Nevertheless, this possible exception does not so embarrass me as to induce me to abandon the proposed definition, for it is purely hypothetical. In the real history of religion, the magical worldview never places man at the top of the hierarchy of spirits, but assigns him a middle position. So in the magical worlds there are spirits lower than man, and there are spirits higher than him. He commands the lower ones like a magician, the higher ones like a "pious man" he prays and obeys. The only exception is the magical world of J. Rowling in her Harry Potter tales. The worlds of Blavatsky and the Roerichs are no exception.

Religious ideas about the Supreme can be very different: the sermon can be about the Personal God and the impersonal Absolute, about Tao and the world of spirits, about the world of ancestors or about the "Cosmic Hierarchy". But where the task is to contact this non-human and above-human spiritual world, there is also religion.

Death and the ways to overcome it can also be completely different in different religions. The search for Nirvana or the Kingdom of God, a better reincarnation or dissolution in Brahman, resurrection in the fields of Ialu or wandering in Hades, migration to the "heavenly planets" or finding eternal life on Earth - these are different ideas about the posthumous fate of a person. But where certain means are offered, with the help of which in the course of earthly human life one can influence one's fate after death, there is religion. In the words of the Russian theologian M. Tareev, "Religion is the creative activity of the spirit, which has as its goal its self-preservation in the world cycle" (the paradox lies in the fact that in a number of religious concepts, primarily of a pantheistic nature, it is proposed to "preserve" only a divine seed, captivated by bodily and psychic fragmentation and heaviness, and, accordingly, the task of "preservation" set in this way will mean the desire to erase any individuating principle).

Since the time of Boethius, religion has been understood as "feedback" (re-legare). Religion is the striving of the world, expulsed outside the deity (illusory or not; in the first case we have before us a pantheistic version, in the second, a personalistic version of religious consciousness; in the extreme, a dualistic one), to return to the source of its existence.

E. Sapir sees the essence of religion "in the obsessive consciousness of one's own utter helplessness in an incomprehensible world and in the completely irrational conviction that one can find mystical security if one somehow identifies oneself with that which will forever remain unknowable."

To cite as an example the Mesopotamian incantation, in which man sought to imbue every part of his body with invulnerability by identifying himself with the gods and sacred symbols: "Enlil is my head, my face is noon! My neck is the necklace of the goddess Ninlil! My two hands are the moon of the western sickle! My fingers are tamarisk, the bones of the heavenly gods! They will not allow witchcraft into my body! The gods Lugaleddin and Latarac are my chest and knees, Muhra are my tirelessly running legs."256 In another incantation, man sought to merge with Earth and Heaven: "I am Heaven, you will not touch me! I am the Earth, you will not bewitch me!" A person tries to deflect the spell from his body; his attention is focused on the only quality of Earth and Heaven - their sacred invulnerability. When he becomes one with them, this attribute will pass to him and merge with his being, and thus he will be protected from evil spells.

Similar declarations identifying man with a deity and thereby transferring him from the world of perishable changeability to the world of eternal stability are found in all religions (perhaps the most famous are the ancient Egyptian incantations from the Book of the Dead, which insistently identify the deceased with Osiris).

The identification of a person with God (gods, mythical Ancestors) through the identity of a name or image (mask), through the identity of energies, situations and actions is the main religious activity. Realize your kinship or unity with That which is above suffering, and you will receive deliverance from suffering.

All religions proceed from the idea of the hierarchy of being. There is a secondary, created, imaginary, fractional-plural world, a world of shadows and images, a world of "caves", a world of ambiguity, suffering and unfreedomyyy. And there is a genuine, One, Free, Eternal Being. A gap arose between these two planes of existence. Man is on the fault line. He is burdened by the fact that he falls into errors, that he sometimes loses even knowledge about himself. He is burdened by the fact that he is possessed by death and passion, hunger, thirst and sexual addiction. He is burdened by the fact that according to the conditions of his life, he is not God. The way to eliminate the original corruption of human existence is to restore the presence of the Divine in oneself and in the world. Therefore, religious worship seeks means to attract eternal divine energies into our world, the world of people (or to expand their presence at least in the inner world of man) and through this to bring liberation, strength and immortality to religious man...

Thus, the sign of religious activity is the striving to achieve a specifically religious goal, which is recognized as contact with the superhuman spiritual world, understood as having significance for determining the fate of man after the death of his body. The activity aimed at establishing such personal contact is religious practice (religious rite, ceremony, worship). The conceptual understanding of this kind of activity is a religious doctrine. Dissemination of information about religious doctrine aimed at attracting people to participate in religious practice is religious training, upbringing, preaching.

I hope that with this reflection I have responded to the remark of the Vice-President of the ICR, L. V. Shaposhnikova, who said in one of her speeches: "There are several decisions of all sorts of theological seminars, which were held under the leadership of the Patriarchate, that the Roerich movement is a sect. But, excuse me, the deacon did not even formulate: what is religion?" 257.

In turn, I could ask the Roerichs what definition of religion they use. How do they manage to understand religion in such a peculiar way that their own activities turn out to be non-religious?

For more than one year I have been collecting a collection of those definitions of religion given by Roerich activists.

Here is the judgment of S. R. Ableev, "Vice-Rector of the Law College of the Russian Section of the International Police Association": "Four most important features are characteristic of the orthodox religion: 1) the elevation of Faith to the principle and subordinate position of Knowledge; 2) the possibility of a "miracle" is admitted, that is, a supernatural, non-causal phenomenon inexplicable by the powers of reason; 3) the presence of rites, rituals and cult; 4) the presence of the Holy Scriptures and subsequent dogmas, which are regarded as the absolute and immutable truth in the last instance. By none of these signs does the Living Ethics fall into the category of religious teachings."258