystical ecstasy. "The wheel is still turning, although the push given to it has already stopped." In the same way, the soul, having concentrated in itself, having withdrawn into itself or having soared to the source of light, is still conscious of itself, as it were, by inertia, already ready to plunge into eternal blissful rest. And, losing consciousness of itself, it feels more and more vividly within itself "the quiet God, who calms everything," it partakes of other worlds, and realizes the unity of the world. A soul that vainly searched for God in the world and sorrowfully exclaimed: "He is not here! He is gone!", in mystical ecstasy, jubilantly, declares: "He is here!"

Undoubtedly, the emotional side of the mystical act, as well as its objects, changes depending on the era, cultural environment, tradition and individuality. But its essence is perceptible, as identical, everywhere, in all cases known to us. We, simple and doubtful people, do not realize the absolute truth of the mystical content; Act; The flickering of the divine light seems to us to be an objectified state of the psyche, and the mystic seems to be a credulous seeker who believes in his illusions. But in spite of this, we understand that the mystical act can be, or seem to be, for the mystic the pure source of absolute knowledge.

Wise with classical descriptions of the mystical act, we find its signs where the author does not declare it. If, in his "Ustav," St. Francis begins to address God, to shower Him in disorder with the epithets "sweetest," "quiet," "beloved," etc., to repeat them without need, and to express his religious mood in words that seem to mean nothing, we catch behind the incoherent speech of the saint the beginnings of mystical uplift, we feel tears and the joyful throbbing of an imminent ecstasy. You don't even need to reread the prayers of a saint to come across the mystical. Mystical moments are more common than it seems at first glance, although their prevalence should already follow from the very fact of their "intelligibility". The prayerful mood is nothing but a weak degree of mystical ecstasy. The fear of something unclear and unknown, which engulfs us in the darkness of the night, is also a sensation of the otherworldly, although accompanied by some specific emotions. Mystical is the belief in the magical power of individual objects, in the mysterious healing power of a relic, or in the evil eye. Mysticism materializes, concretizes, and is connected with the objects of the external world: hence the cosmic symbolism of prophetic dreams degenerates into vulgar mysticism. And vice versa – vulgar mysticism can develop into pure mysticism. The mystical ecstasies of the greatest mystics and the most vulgar moments of the most vulgar mysticism are only two poles of the infinitely rich world of mystical sensations, and this world itself is a difficult component of religiosity in general.

Mysticism is conceivable without connection with the historical church. There are moments in it that liberate the church from the bonds. Does the mystic need tradition for the cognizer of absolute truth, does he need an external saving institution, such as the church, when he himself is saved in communion with the Divine? But medieval mysticism lives within the religiosity of the epoch, whimsically intertwined and fused with its others.

elements into an organic, inseparable whole. The center of medieval religiosity lies in the church; The largest religious movements of the Middle Ages arose from the Church. One of the most distinctive features of the ΧΙΙ-ΧΙΙΙ centuries is the search for the true Church, whether in the form of a desire to reform the Catholic Church, or in the form of attempts to create one's own. What role did mysticism play in this great process, apparently disposing to isolation from the Church, but at the same time connected with it?

A significant part, if not most, of vulgar mysticism was associated with the Church and its cult. In cases of natural disasters, such as drought or hail, the laity resorted to the magical help of the altar servers; solemn processions, "standing", "throwing" were arranged, holy gifts were carried out to drive away thunderclouds, fields were sprinkled with holy water, bells were rung to "break lightning". Special masses were served to prevent certain misfortunes; Prayer, together with the offering of the Holy Gifts, tore the heavy fetters of the distant captives. The woman in labor, languishing in agony, waited for relief from the priest's prayer. The demon of disease was expelled by baths of holy water. Sacramental prayers and priestly incantations were used in all occasions of life. It was believed that a holy man possessed some special power sent down by God, a power almost equal to that of a priest. Touching the body, the clothes of the saint, his grave or relics had a miraculous influence, as if a spiritual, immaterial force was penetrated into material objects, as if it could be taken with one's hands, divided and carried away with oneself. The body of Christ – the host – was carefully carried home by the laity, preserved it and with its help defended themselves from countless demons. The whole cult, with all its prayers and rites, was permeated with mystical moments, and everywhere, in the temple or outside it, man came into contact with other worlds, received help from them, or protected himself from demons, the "powers of the air" — potestates aegeae. Even the morally purifying activity of the Church culminated in the mystical act of absolution of sins by the priest, who mysteriously acted through him and only through him by the cleansing and sanctifying power of God.