From the author: A course of 10 Lectures given in 2008-2009. at the International University of Fundamental Education (St. Petersburg) Vladislav Lebedko Lecture series “Phenomenology of the Soul” 2008-2009. Lecture 1. Dionysus. Dear ladies and gentlemen. With this lecture I begin the course Phenomenology of the Soul, in which I hope to reveal the most diverse phenomena of the soul in psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, literature, art, history, ethnography, in geopolitical phenomena, in dreams and psychotherapeutic cases and, perhaps, in something else. I wanted to start with a theme that was repeatedly heard in various works of Nietzsche and which can be indicated by a quote from him “I would rather be a satyr than a saint”... Yes, we will talk about Dionysus, about Dionysian manifestations and needs of the human soul, about Dionysus , as a god and an archetype, manifesting itself in each of us to one degree or another - more precisely, to the extent to which we allow it to manifest itself in ourselves, because only a few can fully manifest it, for this is contact with the naked nerve of life , this being, metaphorically speaking, “without skin.” I’ll start from afar. From the very idea of ​​reading these lectures, which, in addition to rational explanations, also has sensual roots. After all, everything related to oratory is a very interesting matter. This is receiving “oral pleasure”, just as for the listener it is receiving “auditory pleasure”, this is a kind of stimulation of erogenous zones. And since the connection with Dionysus will be direct today, we will try: I for my part, and you for your part, to get this kind of pleasure. Or maybe displeasure, maybe disappointment, because Dionysus is open to both. Even as a child, I fell in love with the work of the wonderful speaker and literary critic Irakli Andronikov (perhaps the older generation remembers his program “The Word of Andronikov”), who talked about completely simple things. For example, in his research, he looked for some lost phrase from Lermontov or references to this or that person with whom Lermontov was familiar. And he told such fantastic stories about this that on Sundays, when I was still little, I always asked my parents to turn on the TV and listen to this program. It was clear that this nectar was pouring out of him. I remember this very well. The next milestone was my father, who told many tales, stories, and who had some kind of hypnotic power, which also probably had some influence. So ten years ago I gave lectures in such a way that the audience listened at least with interest. Even the deputy deans of some universities, who came and wrote something at their place, eventually stopped writing and listened. The next very important milestone in my life was the film “Little Tragedies,” which was released in 1979. I think the film is amazing, so much so that the director Mikhail Shveitser, who directed it, deserves a monument only for this film, although he directed many other wonderful films, including adaptations of the classics: “The Golden Calf”, “Dead Souls”, “ The Kreutzer Sonata”... The main plot of the film revolves around the figure of the Improviser, played by the still quite young Sergei Yursky. He comes to the St. Petersburg poet Charsky, more or less famous, who moves in the world and invites him to compose an improvisation for the public. In St. Petersburg this was completely incomprehensible, no one knew improvisers, and the Italian school of improvisers had already existed for a long time. And I remember when the first episode ended, the audience asked the improviser the question “cruel age, cruel hearts,” and I went and immediately wrote a poem. I was 14 years old then. If you remember, in this passage where the improviser talks to the poet Charsky, he says: “ask me a topic, and I’ll read it to you now.” And these Dionysian lines sound exactly there, which I will try to reproduce. There it was said that a poet should not be forced and serve the consumer society. He can talk about whatever he wants and notadapt to public taste. Here are these lines: “Why does the wind spin in a ravine, Raise a leaf and carry dust, When a ship in the silent moisture eagerly awaits His breath. Why does an eagle fly from the mountain and past the arable fields, heavy and terrible, On a stunted stump? Ask him! Why does the blackamoor love Desdemona, as the evening loves the darkness of the night? Because the wind and the eagle And the heart of a maiden has no law! Such a poet is like Aquilon. What he wants, that is what he carries. The eagle, like the eagle, he flies, And without asking anyone, Like Desdemona chooses an Idol for your heart.” Here it is already very close to Dionysus. A small comparison immediately comes to mind. Who read my first books: “Chronicles of Russian Sannyas” - I then went to various Russian mystics of the 60-80s. It was an interesting collecting job. I interviewed them about who lived what life, who followed the spiritual path. This is a separate conversation. At the same time, I went on a retreat, then the Tibetan enlightened master Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche came to Russia for the third time. There was a tent there, 2000 people: this Namkhai Norbu comes out and says something. Well, there goes the state, by that time I was already sensitive, prepared by certain practices. It feels good, pleasant, blissful, detached. And ironically, it so happened that I come to St. Petersburg (and there was a retreat in the Moscow region) and go to the same Yursky, who read Pushkin at the Philharmonic. I sit down to listen, and Yursky comes out. Namkhai Norbu - resting. The power of state that Yursky conveyed simply by reading Pushkin... he even sat (he was already an elderly man and moved little), a slight turn of his head, a small gesture... In the theory of acting according to Mikhail Chekhov, there is the concept of psychogesture, when the actor does not make external gestures, but makes internal gestures, gestures of attention. He can be torn, scattered in all directions with his attention, and this affects the viewer. He can sit calmly, speak, intone, and the viewer will feel this presentation of information. Thus, Yursky, my favorite actor, twice affected my imagination, my mental space, which we will talk about, about the Soul. I graduated from the Faculty of Psychology in 1992, and I had to somehow earn my bread, especially since that there was a crisis, just like now, but then it was more difficult. I went to companies and offered everyone some courses. I myself had a tenth carbon copy of a printed advertisement about courses in psychological knowledge and skills for company employees. I entered the first company I came across, and unexpectedly I was greeted very friendly and warmly. “Come on in, it’s very interesting.” And I still had such a dirty look: sneakers, jeans, a backpack, and there was such a respectable man: shirt, tie... I said, “I should talk to the director.” He is “I am the director.” I got even more scared and started babbling something incomprehensibly. He says, “well, tell me what you are going to talk about.” I stammer, blush and answer in slurred language - “well, this, well, that, well, this is the very thing, in general, it should be beautiful when a person speaks.” He says: “Oh, well, this is certainly interesting.” Looked at my piece of paper - “Oh! But what is Ericksonian hypnosis? “And this, I say, is when one person is tongue-tied, and the other falls under his influence.” He - “Stop! Stop it! We’ll meet sometime next week, leave your phone number and I’ll call you back.” I left my phone number, he, of course, did not call back, apparently he was frightened by this “Ericksonian hypnosis.” But then things got better and I started conducting the first trainings in Russia for company employees. Then a friend and I created a company for training advertising and commercial agents and real estate agents. Moreover, it was a hit with the stream and we rolled around like cheese in butter. And there I began to give lectures to these agents, and gods forgive me, these were lectures on pure manipulation. The lectures were full of examples and engaging. Moreover, we promised the people employment, but of course it was for interest; companies gave us papers with a guarantee of employment. We made so much money from this that within a month I bought a car (then insold the next default). And after this there was a time when Castaneda just began to be published, but I read the first volumes in photocopies, when it had not yet been published in Russia, and then the following volumes began to be published, 6-7, where Don Juan performed strange manipulations on Castaneda, and there were all sorts of terrible people who kept Don Juan captive. There was such a case, at that time the Magic Theater had already appeared and my friend Andrei Fomintsev and I decided to announce this as a new scientific direction. At that time, of course, it was too early to declare such a thing about MT. It was 1993 when we decided to give a lecture at the Faculty of Psychology: “A new direction in psychotherapy, systemic psychotherapy,” everything as it should be - with announcements, in an audience of two hundred people, etc. And we got ready, professors were expected in the hall, serious people, and they would ask very serious questions, for which, as we felt internally, we were not particularly prepared. Then we did the following: half an hour before the lecture, we went to the Sytny Market (it was not far from the University) and looked for the most colorful homeless person there. Everyone refused, they thought that we were offering crime. Finally, a drunken Kolyan was found. We promised this Kolyan 500 rubles, and despite the smell, we took him to the university in a taxi. And there, while Andrei Fomintsev is pasting up posters, diagrams, explanations, and I am training Kolyan under the stairs: - Kolyan, you come in and ask “where are the results?”, and there is no need to say anything else. Repeat! “Your mother is so excited about them, where are your money?” “Kolyan, what money, results!” Somehow I agreed with him that the fee would be increased for correctly pronounced words and lowered for incorrectly pronounced words. I entered the hall, Kolyan was waiting outside the door. And the professors are sitting in the hall; serious people from other educational institutions have arrived. And I say: “Gentlemen, I’m sorry, we deceived you. Of course, we have not invented any new therapy. The whole point is that there was such a drunken and degenerate psychologist who witnessed our scam and we are now on his hook and wants us to create a new psychotherapy, and he would fit into our team and thereby rise. But since we haven’t come up with anything, we have to pretend everywhere. And here we made an appearance, but thank God he is not here, and we can say this calmly.” At this moment I make a conventional gesture, the door opens, Kolyan comes in, terribly knocking with his feet and hands: “Your mother, where are your fucking results?” We: “Nikolai Mikhailovich, everything is fine, you see the posters, we are now giving a lecture to people, everything is fine.” The audience was naturally dumbfounded; everything was done in the best traditions of Don Juan. I gave Kolyan the money and sent him out, after that the lecture went in one breath and there were no questions. That's how it all went. This was a short preamble. Let's move on to Dionysus, although, as you probably already guessed, he was already present at the beginning of the lecture. But first, a little about the soul, because the lectures are called “Phenomenology of the Soul,” and we need to define the concepts. Such a concept as Soul is very complex and capacious. And the first attempt to systematically and scientifically describe it was made by Plato in his dialogue “Timaeus” (there were probably attempts in more ancient sources, but I know nothing about them). There are very complex structures, very complex mechanics, all this description of the Soul of the World, and how the elements are formed from triangles and squares, and so on. In general, a very entertaining and, by the way, very phenomenologically accurate description, because this is a description from the point of view of the ecological perception of the world. You and I do not live in physical space, i.e. not in the space of emptiness, which physicists describe with xyz coordinates. We live in an ecological space, a space of landscapes. Also in real life we ​​deal with very complex landscapes and our perception is built in a rather complex way. And Plato or Socrates, I don’t know which one, they were able to describe this very competently and clearly. Let me quote him: “After all, just as being relates to birth, so truthrelates to faith Therefore, do not be surprised, Socrates, that we, considering many things in many respects, such as the gods and the birth of the Universe, will not achieve complete accuracy and consistency in our reasoning. (I will note his self-criticism - V.L) On the contrary, we should rejoice if our reasoning turns out to be no less plausible than any other, and, moreover, remember that both I, the reasoner, and you, my judges, are just people, and therefore we in such matters one has to be content with a plausible myth, without demanding more.” Golden words that I never tire of being amazed by because they were said at the dawn of Western civilization, and they were said extremely accurately. Myth! It is very difficult for us to get closer in our constructions to some absolute transcendental truth, which may not exist. As postmodernists tell us today, anything can be the truth. Therefore, accordingly, what I will talk about the soul and the phenomena of the soul is all a certain myth, a certain myth, one way or another close to reality. Among the most powerful Russian philosophers of the mid-20th century, there were several who, despite the Soviet regime, managed to build a very global philosophy, comparable to what was happening in the West, in France or in America in the middle of the 20th century. First of all, these are Merab Mamardashvili and Alexey Fedorovich Losev, who created the concept of total mythology. By the way, he studied Antiquity, studied Plato, commented on Plato very carefully, and came to the concept of total mythology, according to which we all live in myth. For some, this is a personal myth, limited to a certain cozy little world - home-work-home, etc. For some, this myth is expanded to the limits of a planetary scale, for a person who correlates his life, his history with the history of at least some human era. And if a person succeeds in this, this, one might say, is a kind of contact with God, because this is a large-scale contact. If you relate yourself to the leading edge of the myth, then you are at this leading edge, and you are in contact with what is unmanifested. If you follow, you can identify several such large stages-myths in the history of our civilization, which took: some several thousand years, one – a couple of thousand, and the last ones – quite a bit – fifty years and 20-30 years. This is an ancient myth - the myth of polytheism, the myth of monotheism, the myth of existentialism, which appeared after the words of Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Heisenberg were spoken. The old picture of the world fell apart and existentialism arrived. And finally, in the 60s there was another revolution, and it was precisely the revolution – the revolution of postmodernism. If you look closely at the texts of postmodernism, these are not only heterogeneous contradictory statements that call for pluralism, for the absence of transcendental truths. This is, first of all, a revolutionary doctrine. The same “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is a fundamental work, I believe, of the last 80-70 years in the history of philosophy. This is actually a revolutionary manifesto, but not a manifesto “for what?” and not a manifesto “against whom?” This is not a manifesto against any ruling party, against any government, for the sake of overthrowing any specific people or governments. This is a manifesto of “internal germination” to a free person, like Dionysus, open. This is a call for an internal revolution. Which sweeps aside old myths. For example, there are such concepts as “Anti-Oedipus”, which abolishes the Oedipalization of the psyche, the Oedipalization of relationships, power, both internal and external, and other things. But now our topic is not postmodernism, although we may have to touch on this later in this topic. So, here are four, in my opinion, mythologies. Losev himself speaks magnificently about myth: “We must imagine that the world in which we live, and all things exist, is a myth and a mythical world. That in general there are only myths in the world. Such a position will reveal the essence of myth as a myth.” Indeed, a lot depends on the limitations of our perception of both the sensual and supersensible, physical andmental space. We will probably return to Losev’s total mythology and the development of this idea more than once. In the meantime, I want to note that in early Antiquity not only Plato, but also many of his followers, especially the Neoplatonists, whose development took place in the 2nd-5th centuries AD, was very powerful and very didactic in terms of logic, feelings, experiences described the concept of soul. Then the soul passed into the hands of theologians, and, it seems to me, it was quite strongly castrated. And only in the 20th century, through the efforts of Jung and his students, was it returned to modern science, although the soul is now not accepted in science. I tried to communicate with many prominent scientists about the concept of returning the soul to science, because there are technologies using which we can directly build a vertical... Here is an example: in the early 1960s, simultaneously in the same year in almost the same month lasers and laser coherent radiation were discovered. This area is close to me, because I am a physicist by training and was working on it in 1989. Even now, thinking about this, I realized that there were those who ordered this event in the psychic space - mythological. And they can be calculated - these customers: Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Hermes. The appearance of liquid-based lasers occurred with the blessing of Neptune, and solid-state lasers - with the blessing of Hades. Ares became interested in this topic - so here is the penetration of the laser topic into the field of the defense industry. Asclepius became interested in the use of lasers in medicine, Hephaestus became interested in the use of lasers in metallurgy, etc. Only one person who, 20 years ago at a chance meeting, turned me, who was then keen on physics and psychology, a little towards esotericism - now he is a member - correspondent and chairman of the scientific council of one of the leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences - responded to this idea - the idea that every scientific technology or discovery has archetypal customers. He accepted this concept and offered to work together with it further, but this is a separate topic. The soul has not yet reached science, and God forbid, if 20-30 or more years pass, this concept will be returned to science, politics, and economics, and not only the concept, but also the experience of the soul. And it will be a strong breakthrough if it succeeds... Neoplatonists, in particular Plotinus, gave an amazing definition. He himself did not write anything, but his student Proclus recorded his lectures and then compiled the so-called. nine "Enneads", i.e. lectures. “One way or another, the Soul is one. Being present in all private souls, as if immersed in everything, it does not lose its integrity, just as science, consisting of many sections, is integral and united, as a seed is integral and united, giving, according to nature, the beginning to different parts of the organism, in the material sense divided, but meaningless outside the whole.” (Plotinus “Ennead” IV) That is. Outside the whole, the individual soul has no meaning. This is where the concept of “World Soul” came from, and all souls are the essence of “World Soul”, some kind of projection in an individual person. It is about this that Pelevin has lines in “Chapaev and Emptiness” where someone Ovechkin tried to sell his soul to the devil, and Chapaev laughed and said that this was complete stupidity because it is not Ovechkin who has a soul, but the soul has Ovechkin. And the only thing that happened was that his last name changed to Kozlov. I speak in some episodes, in strokes. And in order to approach such a voluminous topic, and the deeper I look into it over the years, the more it seems to me that this is something so immense that to take and construct some kind of theory of the soul, it seems to me, is an impossible task. Therefore, following the trends of postmodernism, where there is no certain horizontal and vertical in the description of an object, in contrast to traditional science, in which there is a foundation, there is a base of evidence, there is a superstructure, application, etc., in postmodernism all this is a traditional tree collapses and a strange thing appears, without any structure, which is called the Rhizome. In this case, it can be represented as separate strokes in different places, whichgradually fill the canvas completely, as if without correlation with each other. But in the end it will be clear that all this is one drawing, and the drawing is dynamic, floating, without any stability or constancy. I took one of the definitions of Rhizome, which was given by Umberto Eco, and it is the simplest, because the definition that Gilles Deleuze gave is impossible to read and perceive, and you need to have some special brains. So, what is Rhizome: “Instead of a concept “pictures of the world”, which are based on the principles of consistency, subordination, progress, the image of a labyrinth appears as a symbol of completeness and the Idea of ​​the world. It has branched corridors. But unlike the classical labyrinth, at the threshold of which Ariadne’s thread immediately falls into your hand, leading to the only exit (this is a kind of metaphor for the path of knowledge in traditional thought), there is none here. There is no center, no periphery. Paths are like a grid - it is a rhizome. It is designed so that each path has the opportunity to intersect with another. The space of culture, spiritual forms of activity (art, philosophy, religion, science) is the space of the rhizome. Such a structure is potentially limitless, although in reality it is not fully completed. Our exploration of the world - a “labyrinth” is like traveling along the equivalent possibilities of the paths of a rhizome. So the idea of ​​the unity of the world completes itself in the pluralism of forms, methods, principles, directions of its development, which now does not need the transcendentalism of absolute truths.” And now a small sketch from the point of view of these strokes, this labyrinth, into which we will look from different ends , peek and so on. Let us turn to Jung, who helped us understand what the soul is by determining that there is a certain psychic space. What this is is not clear. A question of faith: whether it is “in heaven,” underground, in the brain, in some information field, whether it is transmitted through genes – it does not matter. What matters is that it exists, and in this space, in addition to the Ego, there are many other figures, archetypes. This is a common space, a space from which we all grow, just as fingers grow from one palm, or mushrooms grow from one mycelium. Although these are different mushrooms, they grow from the same root and in this root, if we turn to the Rhizome, it contains everything. It contains archetypes that different people can personify as gods of various pantheons, daimons, geniuses, spirits, and some other creatures that exist besides humans and who have their own goals, their own tasks, their own will and their own enormous power. If we Even if we look at this position atheistically, although we can do it theistically (it will be the same for the problem of psychic space, because it is a matter of faith - where and how this happens), we can see how this psychic space arose if we turn to the history of the emergence of civilization . We don’t know how it arose, but there are hypotheses that we can rely on. And in general, even what we can say about the Middle Ages, we can say with great stretch, because people then perceived everything differently, not to mention Antiquity, the ancient world, about people who lived 20-30-40 thousand years ago. But at least approximately, extrapolating ourselves there, we can put forward some kind of hypothesis, as Plato said in the Timaeus, “no more and no less plausible than other hypotheses.” One hypothesis was put forward by Rene Gerard, a French philosopher, it was the hypothesis of the “sacrificial crisis” . The formation of any pack limits the needs of each member. The formation of a family limits the needs of the members of that family. That is, we can no longer do what we would do if we were alone. We already have certain responsibilities, and some of our needs remain unsatisfied because we are together and care about a common cause. Naturally, any need, being frustrated, gives rise to aggression, which has been repeatedly proven and confirmed before Freud and by Freud. This aggression is directed either inward or outward. And since in primitive societyNo one wanted to direct aggression inward and there were no rules of politeness - aggression went outward and there was a real threat that everyone would kill everyone. At some point, a critical mass of unmet needs began to self-destruct. Someone smart guessed or accidentally decided to let aggression go in a certain direction, came up with a mechanism of atoning sacrifice. The first sacrifices were human - a completely innocent person was sacrificed, he was killed. Aggression receded for some time (a month or a year) in this tribe because it was all concentrated in this victim. But there was also an understanding that an innocent person was being killed. And they made an idol out of it, to which they prayed, and the next sacrifice was brought to this idol. This was the moment of the first split of the Ego, because every victim carries within itself an element of self-sacrifice, the first rudiments of a feeling of guilt are present in it. The Ego arose, and part of this Ego, part of its power was immediately given to the “victim”. Thousands, tens of thousands of years passed, a long period of sacrificial practice incomparable to our present world as we know it. This mechanism worked; it saved the world and certain groups of people from total violence. And the resulting idols were personified into gods. We can now combine this model with what Vernadsky wrote from the position of the Noosphere, considering the Earth as a living being with a natural and highly developed consciousness, which has some kind of resonant frequencies. And so it happened that these idols, on which colossal power was prayed, and along with the power: motives, intentions, prayers, tasks, which were brought along with sacrifices to the altar, arose as personified gods, daimons, geniuses, muses and others like them. These gods took their place in psychic space and, possessing colossal power, gave man moments of inspiration, moments of crisis, moments of pain, moments of blinding with divine light, because all this is in this space. Here the next model arises. This model was created by me and my student Zhenya Naydenov in the process of long thoughts, experiments and reflections - this is the model of the “aggregate customer”. Suppose a person is conceived - at this moment generic forces and prerequisites are transferred to him. In addition, a person is conceived under certain conditions: environmental, medical, social, natural, geographical, etc. That is, certain features are already assumed. Beings of psychic space are gods, daimons, etc. have views on this being who is about to incarnate, because only through a person, through a material carrier in this physical world can they manifest and manifest their tasks and goals. And they have tasks and goals - these are the tasks of both the Noosphere and those many generations of people who were prayed to by these gods. The space around a person is surrounded by this “aggregate customer”. Further, during life, this “Collective Customer,” this specific collective of gods, manifests itself. For example, we can take the same “Collective Customer” of lasers, those gods discussed above. Each person has many more customers, and they also influence what a person has to do based on his capabilities, inclinations, intelligence, emotional resources, etc. These could be some works of art, scientific discoveries, anything for which there are orders. Orders can be for certain actions of personal life, for the gods to meet each other through personal life, when the gods look at each other through our eyes. When we approached this idea of ​​​​the “aggregate customer”, it was repeatedly tested and tested in the Magic Theater, this The theory was suitable for our practice as one of the coordinate systems. This theory is a myth, but it works, this is enough for us to talk about it somehow. Then the question arose - what is Spirit, what is Soul? This concept is quite capacious and we sat on its definition for several weeks. “The human spirit is aimed at fulfilling the “contract” with the Aggregate Customer and it is heis the force that steadily attracts a person to fulfill the terms of the “agreement” (no matter how they are perceived by the person’s ego - joyful or cruel). We can say that this “agreement” is a destiny, but this will be a simplified view, because there is not only a monistically oriented spirit (a directed arrow), but also a polytheistically minded soul, which gives, depending on the development of the soul, a variety and multivariate forks in the originally the unambiguous movement of the spirit towards the goal. The soul is a space of living channels that connect, through feelings and images, the ego and spirit of a person with each of the “customers” that are part of the Aggregate Customer, as well as with the souls of other people and (with a developed soul) with their “ customers." Activation of certain channels, awareness of them, makes it possible to make amendments to the initial “agreement” (sometimes not only your own, but also another person’s, which occurs in psychotherapy or magic). The compass indicating whether a particular action of the soul is adequate to the planetary Whole is the body, which reacts with tension (situational or chronic, turning into a somatic disease) to inadequate steps. Detected inadequacies can be discharged (if you learn to notice them and “listen”) by activating certain channels of the soul (manifesting conscious feelings or creating images). From the point of view of mythological consciousness, a person’s task can be seen in creating and activating (awareness) the channels of the soul that connect it is limited to all creatures of the Universe or at least the planet. Those. this means the animation of the world and the conscious union of one’s soul with the World Soul.” We again return to the Neoplatonists, to what Plotinus spoke about, that the individual soul does not make much sense if there is no conversation about the World Soul. By the way, recently on LiveJournal one of my friends read the following phrase: “In the era of the global crisis that is now coming, those who bet not on the personal, but bet on the eternal will survive” - to the same topic. You can argue with this or accept it, but this is the point of view. This is still the primary definition of the soul, the primary myth into which we looked from one of the paths of the labyrinth. You can look from many, and we will do this. Now - the first word from the title of this course of lectures: Phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of phenomena, and as a science it appeared at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Kant, Hegel and their followers in the German school became so carried away by abstractions that a certain intelligent man named Edmund Husserl put forward the thesis: “back to things,” to phenomena - to phenomena. Let us gentlemen, philosophers, move away from abstract reasoning and the abundance of terms in which we are completely confused, and let us consider the phenomena themselves. For example, he could talk for a long time about some mailbox, describing it from different sides. And this was a whole direction, which later grew into existentialism, because... Husserl's student was Heidegger, who picked up the teaching of phenomenology and later developed it into a whole powerful direction of philosophy of the 20th century - existentialism. “Phenomenology of spirit” (not soul, but spirit) is the title of Hegel’s famous work. It contains one starting point for our research. Phenomenology of spirit is one of the main questions of philosophy of the 20th century after Nietzsche. This question came to light through the efforts of the Russian philosopher Kozhev (or Kozhevnikov), who on a philosophical ship in 1921 sailed with Berdyaev and many other scientists who did not accept the new government to France, where he founded a circle of “neo-Hegelians”, which included many future outstanding minds of the 20th century. The question of “Master and Slave” was considered as one of the main theses in the provisions of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”. Who is Mister? This is the one who puts victory above life, he is able and willing to take risks and put everything on the line (what Nietzsche called a strong nature). A slave cannot do this, the instinct of self-preservation is stronger than him. This doesn't mean that Slave is bad and Master is good, it's justSome people got such positions, others didn’t. And here again the shadow of Dionysus appears, resurrected for Western humanity mainly through the works of Nietzsche... And this was a huge boom at the beginning of the 20th and already at the beginning of the 19th century, when Zarathustra was already written. This is Nietzsche's thesis: “I am a servant of Dionysus and would rather be a satyr than a saint.” He sang life in all its manifestations, from pain to ecstasy, the same as Dionysus. Dionysus is open to everything, if considered in the language of humanity, he is a god without skin, without armor, without defense mechanisms. He equally deeply experiences suffering and pain, and does not run away from this pain, but plunges into it completely headlong, and equally experiences ecstasy, delight, and, in principle, any feelings that a person and, accordingly, God can contain. Dionysus as the god of wine is just one of his aspects. Wine opens up, removes from a person his inhibitory defense mechanisms and a living feeling breaks through, depending on the extent to which a person can master wine. This is a certain dedication. At that time, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, there was a huge generation of people of culture, art and science who were, in the best sense of the word, people of esotericism. Not the esotericism that is now emerging as a kind of “foam” - someone somewhere heard something, but a very deep and real esotericism. In Russia and abroad these were many famous people, poets. These are the poet Nikolai Gumilev (who was a student of Heinrich Ottovich Mobis - the successor and, to some extent, the founder of the arcanological field of the Arcana Tarot), Voloshin, Tsvetaeva, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Blok. Many of them belonged to different Rosicrucian lodges. People's Commissar Lunacharsky himself was a member of the Rosicrucian lodge until the age of 22, and director Eisenstein, who filmed Battleship Potemkin, was noticed in these connections, and very actively. Not to mention such people as the hereditary occultist Dzerzhinsky. Or, for example, in Gurdjieff’s book “Meetings with Remarkable People” there is a whole chapter “Prince Nizheradze”, where he describes his friend at the Tiflis Theological Academy, with whom he began his spiritual quest. And this Prince Nizheradze is none other than Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Very serious people stood at the origins and comprehended very deeply, including Vyacheslav Ivanov, and he is a very powerful mystic. He knew Nietzsche and went to see him in Germany at a time when Nietzsche had already left and was obsessed. Having arrived, Ivanov wrote a fairly large work in which he argues with Nietzsche, saying that he opened Dionysus for us, but closed it for himself - with the will to power. Dionysus is the only god who does not enter into any competition with anyone, does not conflict or intrigue, he has no will to power. And here, in very cunning circles, Ivanov goes so far as to bring Dionysus closer to Christ, although Nietzsche in his last work “Antichrist” pushed these figures as far apart as possible. Ivanov has lines dedicated to Dionysus in the guise of Bacchus. Summoning Bacchus I enchanted, I conjured, I invited the God Bacchus To the rapids of the river, In the black forest, in the thick tar, In abundance, in the wilderness, To the boulders of the sea. I conjured, I conjured, I summoned the God Bacchus At the crossroads, At the cursed hour, the hour of Hecate, At noon, conceived by enchantment: The close god was invisible. Amazing lines, he is really close, but invisible, intangible. It is very difficult to reach him, the same Ivanov writes a wonderful line: “You need to accept loneliness as horror from your finitude and nostalgia for yourself as integrity.” 30 years before Heidegger and Jung. After all, it is very difficult to let in Dionysus, who naturally is present in most people in that same “aggregate customer”. A lot of armor. When a person is born, or is still in the womb, in the first years of his life and after, we are accustomed to running away from pain. We are already accustomed to genetically running away from pain, although pain is a passage into some new quality, if you allow it to happen, if you allow yourself to immerse yourself in it and not fight it. But it so happens that the little mansomeone who doesn’t yet speak a word experiences some pain, either from the absence of his mother, or because he was offended or not fed. And with his whole being he calls out, resonates into the surrounding space: “help, someone reduce my pain,” this is a silent cry, vibration. Naturally, someone from the collective collective of customers reacts to it and provides an opportunity to reduce this pain, compensate, and make it easier. The result is a neurotic defense mechanism with which a person lives until, as a result of self-knowledge, in the process of psychotherapy or something else, the time comes to deal with this situation, to remove this, relatively speaking, agreement with one of the gods. Moreover, these may not necessarily be some “dark” gods, because, if you look at the big picture, there are no evil and good gods, they all do the same thing. To remove this agreement, to return a piece of the soul that was rejected, and to become less thick-skinned, a little closer to Dionysus, to the fullness of being - this is the task that I, among other things, am working on... It is very interesting that mystical teachings are not all aimed at one thing and also. I think this is largely the fault of the translators, and not only them, but also some kind of deliberate manipulation of meanings. For example, such a concept as Nirvana is not detachment, and the words attributed to Buddha that samsara is nirvana still seem to me to be closer to the truth. Jung writes wonderful words about this, referring to the state of Nirvana, which is translated as detachment, non-involvement, detachment of oneself from the world: “The goal of a yogi is the state of nirvana. Wanting to renounce his own nature, through meditation he achieves a state of lightness and emptiness, thus freeing himself. I, on the contrary, want to stay with my own - I do not want to give up either human communication, or nature, or myself and my own fantasies. I am convinced that all this was given to me as the greatest miracle. I perceive nature, soul and life as a kind of development of the deity - what more is worth striving for? The highest meaning of existence for me lies in the fact that it exists, and not in the fact that it does not exist.” C. G. Jung “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.” It’s interestingly said, at least it’s hard to argue with him, although and it is possible. There are wonderful lines in Goethe's Faust, where an aged sage, already satiated with knowledge, to whom the whole city in which he lives is grateful, who he treated for the plague, an alchemist who has comprehended much wisdom and many books, a philosopher reflecting on life and death - a man who has learned a lot and tired of this knowledge. At some point, realizing that “there is no happiness in deep knowledge, I cursed the false light of knowledge.” He was going to drink poison, he failed, and then Mephistopheles appears and offers him an agreement - I will guide you through those corners of life, including your soul and inner world, which you still did not know: this is the sensory world, the world pleasures, a world of pain, a world not only of the mind in which you lived for your 60 years. Faust agrees with great joy and pronounces the following monologue: “From now on, having dived headlong into the bubbling crucible of passions, with all the uncontrollability of blazing their abyss, to the depths! In the heat of time, headlong, in the midst of accidents with a running start! Into living pain, into living bliss, into a whirlwind sorrows and fun! Let the happy fate and the unhappy fate alternate throughout the whole period, a person finds himself in tirelessness all the time.” He comes to the Dionysian understanding of life. For now, I understand, because what awaits him next is a very tough life, in which Faust did many things, not only personally unpleasant, but also criminal. Mephistopheles and Faust suggested to the emperor, whose treasury was empty, to simply print money, they say, there is probably gold underground and this gold will someday be mined, so all this will pay off. Naturally, after several years of prosperity in this country, they realized that there was no gold and nothing to cover expenses, and the country experienced a financial crisis exactly like ours. So what is the Dionysian principle? Iftalking about Dionysus, now a lot of interesting literature has appeared, including Jung’s students, who consider various gods and their interaction precisely in psychic space. To begin with, we can recommend Jean Shinoda Bohlen, a student of Jung’s students, who wrote two volumes: “The Goddesses in Every Woman” and “The Gods in Every Man,” examining each individual god from the Greek pantheon, its influence, manifestations in humans, the main features, character, etc. But in principle, this is literature of the first layer, shallow, for reference. To turn to a deep understanding of the same Dionysus, one must take James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, a direct student and reformer of Jung, who argues with him, just as Jung argued with Freud in his time. In my opinion, he is currently one of the few greatest philosophers, psychologists, psychotherapists, and analysts still alive. Here is what he writes: “To affirm the Dionysian principle means to recognize and understand the role that pain and death play in life, to welcome the entire spectrum of sensations from life to death, from pain to ecstasy, including the traumatic experience when a person is born from the womb of a hateful and stultifying conformity to cultural, family and other expectations” That is, if you accept Dionysus, it turns out that the person who accepts him automatically becomes asocial. It's kind of scary. As in “Hamlet”: “It is easier to put up with familiar evil than to strive for flight to the unfamiliar.” I remember a moment in my life when I experienced a very powerful Dionysian divine ecstasy. Until I was 23-24 years old, I was an extremely shy person, extremely dependent on authorities. At that time, I was studying in a psychological group led by an authoritarian psychologist. We had been studying for 2 or 3 years already, and he somehow very cunningly provoked the situation, brought me to white heat, and I, who until then had not dared to raise my voice or even look at the authority with any condemnation, I betrayed him, sent swearing and also added teething. Naturally, he responded, and a small scuffle ensued. But it was such a strong impression, it was the first breakthrough against authority!! Thank you very much to him, he provoked this situation, he simply forced me to explode. I exploded and I remember walking home after that, I walk and suddenly I feel how it has become surprisingly easy to breathe, so easy that I don’t even remember it. And then, somewhere from the center, I don’t remember which one, I think from the whole body there was an explosion, I just flew apart. At first I was scared, it was similar to the feeling when I experienced orgasm for the first time as a child at the age of 11 (I didn’t even know what masturbation was, I was just fidgeting with something and suddenly - bang!). After that, I was afraid to engage in masturbation for another six months. The feeling from the first orgasm was very powerful, but that time everything was much stronger, the feeling that you were falling into pieces, and you were flying apart with incredible happiness and at the same time incredible pain. I walked through the streets and shouted to passing people that I loved them, sang songs, threw up my briefcase, and in a midnight park approached some homeless people with words about brotherly love. In general, I was overcome with such fury that I could not come to my senses for a very long time. At the same time, I was working somewhere far inside myself, and was aware of what was happening, but I understood that something unusual was happening. I didn’t know such concepts as satori back then. I came home and tried to go to bed, although I was shaking and bursting. I closed my eyes, and it continued to explode. I spent two nights without sleep in this state, then it subsided, but I remember it as the most grandiose event. There were some approximations later, but there was no such a powerful breakthrough. It was that same asociality. I broke the ban, I left the control of the authoritarian figure. This was the key, but then, no matter how much I looked for clues in the same area, it no longer led to similar results. This is apparently the mechanism of all these phenomena - you can’t press the same button twice. I tried to do antisocial thingsget involved in adventures. There was something from this: sluggish ecstasy, euphoria, but not that. And here, in the Dionysian world, we have to look every time for a new key to repeat the divine intoxication. Everyone read Omar Khayyam, he praised wine, praised love and despised death, decay, and said “live now, live while you are alive,” don’t think about what’s wrong with you awaits in the future, drink wine and caress young beauties. But there is a deeper meaning in his words. Al-Farid, a 12th-century Sufi mystic, sees in what we would call Dionysus “a journey along the river of life to its source.” Here is the wine! Drink it! If you want, mix it with the kiss of love - let it flow over the edge! Drink and sing without wasting sacred moments, After all, wine and care run away from each other. Drunk with life, he will understand that fate is not his mistress, but only a slave. The sober man did not live at all - the meaning of the universe flowed past the lips of the one who could not get drunk. Let him mourn, surrounded by wine - He was left without a share in the earthly feast.” (Al Farid) Wine. Dionysus in his incarnation Bacchus is the god of wine, the god of winemaking. It was he who traveled persecuted, because conceived by Zeus from the mortal woman Semele, like all illegitimate children of Zeus, he was persecuted by Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus. His mother Hera brought him to the grave and drove him around the world, and wandering everywhere he taught people to plant and cultivate grapes and make wine from them. At that ancient time, although we cannot say this with great accuracy, they treated wine a little differently. There were cults to which only initiates had access, who through wine entered a state of divine ecstasy. Among Russian mystics of the 60s - 80s, all this was underground, in the deepest underground, and no one brought anything like this to the surface. No matter who they were, no matter what they did, whether they were followers of Gurdjieff, yoga, or maybe someone went to Central Asia and found some kind of a la Sufi, but everywhere it happened through vodka or wine. Nowhere in the Russian mystical tradition could we do without this. If a person came to the mystical circle and laid claim to something, first of all they gave him a glass of vodka - “show what kind of comrade Sukhov you are.” And the person had to show how much he mastered the technique of internal transformation of this drink - while remaining sober, expand his consciousness. There was and remains a bison of the Soviet esoteric party, limitedly known to a fairly wide circle of people, whose initiates call Admiral - Evgeniy Vsevolodovich Golovin. He lived and lives in Moscow, traveled a lot. He is considered an alchemist, and by alchemy he also perceives the transformation of alcohol. He was never seen sober. There were rumors that one could enter his house, for example, in March, sit down at the table (which was set all the time and messengers were sent to the grocery store all the time), and come to his senses in February of the following year. And at the same time, realize that this year has not been lived in vain. The admiral gave birth to a lot of students, for example, Vladimir Stepanov (“Ship of Fools”), who travels to different cities and no one has ever seen him sober. I met him several times, his constant intoxication also surprised me at first, but then I realized that the man was drunk, but at the same time was in a very sober state of consciousness. His consciousness is very expanded and he is very wise in this state. Evgeny Golovin also has an interesting passage that I would like to read. It characterizes the attitude towards Dionysus in our century. “In our century, goals are achieved, as a rule, not by attack, but by siege... Buy something and spend minimally - buy a girl for an hour, money for five years, a reputation for fifty years... Experiencing mad passion for a woman, it is hidden, tactically dissipated by a frantic impulse in circular approaches, in small offerings, courtship. Failure constantly hangs over such a “tactician” - after all, you can find yourself in an uncomfortable position, lose what you have won with difficulty... Ration, dictated by fear, decomposes the dazzling impulse into a uniform sequence - this is anti-Dionysism! We must destroy our house and build a boat,raft, cut off the roots and play with your body, property, reputation in the free mode of water." A cruel and painful process that only strong natures can handle - here Nietzsche appears again... Pounce on the desired woman with a knife, throw a wad of a hundred thousand into the fire, throw a glove at Madame's arrogant face - Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Schiller, all these are literary moments. You can dream about this, “oh how good it would be.” Literature. There are quite a few people who are now capable of this. It is believed that everything is different in life... But! For people involved in intoxication, ecstasy, pain, delight, rage, madness... this is possible. For Golovin, wine is the drinking gold of philosophers; in order to be able to transform it into divine ecstasy, one needs dedication, initiation is the prerogative of the priests of Dionysus. And Golovin gave these initiations, not to everyone and very rarely. Here in St. Petersburg lived a certain Vasily Maksimov, who was an amazingly wise man and people came to him from all over the country. HE lived somewhere near Vyborg, worked as a watchman in some forest plot. People came to him for initiation, and naturally he also offered them a glass of vodka. He was a man who achieved and comprehended a lot, including through vodka, he discovered mushrooms, Pelevin studied with him, he initiated many into this, and most of them drank themselves to death. Some, and only a few of them, mastered this science and underwent initiation. Then, in the late 90s, at the age of 62, Vasily Maksimov went to a Zen Buddhist monastery and received a certificate of enlightenment from a Zen master there. For some time, before his audience with Patriarch Seung-San, he lived in this monastery as a monk. Monks are forbidden to smoke, and Vasily was a heavy smoker and could not get rid of his habit, despite his enlightenment. He walked the local hills, collected cigarette butts and smoked them. When Patriarch Seung-San found out about this, everyone expected that a terrible punishment would follow and that Maximov would be expelled from this monastery; usually the monk was expelled. But the Teacher called Maksimov to his place and asked if he had enough money to buy himself cigarettes? After which he gave him money and regularly inquired about his supply of cigarettes. Such an extraordinary person. These are the priests of Dionysus. Dionysus is also violence in any form. Why violence? From the time when there were cults of Dionysus in Greece, there were no descriptions other than poetic ones, for example Euripides' poem "The Bacchae", and the inner circle did not share what happened there. As a rule, Dionysus is surrounded by women, just as a person in whom Dionysus is strongly manifested is surrounded by many women. And he himself has features of femininity. The Bacchae gathered for their, as they called it, orgies. It is unknown what they were doing there, but naturally they drank wine there and saw divine ecstasy, and then something happened to them. The only thing that came out of the evidence was that in the end they had to tear the wild beast apart and eat it, because such animals as the leopard, wild cat, and tiger were associated with Dionysus. The Bacchae tore apart some wild cats, ate them and thereby received communion through this act of violence. The tragedy of Euripides “The Bacchae” tells that there was such a king Pentheus in Thebes. His wife was constantly going somewhere, and the king decided to follow her. He secretly dressed himself in animal skin, climbed a tree and began to observe. He did not have to watch for long, because the women, who came into ecstasy, saw him like a wild beast and tore him into pieces and ate him. Observing with our ordinary Apollonian consciousness what is happening to Dionysus is difficult and, to some extent, dangerous. Dionysus is violence, and people who went through orgies of wine and voluptuousness, they survived the war. Several guys of my generation whom I knew fought in Afghanistan, among them there were guys who, at the age of 18, I didn’t like because they constantly took part in some kind of drinking, orgies, and brawls. These are exactly the people who entered into the ecstasy of intoxication during the war, and the bullet did not take them, it flew past. They were intoxicated by the action itself. In the films Afghan Break, 9th Companya couple of examples are given of guys who don’t care about anything and who find in war, in violence, some kind of prowess and a special intoxication in the atmosphere of twisted metal, corpses - this is also Dionysus. Also Dionysus, devoid of skin. Dionysus satisfies any desire. Our inner Dionysus, if we find the keys to turn to him, our desires will be satisfied, and Dionysus does not care what desires they are. Some will die from drunkenness and drugs, others, on the contrary, will harden and partake of divine ecstasy. Madness is another trait. Asociality of madness, crazy actions, crazy life. Casanova, in the best sense - he was driven around the world not only by his personal desire, but also by the persecution of the authorities of various countries. Casanova, who intoxicated people and was intoxicated with love, who initiated women into these sacraments, took them out of the social circle at least for a day or several days, showed them this state of naked happiness. We cannot judge whether this is good or bad. So it was. Another famous Arab poet, Jalaladin Rumi, writes about this: “O true believers, I have lost myself among people. I am a stranger to Christ, a stranger to Islam, neither a barbarian nor a Jew. I am deprived of four principles, not subject to the movement of the spheres, West and East, seas and mountains are alien to me - I am nobody’s. I live outside the four elements, not a slave of either heaven or earth, I am in the present, I am in the past - flowing, changing, like Creek. Neither hell, nor heaven, nor this world, nor the other world are mine, And Adam and I are not related - I have not known the days of Eden. There is no name for my features, I am outside of place and space, After all, I am the soul of any soul, no I have my own soul. Having rejected duality, I delved into the inseparability of the two worlds, I only look at her, and I talk only about her. But sorrow, repentance and shame would torment me all my life, If I had spent a single moment in separation from my beloved. You are unconscious, O Shams, drunk with wine and passion, And in the whole world there is nothing more necessary than intoxication.” (Rumi) Shams is Rumi’s teacher, a man of amazing spiritual purity, beauty, integrity, whom Rumi met in 1244 and changed his whole life. Rumi was a Muslim, fulfilled all his covenants, and suddenly after this meeting he leaves society, becomes asocial, drinks. He is seen drunk lying under the fence, he gives away all his property, although he was a high-born man. He writes amazing poetry that drives people crazy, and brings many students and admirers to him from different parts of the Arab world. And the people, seeing what was happening to his former circle, killed Shams. For Rumi this was the greatest shock, he lost all his guidelines and found himself in the fact that he, as it were, embodied the soul of his teacher, began to be called by him and write on his behalf. He ended his life drunk somewhere under the fence, but he lived it at a certain intensity, and it is also difficult to judge whether this is good or bad. The legacy he left behind is priceless. Who else is Dionysus? If you look at modern science, he is the father of synergetics. Synergetics is the science of the emergence of ordered structures from chaos. It started with Hermann Haken, a German scientist researching laser light and why laser light becomes coherent. Firstly, the laser beam diverges almost nowhere, and secondly, its particle, the photon, is located in the so-called. coherent state in which we can, without exceeding the accuracy threshold, measure both position and momentum. And we know that according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, we cannot simultaneously know both the coordinate of a particle and its momentum. In the case of coherent radiation, we can recognize both to a certain extent. This is some orderly phenomenon. Subsequently, the study of coherence was transferred to other areas of physics, and the concept of “nonequilibrium thermodynamics” appeared, for which Ilya Prigogine received the Nobel Prize. Back in school, we studied the laws of Gay-Lussk, Boyle-Mariotte, etc., for example, the relationships: if you increase the pressure, the temperature rises, and the volume increases. But all these laws are valid for certain ideal, closed systems that do notinteract with the outside world. From these laws follows the principle: the entropy of this world is constantly increasing. Entropy is the degree of chaos, disorder. For example, here is an experiment: there is a pipe, and some kind of gas escapes from it under high pressure. There is a critical speed parameter, in a certain range, in which the gas begins to escape not in a straight stream, but some very cunning and beautiful patterns appear. Why is that? Because the world cannot be considered as a closed system, the world is an open, nonequilibrium system, in which the parameters are not strictly specified. It’s the same with a person: you want your butt to be warm, but as soon as it is warm and balanced, that’s where life ends. Vegetation begins in a cozy comfortable world, and entropy increases. And Dionysus is the path to negentropy, to a decrease in entropy until its complete disappearance in this ecstasy of union with God. Why Dionysus? Let's look from the point of view of the plots. In all types of art, there are classics that have stood the test of time, and there are temporary workers who may be more popular and much more popular than the classics during their lifetime. For example, at the same time as Chekhov there was a writer named Amphitheaters, a famous writer at that time and achieving much greater success than Chekhov, I read a couple of his stories on the Internet - he writes very well, fascinatingly, good style, interesting plots. It would seem why the Amphitheaters were forgotten, but Chekhov remained, and every theater strives to stage Chekhov? Because Chekhov, Shakespeare, Goethe - they reflect something that is characteristic of every person. Moreover, it is not typical for his life, for example, I did not find myself in the situation of Uncle Vanya, who sits alone with Sonya on the estate and sends money to Professor Serebryakov, but Uncle Vanya is in me, Sonya is in me, Professor Serebryakov is in me, Trigorin from Chaika , and so on. Chekhov, naturally seeing his genius and seeing that there are writers who are much more revered, he expressed this in a monologue of Trigorin from Chaika: “When I die, they will come up to my tombstone and say, yes, here lies the writer Trigorin, he wrote well, but not Turgenev." This pain of Chekhov seeped through his character, to some extent he may have compared himself to Trigorin. And Trigorin is in each of us, the question is in what contexts it unfolds. I will explain this using the example of the classical tragedy “Othello” by Shakespeare. What is happening - Othello is a man who has passed through fire and water. Having been in captivity, having had enormous experience in battles, the most educated man of his time, a general, and not everyone becomes a general, this is a very high position in Cyprus. He went through fire, water, copper pipes and was finally reunited with his psyche soul, with Desdemona. And then a situation arises when a certain Iago appears, envious of Othello for some reason of his own and wanting to take his place as a lieutenant, because he is only an ensign. And Iago surprisingly accurately reproduces the mechanism of creating a dominant. He begins to “drip”, at first slightly “but where is your wife now?” - “yes, somewhere there” - “but Cassio was spinning around there” - “oh well, God be with him” - “Well, God be with him, God be with him.” Then again, “What about Cassio? I saw he was thinking about your wife there” - “Come on, God bless him. You are the most honest Iago, I believe you,” says Othello. And in the end he gets to the point “don’t poison her, just strangle her.” Gradually, drop by drop, he brings Othello, who has passed through the fires and waters, who seemed to have found harmony with his soul, to a state of frenzy. This is the 18th lasso, when a person has already gone through everything and even entered the transpersonal area, and did not pass the last test, and stumbled over his own inner voice. This is the inner voice of every jealous person. It is not for nothing that Shakespeare repeats “The most honorable fellow Iago” or “The most honest Iago” 10 or 12 times during the play, because it is this voice that is dear to the jealous. When we are jealous, we stop hearing the voices that are trying to sober us up. The cutest, although unpleasant, voice is the voice of jealousy. “And look whereWhy is she looking now, and who is she thinking about now, and what is she doing?” - this is the inner Iago. Here she is Desdemona - the soul that Othello kills without passing this test. He kills his soul, and as a result, the Ego himself, Othello himself, dies. This is an archetypal plot. There are many such plots and, in principle, it is very interesting to consider many classical plots, and Zhenya Naydenov and I did this using the example of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Ostrovsky. There is a lot of material that is still on the table, and perhaps this will be discussed in these lectures: internal plots, internal characters who provide clues, just like in the myth of Dionysus. After all, Dionysus is another lesson. As I said, his mother is mortal, and Hera kills her, appearing to her under the guise of a kind nanny. And when Semele says that she conceived from Zeus himself, Hera tells her - don’t believe it, it’s probably not Zeus, but some kind of rogue, ask him to appear to you in all his greatness and then you will see whether it’s really Zeus or not Zeus. The next time Zeus appears at Semele's, she asks him - swear that you will fulfill my wish. He swears, and she asks - appear in all your greatness. Zeus is bound by an oath, he is forced to appear in all his greatness, and this is thunder, lightning and incinerating fire. Naturally, Semele dies; she is unable to withstand the vision of God in all its multifaceted power and dazzling lightning speed. She dies and ends up in Hades. And Dionysus, according to myth, having already matured, having passed many trials, descends to Hades and asks Hades to let his mother go. Somehow he succeeds, they go outside, and Dionysus begs Zeus to accept his resurrected mother into the kingdom of the celestials, and Zeus willingly goes to meet him. After all, what does this mean - this is a colossal event, this is a colossal experience that Dionysus offers him from us. For hundreds of thousands of years, humanity lived in a situation of matriarchy. Matriarchy is, first of all, the cult of the Great Goddess, but she is great and terrible. Great because it gives fertility, life, love, and terrible because it kills. This is a natural element, this is a cult that was repeated for tens of thousands of years, when a “seasonal king” was chosen from young men who had reached puberty, impregnated the Great Goddess and then was castrated. And since then, under the pressure of these hundreds and tens of thousands of years, any young man, having reached puberty, experiences a crisis, an unaccountable fear. For some, this puberty crisis lasts for 40 or 50 years, unresolved. He is in fear and under the power of the Great Goddess, a constant fear of castration, as Freud called it. And what does Dionysus do? He sees his mother as a mortal, he rescues her from Hades and treats her as a mortal woman. He gives us all the opportunity to see in our mother not the image of the Great and Terrible, which is what most men and women do, in accordance with this, relationships of hatred are built, etc. As a psychologist and psychotherapist, I will say - this is not every second case, this is every first case! Hatred of the mother, or at least ambivalence towards the mother, especially if people live together. And all because of the power of the Great Goddess. And only people who have walked the path of Dionysus, managed to disconnect their own mother as a person from the image of the Great and Terrible Goddess, have the opportunity to mature. But this myth does not tell us how to do this. Perhaps some of Shakespeare's works speak to this. I have a guess about this, that Shakespeare has the keys - exactly how, and what psychological mechanisms are involved in order for this process of maturation to occur. We can also say a few words about the ways of Dionysus. Many people who turn to such things as integrity, the search for meaning, the search for their soul, rush to look for a teacher and perform sets of exercises. I have seen many hundreds of such people who have been doing this for decades, but “the problem is still there.” But there is a Dionysian possibility, and it is spelled out in classical literature. An opportunity when the very entry onto the spiritual path occurs as a result of boyish, childisha stupid act, maybe even some kind of low, immoral act, and yet it happens. Here Faust enters into an agreement with Mephistopheles, a very unsightly figure if you look at it from a moral point of view. He goes through the very decomposition, through the very bottom of his soul, commits many hard things and gets bogged down in these hard things, and in the end, seeing that “only the one who has experienced pain in life deserves life and freedom,” is saved. In Goethe's finale, Mephistopheles does not receive his soul, his soul goes to God. King Lear is the next example - a tyrant who has reached such an absurdity that he demands not worship, not respect, but love from his daughters. And who will say it more beautifully? Nonsense! But this is where the difficult path begins, when through madness Lear becomes loving and finds love. Don Juan, passion, boyish stupidity: “Go Leporelo and call the commander to Donna Anna, where I will be tomorrow,” intending to seduce her. Leporelo got scared, then Don Juan went himself and saw something there. Something after which he could no longer be the same, and he comes to Donna Anna as a completely different person. He reveals himself to her: “yes, I am the Don Juan who killed your husband, I don’t hide it, I love you.” All. From a libertine, from a simple adventurer, he becomes loving. Here they are, the amazing whirlwinds of Dionysus, when a person takes the path and passes it, committing some ridiculous and even harmful actions. A completely contradictory figure - here he is Dionysus. Entering this path, we have to abandon the very familiar, very convenient in the social world, the guise of a good boy and a good girl, which helps us solve many social problems and a career. Destroy these masks, recognize the villain in yourself, admit that you are capable of killing. Remember the monologue from Faust, when the dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles takes place, that you, they say, enjoyed everything, I took you to witches and to spirits, and what is all this for nothing? You wanted to fall in love and fell in love, you wanted fame and achieved it, but were you happy?” Faust: Stop it! Don't poison me with secrets. There is no life in deep knowledge, I cursed the false light of knowledge: and glory, its random ray, is elusive, worldly honor is meaningless, like a dream, but there is direct good - the combination of two souls! Mephistopheles: And the first date? Isn't it true? But is it possible to find out who you want to remember? Isn't it Gretchen? F: Oh, a wonderful dream! O pure flame of love! There, where the shadows are, where the noise of the trees is, where the sweet-sounding streams are, There on the chest of her lovely peace, the languid head, I was happy!.. M: Heavenly Creator! You are delirious, Faust, in reality! You deceive yourself with a helpful memory. Was it not I who, through my efforts, brought you a miracle of beauty? And at the hour of deep midnight he brought her to you. Then, I amused myself with the fruits of my labor, alone... Like the two of you. I remember everything! When your beauty was delighted, in rapture, you plunged into thought. And you and I have proven that thinking is the seed of boredom. And do you know, my philosopher, what you thought at a time when no one thinks? Should I say? F: Say: well, what?! M: You thought: my obedient lamb! I desired you so greedily, as cunningly in a simple-minded maiden, I outraged the dreams of my heart. She surrendered herself innocently to involuntary, selfless love, so now my chest is full of melancholy and hateful boredom! I look at the victim of my whim, drunk with pleasure, with irresistible disgust. So a reckless fool, having vainly decided on an evil deed, having stabbed a beggar to death in the forest, scolds the flayed body. So, having hastily satiated itself with corrupt beauty, depravity glances fearfully sideways. Then, from this you drew just one conclusion... F: Hide, hellish creation, run away from my sight! M: Please! Just give me a task. Idle, you know, I don’t dare leave you, I don’t waste time. F: What’s white there, tell me! M: A ship, Spanish, three-masted, ready to land in Holland, there are three hundred scoundrels on it, two monkeys, barrels of gold , yes, a rich load of chocolate, and a fashionable disease, it was recently presented to you. F: Drown everything!!! M: Now! Faust recognizes the possibility of crime in himself. It sits in…