Task of the spiritual teacher is to help a person navigate among the surrounding signal lights. The White Teacher will point to the next beacon—but the student must see it (and change course) on their own; the Black Teacher will point to one or another pirate beacon—and together with the pirates will feast on the atmanic energy released in the shipwreck, and if fortune smiles, will capture prisoners and sell their souls into slavery to Hagtungr. The Gray Teacher will try to steer the student’s course toward buoys that mean nothing, that is, orient them toward stage-prop ideals, in order to vampirically tap into the student’s atmanic body and subtly absorb their energy.
Of course, the reader understands how both Black and Gray Teachers send these people under quite specific circumstances and for quite specific purposes. What are these circumstances and purposes?
Black Teachers are typical of people (and eras) with strong atmanic energy, when many ideals arise in which the person becomes confused: the true ones, that is, those that open the entrance to one or another atmanic egregore, are all of them, but the mission requires precise choice, which the person is not yet capable of. Then comes the Black Spiritual Teacher, who firmly orients the person toward ideals that clearly do not correspond to their mission. After some time this becomes obvious, and, having gathered from the wreckage of the ship a small boat, the person sets out on a new spiritual journey with significantly more modest atmanic energy—but also being much more attentive to the choice of ideal and feedback with it.
Gray Teachers are characteristic of people (and eras) with reduced atmanic energy. Here the energy of ideals is small, that is, their light is dim and barely discernible—and yet one must orient oneself toward it, subordinating the weak atmanic body to much stronger lower ones. A reduction in atmanic energy may be the most difficult test for a person, a kind of spiritual fast that can drag on for a lifetime and is not necessarily connected with past sins: the Cosmos, in particular the atmanic plane, has its own rhythms that are still poorly studied but exist quite objectively, influencing the flow.
In other words, the author wants to say that a weak atmanic body does not at all mean a person’s lack of spirituality or amorality (or of an era as a whole); it simply determines certain other, special modes of energy exchange in the organism (of a person or society as a whole), which must be taken into account and not equated with the modes that arise with high atmanic energy.
But usually fate takes from us what we neglect—in particular, so that later we value it more and take better care of it.
Of course, such a subjectively-theological interpretation is partly naive, since there are objective energy cycles, for example, day gives way to night, and winter to summer, and in autumn one must think about fur coats without linking these concerns to personal sins. Still, the habit of believing that God constantly teaches a person is far more constructive than the widespread custom of recalling the temple only in times of trouble.
What, then, are the features of life for a person with weak atmanic energy?
The first circumstance they must deeply feel is that no matter what the atmanic body is like, it is still the main one, since a person cannot avoid their basic purpose, and the general outline of their fate will be built precisely around their mission. But in this case the ideals, that is, the beacons on the life path, burn dimly, and the person may think that they do not play a significant role in their fate; they will live “as life goes,” that is, passively float on the waves of being, or else choose goals for themselves based on the causal or mental currents surrounding them.
This, of course, is wrong—no matter what, the ideal should govern all of one’s life, and the ideals themselves should be kept in exemplary condition, reverently wiping the dust off them with a soft cloth.
What happens in a weak atmanic body if a person neglects their ideals? In this case the ideals symbolize narrow channels into the atmanic egregore, which are easily clogged. This is connected with the fact that in a wide channel there is natural self-cleaning of the walls (subjectively the person feels the clear influence of the egregore’s will and is forced to coordinate their actions with it), whereas a narrow channel gives irregular and indistinct connection with the egregore, which is most often one-sided (that is, it goes in one direction) and frequently breaks off, each time requiring separate tuning. Essentially the egregore gives the person a probationary period, testing how serious their intentions are and whether they truly wish to enter into service. And if the person proves insufficiently persistent, then the channel gradually becomes clogged and the connection with the egregore is broken, and the corresponding ideal becomes a puppet.
In a strong atmanic body it is quite difficult to confuse a true ideal with a puppet: they differ approximately as a live puppy from a wind-up toy. However, with weak atmanic energy the difference is not so obvious at first glance, since all movements seem greatly slowed down; but a true ideal is still something alive, whereas a puppet is not.
This last circumstance is quite convenient, since a puppet ideal, not connected with any atmanic egregore, is completely at the person’s disposal, and they can deform it with great convenience for themselves, encountering no resistance. Thus the ideal of honesty is supplemented by the possibility, under certain conditions, of lying for the sake of salvation; the ideal of service to truth is refined by the nature of this truth: class-based, socially necessary, applied; the ideal of nonviolence is successfully combined with the doctrine of limited nuclear war, and so on.
As a result, the person (family, state, people) acquires many puppet ideals, sometimes quite similar to the true ones but in reality not connected with any egregore. Nevertheless, with proper involvement on the person’s part they can be used for applied purposes, most often quite indecent ones, although at the social level there is nothing to reproach the person for.
It is very important here to understand that a puppet ideal qualitatively differs from the present: behind the first there is nothing, whereas behind the second stands an egregore, that is, a practically unlimited source of energy. Nevertheless, a puppet ideal also has a certain energy—that which was expended in creating it as some object in the atmanic body; in addition, the person, if they need to, can additionally animate the puppet ideal with their own (sometimes someone else’s) energy—for various purposes described below.
One such purpose is social adaptation, since it is indecent for a person not to have either faith or ideals. “What do you believe in?” is a question one must be able to answer. Society permits faith in Christ, one may believe in Allah, Buddha, or Jehovah; in the extreme case—simply in love, goodness, or justice. However, any of these ideals, if taken seriously, proves quite demanding of the person, forcing them to renounce much and change not only their way of thinking but their life as a whole. Therefore one must resort to one of the puppet ideals, which are excellently worked out by the collective unconscious and put on and taken off with the same convenience as tailcoats rented out to Nobel laureates immediately before the award ceremony. But these are puppet ideals, so to speak, of general significance: everyone knows what they are worth and in what cases they are used. They densely cover the entrances to the high egregores of the corresponding religions and true meanings of true ideals denoted by the same words with huge gray sacks, and few manage to break through these gray barriers—and these people usually lose communication with the rest of humanity.
However, there is also a rather large series of puppet ideals created by people specifically for themselves but not for lofty, rather for purely applied purposes, and they do not even suspect that they are doing something bad; or, in occult language, simply black magic and preparation for real wars in the buddhic, causal, and so on planes (but more on that below).
A typical example is the creation of a puppet ideal under the guidance of the ego. “What do you imagine your future husband to be like?” The prepared answer to this question may occupy practically all the inner life of a girl, starting from the age of sixteen and continuing quantum satis, that is, until actual marriage, and sometimes even after it. In creating this ideal the essentially positive traits of personality and character most often participate, but with quite specific accentuation, for example: “HE must be: kind (especially to me), responsible (carrying out my requests, instructions, and orders), intelligent (losing his head completely over me), purposeful (my purpose), elegant (but pleasing only to me).”
A young lady with a strong atmanic body may, over several years of intense meditation, succeed in creating an exceptionally energetic puppet ideal of this sort—and as soon as a more or less suitable bachelor approaches her at a dangerous distance, the described monster is implanted in his atmanic body, causing rejection there because it is in no way compatible with the ideals he has. A conflict arises (usually not at the level of ideals, that is, the atmanic, but much lower), and the girl, disappointed, goes on her life path further, interpreting the received life experience approximately as: “Nothing worked out… after all, I liked him at first, but it turned out to be a dud… the scoundrel!” After several such disappointments conclusions are drawn: “One cannot trust men,” as well as “They are all the same,” and the puppet ideal is placed in a special place where it is carefully fed but shown to no one, except in rare cases of protection, when it is necessary to worm its way into trust, taking advantage of a moment of heart’s weakness—but then the blow from the ideal is devastating, and the enemy runs away in disgrace, completely forgetting the phone number.
Another variant is a puppet ideal of a spiritual teacher, moreover possessing a huge sense of responsibility toward me personally, looking and listening at first with adoring but unseeing eyes and unhearing ears. I do not offer myself as a teacher but wait for a similar service from him, and moreover strictly within the framework of the requirements described above.
In such a situation various dirty games arise, but describing them is not the author’s intention; at least until the puppet ideal of the teacher created by the student is destroyed, proper spiritual study, which consists in connecting the student’s atmanic channel to one or another egregore, is impossible.
Thus, puppet ideals are a powerful weapon of self-deception and atmanic wars, but they greatly pollute the atmanic body, and in order to give the person an impulse for its purification, the spirit sends them a Gray Teacher. The Gray Teacher creates an appetizing bait: a very beautiful and bright puppet ideal, which they proclaim, first, to be the true one, and second, the only and true one. The tempted student gives the energy of all their puppet ideals to the one proposed by the teacher—but receives nothing in return: neither a channel nor energy. As a result the overall level of energy in the atmanic body falls sharply (the person falls into sharp apathy, they do not want to live, and the very thought of any higher ideals and aspirations causes nothing but nausea), but at the same time it is purified of the false (that is, both their own and puppet) ideals as a consequence: they, seeping into the buddhic body, poison it as well, distorting the person’s basic values and main plots.
***
Summarizing the main thoughts of the chapter concerning the atmanic body, we can say the following.
Atmanic energy is the highest of all types of energy circulating in the organism. External sources of this energy are the surrounding environment and atmanic egregores, the keys to entry into which are ideals—special formations in the atmanic body intended for connection to the corresponding egregore. One cannot live without atmanic energy, which means that every person has ideals, but far from all of them are even minimally conscious, and none of them is fully conscious.
In addition to true ideals, which really open a channel to the egregore, there also exist puppet ones, which only pretend to do so. Purification of the ideal—the process that implies expanding the channel of connection with the egregore—is a necessary part of the hygiene of the atmanic body. This includes the elimination of puppet ideals, which are something like tumors on the atmanic body that absorb its energy but give nothing in return, replacing and suppressing its natural tissues at the same time; in a neglected variant a puppet ideal, like a metastasizing cancerous tumor, spreads through the entire atmanic body and completely rebuilds its energy process to its own advantage.
A precisely found and well-purified ideal becomes not only a source of higher inspiration and creative energy but also an accurate beacon on the main life path of the person. However, the ideal is not a copper buckle whose care consists in daily polishing with chalk so that its shine becomes unbearable. First of all, it is alive, that is, it has its own will, which must be respected; second, true ideals, like the egregores standing behind them, are constantly changing and at different times require different worship and obedience from the person; third, the ideal must be one’s own, that is, truly serve as a beacon for fulfilling one’s individual mission, and therefore both overly abstract and overly concrete ideals quickly become puppet ones, no matter how carefully they are cared for.
Group Ideals
The reader has doubtless already understood that keeping the atmanic body in proper order and, in particular, selecting ideals is a complex task, and a person cannot cope with it on their own. And of course society does not forget about it in a difficult moment, offering, or rather openly imposing, on each of its members quite specific ideals, fighting against which is quite difficult, all the more so since a significant part of them are not conscious—and are quite dirty. Therefore following one’s life path poses not only the problem of finding one’s own ideals but also the constant struggle for them against all those imposed by society—and this war is subtler and deeper than any other war of a person with society, even the struggle for a system of values, which already pertains to the buddhic body.
Harmonizing ideals is by no means an empty occupation, since it means harmonizing missions, and it is clear that depending on how a given collective perceives a person’s mission, it finds a place for the latter and assigns a role; on the other hand, the person’s mission influences the mission of each collective in which they find themselves, and any of their interactions, whether cooperation or conflict, is determined first of all by the harmonization of ideals (whether conscious or not).
Does every collective have ideals? At least every collective has a certain mission and an atmanic body, involuted by one or another atmanic egregore, and the corresponding channel of involution can somehow be named (although, it should be noted, ordinary human language is poorly adapted for identifying objects of the atmanic plane).
The thing is that not all collectives are concerned with their atmanic body, mission, and ideals, and often they are interested in the causal plane, that is, the flow of concrete events, on which their consciousness stops, operating mainly with the categories of achieving one or another concrete goal. But this does not at all mean that the atmanic body and ideals of the collective do not exist—they are simply not conscious and are formed by the general social egregore: as Marx rightly noted, one cannot live in society and be free of it.
In principle everything said above about the atmanic body and ideals of a person can be almost directly transferred to the atmanic body and ideals of a collective, with the difference that it looks more cumbersome and awkward. Nevertheless, correct understanding of collectives, especially large ones, such as an entire country, may prove simpler than understanding a single person following the winding path of spiritual development.
Culture of the atmanic body presupposes, in addition to care for it itself, careful observation of its relations with the atmanic bodies of all collectives to which the person has even a remote connection. The problem of the lack of harmony between a person’s ideals and those of a collective may seem not the most acute externally, but it is precisely this, descending to denser bodies, that becomes the source of the most severe and hard-to-resolve contradictions and conflicts. On the other hand, any experience, including immersion in an obviously alien collective, has unquestionable educational value for the person; in other words, the higher “I” presupposes that in the process of adapting to the collective the person develops and involuntarily comprehends the world and themselves, sometimes precisely those areas of the inner world that were previously closed to them. This pertains to all bodies, of course, and to the atmanic as well.
In other words, atmanic rebellion, that is, the solemn proclamation of complete incompatibility of one’s ideals (read: atmanic egregores) with group ones, is simply an outright refusal to figure out the situation and find a common path with the collective, and at the same time a crossroads in worldview and ideals, however poorly conscious by both the person and the collective. In other words, the ideals and mission of the collective are most often poorly conscious even by it itself, and the slogans proclaimed externally may reflect them not at all literally. And if the person tries to penetrate more deeply into the being of the collective in which fate has placed them, especially into the life of its higher bodies, they may find their agreement with their own to be significantly greater than they initially thought, and then a more adequate place and status form for them automatically.
An educated reader with political experience may object here: “But what about an intelligent person living in a totalitarian state with ideals, say, of world domination and complete enslavement of every individual citizen?” Such a formulation of the question reveals the habit of thinking in the categories of the causal plane, whereas the author is speaking of the atmanic. The ideals of a totalitarian state have a dual origin: on the one hand, the state receives atmanic involution from the ethnic egregore, the sense of whose ideal is the unification of the ethnos and protection from enemies; on the other hand, here one clearly feels the influence of the rigid atmanic egregore of Hagtungr, that is, the ideal of absolute domination. Encountering the black ideal of the collective means that the person should find its echo, that is, an analogous ideal within themselves, and clarify it (for example, by first transforming it into a puppet one—in this lies the meaning of satire). Then it gains strength—and protection!—for beginning the struggle with the black ideal of the collective. The forms of this struggle can be the most varied, but in all cases an effect of the following sort arises: a cloud of atmanic light appears around the person, in which it is very easy to breathe, and all people who fall into it notice (by contrast) how much they are choked by the usual black ideal. Gradually this cloud expands, and then the black ideal either becomes illuminated or turns into a puppet, after which fighting it becomes much easier (which is not to say that it is weaker—but on the other hand, it is easier to manipulate).
Thus, the precise opposite of one’s own ideals and those of the collective is a possible sign of a person’s mission: they must (within the limits of their strength) change the ideals of the part of the collective surrounding them, bringing them into accord with their own—or realize how deeply rooted in them are the same ideals by which such a collective is guided, and engage in work to illuminate their own atmanic body.
Indifference of a person to the ideals of the collective also does not mean the impossibility of harmonizing their atmanic bodies. Most often the person feels both their own and others’ ideals too poorly, and perceiving them in any way is a complex task. But in addition there is another circumstance, also extremely complicating mutual understanding and contact at the atmanic level: the imperfection of the language for describing atmanic energies and objects, and in particular ideals. Generally speaking, this is not accidental, since direct entry into such intimate areas must be closed; certain words and slogans only point to them from afar, and all attempts to give precise directions lead to the creation of puppet or black ideals. This opens possibilities for various speculations and substitutions—but still within very limited limits, as long as we are speaking of true ideals; puppet ones, on the other hand, have practically unlimited mobility, but are always dead.
Service to any egregore means service to its ideals, whether the person wants this or not. Cooperation with a collective also means interaction with its atmanic body, even if the person shuts their eyes to this circumstance, striving to completely displace it into the unconscious. And most atmanic conflicts between a person and a group, or between one collective and another, are connected precisely with the incompatibility of their ideals and missions, and with elementary misunderstanding of the rules of atmanic interaction, that is, low atmanic culture of behavior as such.
The first of such rules, which must be deeply assimilated, consists in respect for others’ ideals, in particular in the consistent rejection of the principle of the sole correctness of one’s own.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said the Great Teacher… “and there is no other way besides You,” His disciples joyfully chimed in, and strove very hard to convince the whole world of this, meanwhile exterminating those who dared to doubt. In the Age of Aquarius—the most mental and independent of all eras—such a scheme does not work.
For the buddhic body, which is not mistaken, does not confuse the true prophet with the false—for it the difference is obvious, for example, between bright spiritual emanations, causal vanity, mental speculations, and astral hysteria. Light was at the same time oriented exclusively toward total-encompassing ideals. This, of course, is a primitive view of life, but one that obviously corresponded to the evolutionary level of humanity and the character of the era.
***
Thus it becomes clear that the ideals of the state in principle cannot be sufficient for fulfilling the ethnic mission, since the state egregore is no more than a rigid framework strengthening the ethnic one. But assigning to the state functions completely alien to it, such as nationalism, leads to the fact that the ideals of the ethnic egregore are associated with it, which the state naturally profanes to the level of a stage prop. Blaming it for this is approximately as well founded as, having married a skeleton, complaining of its insufficient smoothness of movement and tenderness of embrace.
What, then, remains of the ideals of the state if we remove from it the functions not proper to it? The state reflects but does not ensure the unity of the people—since the ideal of unity in pure form is ethnic. The state is antihuman by its nature—it sacrifices the freedom and life of some people for the sake of others: the army, prisons, and so on. Therefore the ideals of the state are always the minimization of evil on the condition of achieving a certain level of order, and the positive ideals must be inspired by other social organizations.
A modern “democratic” state performs the functions of general economic management and political regulation—but just like a totalitarian one, it cannot take on the role of the main executor of the ethnic mission—and in this case the state ideals are significantly lower than the ethnic ones, but faith in the state as the bearer of the people’s idea is still strong—here the eternal habit of shifting one’s responsibility onto someone else, who is moreover good and knows where to carry it, is manifested. And the difference in perception of the state and ethnic egregores is colossal: the state is often “they,” that is, officials ruling over the people, robbing it and forcibly leading it somewhere, and thus bearing all responsibility for this, whereas the ethnos is always “we,” and there is no escaping personal responsibility.
Transferring in mass unconsciousness responsibility and mission from the ethnic egregore to the state egregore is accompanied by a sharp strengthening of the latter at the expense of the former—and in this the author sees the main cause of the usurpation of power by state structures at the present time. However, in the past the situation in the subtle world was completely different, the missions of ethnoses were different, and therefore historical analysis of the relations between the ethnic and state egregores can give significantly different results depending on the times and ethnoses under consideration.
***
The ideals of the family are to some extent the opposite of the ideals of the state, and at the same time both have much in common. One might say that the slogans written on the chest of the state are depicted on the back of the family, and vice versa: the main goal of the state is ordering, which ultimately leads to prosperity, whereas the main goal of the family is reproduction and prosperity, but also some ordering, that is, the upbringing of socially groomed and adapted individuals.
In general the topic of the family’s atmanic body is deep and little developed by the author. It is clear that society imposes puppet ideals on the family, from which it must free itself, but this is connected with difficulties of two sorts: the puppet ideals present in every family are difficult to become conscious of, and its true ideals may be deeply hidden and partially revealed only after many years.
In general, the family is a model of the Universe, and if we proceed from the holographic paradigm, then all the problems and joys of the world are represented in family reality as well. By creating the family world, household members take direct part in the evolution of the Universe, but each family in its own way. There are, however, common features: for example, carefully sweeping the floor, the housewife contributes to a reduction in crime in the country, and conscientiously walking the baby, which positively influences the growth of democracy.
The public unconscious of our time, inclined—as the author has already mentioned—to transferring the mission of the ethnos to the state, forms the ideals of the family in accordance with the state’s ideas about them, and in this way creates quite obvious puppet and very primitive atmanic constructions, from which it is, however, quite difficult to free oneself; in any case, each family must do this anew and often with difficulty.
The views of the state egregore on the main purpose of the family are well known: the fatherland needs soldiers, and in peacetime—law-abiding (in the sense of obedience to authority) industrious population inclined to asceticism and timely payment of all kinds of taxes. However, for any real family this is still puppet (although it may be very powerful), and this is connected first of all with the fact that the state egregore in principle cannot give the family true ideals—they can only be found in the ethnic (or, more broadly, general social terrestrial) one.
The ethnos distributes its mission among the families of its people, doing so unevenly and superficially “unjustly”: some families have an easy fate, others a very difficult one, and it is not necessary to pretend that they “are to blame” for this. So far the role of consciousness in the real life of people, and even more so of collectives, is extremely small, and primarily because the laws of the subtle world are very poorly studied: using the word karma in our time more often means a person’s philosophy than their real vision.
The mission of the family always includes finding a certain mutual understanding and cooperation among its members at the atmanic level, that is, harmonizing their individual missions. In a good family at some point their synthesis occurs and a group mission arises, preceded by careful (often long) work on harmonizing the ideals of the family members with one another and with the family egregore (of which, let us not forget, there are also ideals, and one cannot ignore them).
Thus the family is essentially a school of evolutionary work, but what grades the household members receive in it is best judged by them themselves. Into this school enter (most often almost unconsciously) the processes of harmonizing the ideals of all family members, the family egregore, and the egregores of all collectives in which the family members find themselves, and it is necessary to carefully monitor that in the course of these harmonizations the family’s ideals do not become polluted and turn into puppets.
Discrepancies and disagreements in the ideals of family members and the family egregore very painfully affect their fates, especially when they remain unconscious: then a feeling of constant invisible war arises in the family, which everyone wages against all the others, arranging conflicts on much denser planes (astral, etheric, physical) without visible grounds or perceptible causes, and it will be very difficult for a psychotherapist to figure out the real problems of such a family.
A typical example of such distortion is the accentuation in the family’s atmanic energy of the channel of one of its members, to whom the rest begin to worship intensively. This may be done with the best intentions, for example, a wife literally idolizes her husband and considers her mission to be service to him, or parents jointly place the child at the center of family concerns, foreseeing their great future—which inevitably (“You shall have no other gods before Me!”) distorts the atmanic situation of all the family’s members.
On the material of family life not only the themes of interaction of the ideals of different people are worked out but also the problem of finding true ideals, which, unlike overly puppet ones, must not be too concrete, and most importantly—be formulated so as to inspire all family members without exception, but differently, in accordance with each one’s individual mission. At the same time it often happens that a concept that has long served the family as an ideal at some point becomes so concrete that it becomes quite explicit—and this is a sure sign that times have changed, the former ideal has been mastered, has become a puppet, and must be replaced: a true ideal is never fully comprehensible, and the person must rethink it each time.
***
The ideals of enterprises, factories, plants, institutes, and other hierarchically organized structures with the main function of organizing the labor of one or another collective are formed in the interaction of two egregores: professional (masons, bakers, programmers) and state-economic, and their interests often do not coincide, and a good manager occupies himself with harmonizing them.
The problems of any enterprise repeat in miniature the problems of the state (in the sense of “people + political system”), and one can also say that the mission of an enterprise is much broader than what is expressed in its name: the Gipromash Research Institute has the same relation to the corresponding institute as the name “Workers’ and Peasants’ State” does to the real fate of the state.
Essentially, no matter what a person is occupied with, they are directly or indirectly participating in the evolution of every part of the Universe, and moreover on all planes, from the physical to the atmanic. However, this work is always carried out on a certain material, and a significant part of their efforts is spent on what is called “socially useful labor.” Nevertheless, behind the materialist facade there always hide subtle plans, often very little corresponding to it, and then the evolutionary sense of a person’s activity at work almost does not correspond to the name of their position (at least in its exoteric reading).
Work in a collective (as is life in a family) is first of all a school of cooperation, which begins with harmonizing ideals. If this is done poorly, the enterprise quickly degenerates into a unitary state model with a powerful bureaucracy that sets itself at the foundation; however, these processes require special consideration and go beyond the framework of this treatise.
