Messages from there

We often hear a question: could ghosts of the departed appear before us? And here does not lie a mere curiosity. Quite a few facts are known when the departed appeared to their nearest people in their dreams, in a drowse and even in reality and conveyed some important news to them. For example, three months before his death Philaret (Drozdov) Moscow metropolitan, saw his departed father in his dream who said: “Remember the date of 19-th”. Really, the Metropolitan died on the 19-th of November. There are a lot of these facts. Also there are quite a few reliable reports about how the recently died people appeared before their relatives and very close friends. Numerous facts of this kind are given in the book “Spirit, soul and a body”, written by archbishop Luke (Voino-Yasenezky), in the books “Variety of religious experience” by V.James, in “Dark force” by M.Lodyzensky, “Mysterious phenomenon of a human state of mind ” by A. Vasiliev, “About life after death” by K.G. Young and etc.

But the yearning to see the departed, to find out about his whereabouts, is very hazardous. The attitude towards these phenomena should be extremely responsible as the Christian creed asserts. Saint Fathers warn strictly that we should not only search for contacts with that world, but with all possible means we must avoid them and not trust the information, obtained in the dream or in reality, moreover at some sort of spiritual sessions, where, allegedly, they summon the souls of the dead. Sometimes a message from there in fact comes true. The danger of such realizations lies in the fact that a man is set up to trust dreams, visions, and etc. – and then demons would show him such disgusting things that he would run his head into the noose. Horrible thing. If it is needed, God will find means to prompt a man what he really must do. By the way, the statistics states, that those involved in spiritism, as a rule, are mentally deranged, many end their lives by a suicide.

Venerable John Cassian of Rome describes what happened with one monk, who being a strict ascetic, began to trust dreams and perished. Here is that message: “ The devil, wishing to lure him, often showed him true dreams (dreams coming true) in order to win him over for accepting temptation into which he wanted to involve him later. So, one night he showed him Christian people with apostles and martyrs, covered with every sort of the infamy, exhausted with grief and weeping, - on the one side, and on the other – Judaic people with Moses, patriarchs and prophets – in the splendor of a radiant light and living in the joy and fun. In addition the temptator advised him that he should take the circumcision (that is Judaism), if he wanted to participate in beatitude and gladness of the Judaist people. And he, being tempted, fulfilled the order. From all said above it is clear, that everybody whom we have spoken about, would not have been mocked at in the most miserable and grievous way, if they had had the gift of reasonableness”³⁸.

The venerable John Climacus (of the Ladder) wrote: “He, who believes dreams, he is like a man, he runs after his shadow and tries to grasp it”³⁹. ‘If we start to subjugate ourselves to demons in dreams, they will outrage over us during our wakefulness. He who believes dreams, he is not clever at all; and he who does not have any trust for them, he has love of wisdom”⁴⁰.

Now in the West (and we do not to try and lag behind them) we witness everybody’s fad for mysticism, to be precise, we’d better use the Latin word - occultism. Every one is eager to learn what is there. According to public opinion polls it was found out that 42 percent of Americans had a contact, as they think, with the “departed”, and two thirds had the experience of extrasensory perceptions. That is the real national disaster. People do not even suspect that such an information may originate from spirits of lies, from devil, and they do not understand how dangerous it is to enter a contact with such “Spirits”. It is not the departed that speak with them but the demons in the image of the dead. That is why the Orthodox saints, knowing perfectly the nature of such phenomenon, they didn’t only search this kind of meetings, but in order to avoid a fatal mistake, they completely rejected to perceive any visions or attach importance to dreams. Venerable Gregory Sinait (XIV) warned: “Never take to your heart whatever you see sensual or spiritual, outwards or inwards, irrespective whether it is the image of Christ or Angel, or any saint…That one who takes, is easily tempted…God is not indignant at him who carefully heeds himself, if he, for fear of temptation, will not take what comes from Him…but He will praise him as a wise man”⁴¹.

Multiple facts, connected with the phenomena of that world, with different mysterious phenomena (prognostication, telepathy, poltergeist, vision of the dead in real life and in unusual dream and etc.), occultism, spiritism and etc., may be found, for one, in interesting books by archpriest Gregory Diachenko: “ From the sphere of mysterious”, M., 1896 and “Spiritual life” – amendment to the book “From the sphere of mysterious”, M., 1900.

For those who are interested in patristic understanding of these issues, I’d recommend chapter 46 “About dreams” of the fifth volume of Ignatius’ (Brianchaninov) writings and the third volume of the same author “Ascetic experience’, which contains “A word about sensual and spiritual vision of ghosts”, “A word about death”, “Amendment to a word about death” and “About the essence of created spirits and a human soul’. Here you may find a lot of interesting facts about appearance of both angels and demons, you will find a patristic teaching about spirits, about how to discern spirits, about their influence on a man, and what is the most important – about the correct attitude of a man towards different mystical phenomena, about ways of resisting “ uninvited guests”, and serious warnings based on experience of saint Fathers, to categorically avoid contacts – visual, acoustic, mental, perceptional – with that world.

This is how all saint people behaved! And we being sinful should be more careful the more so.

“TAKE EARTHY THINGS HERE AS MOST WEAK