“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to find/return something all the time. It's like I can't come to terms with living in this world. I've been to different cities and countries in search of a place where I would be comfortable, but I couldn’t find it. My relationships with men do not work out because of the expectation of “the one” who is “destined from above” for me (I directly physically feel what he is like). Sometimes I almost manage to convince myself that all these squeaks and expectations are just an attempt to return to my mother’s womb (I was born prematurely). But it’s worth sounding some beautiful song in folk style, or a heart-warming story will catch your eye happy love, how everything returns to normal: an unclear longing for something or someone, expectations and hopes... I already had a child, but I still can’t settle down and start looking for a normal man who would become the child’s father, and stop dreaming about an ideal (for the soul) place of residence..."

Elena, 30 years old

Konstantin Slepak, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst:

“Thank you for the letter, it reminded me that many people, including myself, are looking for something supposedly lost, a path to a lost paradise or a wizard who will help find this paradise. Unfortunately, such thoughts take us too far from reality. The need for paradise or a wizard has an archetypal nature, so it is, to one degree or another, common to all people. But there is a world of the archetypal and there is a world of reality, everyday life, pragmatics, and we live in both worlds. Giving preference to one of them is tantamount to losing the other, that is, losing half of life's chances and opportunities. To fall in love with reality and to be rooted in it means to experience the trauma of abandoning powerful narcissistic fantasies associated with infinite possibilities, omnipotent energies, magic and a sense of the limitlessness of one’s own powers. It means coming down to earth and recognizing your limitations, your weaknesses and your inability to find a universal paradise. Such a step may allow one to narrow the idea of ​​universal happiness to one’s own happiness, to one’s own “quiet” but achievable paradise. (This paradise will certainly be shaken by discontent and crowding, but earthly paradise- he is like that.) To abandon archetypal fantasies means to give a chance to reality to offer its services, that is, to give a chance to men to be heard in their desire to share happiness with you, and to the city in which you live to be recognized and worthy of you in lived there. Last year, Cogito Center published a book by Jungian analyst James Hollis, Dreams of Eden: In Search of good wizard“- it seems to me that with the help of this book you can once again try to take a few steps towards reality. All the best to you on this journey.”

You read first! An excerpt from the book “Longing for Paradise” by Mikhail Morgulis, from the chapter “Meeting with the Devil.” Critic K. Andreev called the book by Mikhail Morgulis “the answer to our generation.”

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK “LONGING FOR PARADISE” BY MICHAEL MORGULIS.

(MEETING WITH THE DEVIL)

(This writer gave the answer to an entire generation!).

Critic Konstantin Andreev, Moscow)

We came out onto a path that wound next to a mountain road. Suddenly the wind blew and there was a strong smell of sulfur. My head began to spin, I squeezed Pony’s hand forcefully.

There was a loud, infectious laugh. It was a happy laugh. And a soft, gentle voice said:

- My dear fool... Do you think you escaped the slavery of hell to freedom?! In fact? Crazy romantics...

After a short silence, the voice whispered excitingly:

– In fact, from the free kingdom of the prince of darkness, you again ended up in the earthly deceitful jungle of good. Dear simpletons, you think that the earth is grass, rivers and fields. Fools! The earth is a place for sacrifices. And do you know who is being sacrificed? Of people. And you know who? God. Now you will again become miserable worm-people. You will, you will definitely sin, and still come back to me.

Jesus? Yes, this is all true, but you will end up with me again.

The voice rang out roulades in an unfamiliar language for half a minute, the sounds flowed as if an alarmingly rumbling stream was flying from a mountain into an abyss. And he spoke happily again:

- My dear fool. And what have you achieved? Well, you are left here, on the land of Adam and Eve. And they became mortal again! They exchanged life with me for an illusory hope that never comes true. But still, for the sake of justice, I want to remember and extol the great deed of Adam and Eve. They didn’t know that God allowed me to test their loyalty in the Garden of Eden. And they believed me. After I persuaded them to leave God, they created a mixture of heaven and hell on earth. And so, you are back in this terrible mess, let's call it Raad. Here there is love and hate, truth and lies, good and evil, here He and I. And Eve and Adam are my adopted children. And no one is allowed to forget about their feat. But, of course, you, like many, want to humiliate their great deed, the people who left paradise... Real revolutionaries, not hypocrites! You want to be in the silent circle of those who are unhappy with their decision. You, like others, really want to return to paradise from which you were once kicked out. But, dear fools, without Adam and Eve you would still be slaves in paradise, hypnotized by rabbits. But no one fully appreciated their feat. But thanks to them, you can now sin, repent, cry, suffer and laugh through your tears! Yes, it’s true, then comes the reckoning... And this is a special reckoning... But understand, dear ignoramuses, after Eve and Adam, all people had the freedom to choose between heaven and hell. After all, after the land of Raad, you need to go somewhere... Thanks to these two revolutionaries, I was able to convince many on the land of Raad: now you can kill and forgive, die and love, you own the bird that He and I gave you, by our mutual agreement . This bird is your soul, wonderful and vile. One of her wings is white, and the other is black.

So, you have chosen Raad... Well, go, dear fool! Rejoice and cry, sin and pay. If you didn’t want to be with me, stay here... The main thing is, don’t return to heaven...

And then the pungent smell of sulfur arose again. And the voice laughed infectiously again and said, choking with laughter:

- Don't be afraid, I won't do anything bad to you. You were your own judge and signed your own verdict. You have already been punished, beloved fools. The punishment of the world will be on you, as well as on Him. You will still look for me, and I will be found, and together we will laugh at your hopes in Raada. I am kind, I will accept you as my best friends. I'm a little sorry that you're so stubborn, because I like you. I will be waiting for you at my place...

I asked quietly and hoarsely:

– So what is life?

For a moment the voice faltered, but then said loudly and clearly:

– Life is an enemy pretending to be a friend.

Then the voice began to move away, but it was still audible:

- Look for me, call me, they will tell me. I am kind, I am kinder than Him.

The smell of sulfur began to weaken. And, just once, from afar, a ringing laugh was heard. And then the wind stopped and it became quiet.

* * *

We never shook hands. Our fingers remained intertwined. We were breathing heavily, as if we had been under water for a long time and finally emerged. Pony was hard to look at. A white mask covered her face. Red hair hung over this Pierrot mask. I hugged her and felt the coldness of her body. She wasn't just cold, the cold penetrated deep into her. I began to hug her with all my might, kissing her frozen lips. And she began to warm up and come to life.

- Pony, eternal friend, you heard the great Liar, who has no equal in this world for lies and sincerity in lies. And he is the one great actor. All best performers Hamlet next to him becomes a pale shadow. But he is a liar, everything he says is not true. There is a paradise that the Lord preserves for us, and there, in the Garden of Eden, He awaits our return. These are His words: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

– Jeremiah, why was Christ silent?

“He’s fallen silent before.” But today He was not silent. We were His answer. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But today He defeated evil with us. And he stayed with us.

And, wrapping our fingers around each other again, we walked at random.

– I know, Pony, you can’t get used to happiness. Happiness is often torn fallen angels, their names are envy and anger. A person who longs to always be happy is doomed. When his happiness is torn, he sees one death ahead. If love is torn, death again appears before him. Love is not only a feeling, it is one of many feelings. It becomes the most important thing - when God touches this love. And then the state of your soul changes, then you constantly feel the heavenly tenderness of the Holy Spirit in it. Pony, Pony, I would like to console everyone, but I'm only human. And even the Lord will not console those who do not seek consolation from Him. Everyone runs to Him as to a doctor, a policeman, a judge, an official. And He stands alone in the middle of the stadium, which is booing Him with thousands of throats. And He only speaks quietly into their eyes, mad with rage. And a human tear, lonely like Him, rolls down His cheek.

And I began to remember the words about Him written in the psalms:

“The soul was within me like a weaned child.

The soul is delivered like a bird from the net of those who catch it, the net is broken, and we are delivered.

EARTH MAGICAL PLACES AND NONGING FOR PARADISE

(based on the book “Longing for Paradise” by Mikhail Morgulis)

“I tell you, melancholy will only die with you.”

This line from John Steinbeck (“East of Eden”) is the first part of the epigraph to Mikhail Morgulis’s novel “Longing for Paradise” - a red thread on which the plots are strung...

I, the reader, have the luxury of not having doubts, which often overcome professional critics when, “deducing”, “unraveling” a writer, sifting his “fruits” through a fine sieve, looking through texts to the light, they torment themselves and us with the question: isn't there enough material for?..

My “doubtlessness” is not in self-confidence and not in inductive clairvoyance, they say, give me a drop and I will say the sea...

(Although, if you take this phrase from the novel: “Ever since Adam and Eve left paradise, all of humanity and every person, consciously or unconsciously, dreams of returning to the lost paradise.”, - isn’t this the same drop in which?..)

I admit that my “luxury” is a mixture of impudence to draw conclusions from small things and fear of being deceived in hopes before further recognition... Result: coming into contact with something worthy, available in small quantities, and fearing to be disappointed in a treasure that has suddenly opened, I, at the end of reading, I joyfully slam the book shut and shout: enough! - after all, I already saw what I wanted (in fact, it was the author who drew in me, supposedly my desire from the beginning)!..

It seems to me that after reading just one book by Mikhail Morgulis, I tasted the salt (soul? - soul?) of the epistolary work of this “heavenly-earthly” writer, whose capacious lines breathe and smell, bloom and sparkle, cool and warm, listen and make noise , scare and calm...

[“Steam wiggled from the ground like milky vine shoots. ... It had just rained: suddenly lightning cut razor-like across the peaceful belly of the sky, and water fell to the ground. The raid was gangster-like short, the rain quickly rushed off into the mountains, hastily clicking on the frightened red roofs of lonely houses. And immediately the red-hot spears of the sun whistled from the open sky. It is unknown why it smelled of watermelons, pink overripe pulp-slush, dotted with black mother-of-pearl seeds. The sweet pink smell overwhelmed and overwhelmed even the honeyed intoxication of the recently cut grass. But you could already feel the breath of a black horse, on which Evening, dressed in all black, galloped from the mountains.” - (“There are days for people”)]

The writer-priest Mikhail Morgulis called his book “Longing for Paradise.” It is probably easy to be deceived by the title of the work (coupled with the spiritual status of the author) - and the “deception” may well be intensified by the last plot movement of the characters novel of the same name(avant-garde - is it only in location? - a work in the collection), men and women (“Adam” and “Eve”), - a movement towards Paradise...

Yes, “Adam” and “Eve” in “Tosca...” are almost saints... And one can assume that the whole book, its whole plan is to glorify holiness, innocence...

However: to Paradise - and not to Paradise!.. (According to the text: “It seemed to me that we were Eve and Adam returning to Paradise”).

(“It seemed,” it turns out: remaining on the ground, and not soaring into the sky).

That is, in fact, it is in this place, with last words“Toski...”, the title-status “deception” begins to melt like an avalanche (and this will be confirmed by subsequent stories) and the understanding grows: the book is not about saints...

The book is about us sinners; about us - the living, who, according to nature, yearn for Paradise. About each of us, who do not know, cannot imagine Paradise in heaven, but who have our own, local, privatized from birth or from the first awareness of oneself as a person, paradise on Earth:

“...there is a place on earth where you once grabbed the handrails with your hands and began to crawl out onto the spit-stained deck of life. And to this place your soul should, flapping its tired wings, descend to rest. This is the yard where your childhood remains.".(“Lands of magical places”)

(Is it because he himself, like his hero from “Tosca...” - “...I saw the frantic pupils of passion and coldness, the delightful squeal of anger and the flowery dryness of kindness”? Read "Going Out in the Rain" and maybe you'll hear how "the wounded are screaming bluebirds, falling with hooked beaks into the water of the lakes calling them...")

To what extent, to what upper limits the Knower is unknown; but the fact that From Us ourselves (simple and eternally guilty of each other while we live) - this is already enough, because there is already infinitely much for creativity.

Sometimes it seems that there is no plot in the stories - that the author, throwing his head towards the divine sky, is sorting, near the very sinful earth, solely by touch, some wonderful rosary, with an immeasurable number of beads of various, unpredictable shapes - like pebbles on the side of the road city ​​and rural roads (where there are only “correct” figures - balls, cones, cubes, tetrahedrons...) What next will come to your fingers - and how will it respond: will it warm you with its velvet polished side, will it prick acute angle, will it hurt us to the point of bleeding with a knife edge... But every bead will certainly run, with the author’s talent, into the lines, and the lines will draw pictures in us that will make us smile, think, cry... Because in every picture there is a person, ranging from funny to tragic, as the embodiment of earthly Life, fleeting, but rich, fitting into the universal moment - from birth to death.

Every attentive reader will exclaim, through laughter and tears: so it was, so it is, I believe...

[“Like a warm hand mouse in a sleeve, happiness crawled into him. No, what a mouse, this boat burst into his blood. Little rowers rushed in a boat along the rapid flow of vessels and sang songs. A strange song, as if these were the voices of the Incas from a dead state. They rushed and sang, and then, at a turn, they suddenly raised their heads, because somewhere they sang back to them.” ("Voice of Lake Michigan")]

And this simple, everyday trust in the author, perhaps, will mold in the reader a true way of behavior that atones for the biblical guilt of the descendants of Adam and Eve, living on the “cursed land”, on which “thorns and thistles” grow, from which they feed all the days of their lives , earning bread by the sweat of their brows...

Love for one's neighbor, for nature, are projections that make up the vector of love for Him, who gives hope for the Garden of Eden. There is no other, more direct and easier path that does not strain the mind, soul and heart.

And if at least one of a hundred readers, after reading the book, says not only “I believe...”, but also “I believe!” - this will be a great reward for the unmercenary Author, the reward for which he creates.

The final lines of the epigraph to “Longing for Paradise” are from Thomas Wolfe (“The wind rushes and the rivers flow”):

“Then I did not yet know the truth that only those who have humility, tolerance, and the ability to hear someone else’s soul are truly superior to others.”

This, in Wulf’s phrase, from Mikhail Morgulis, the author, - to the readers...

But let him, Mikhail Morgulis, know that with the same phrase I, the Reader, speak to him, the Author... about him; with a slight, now personal, emphasis on preliminary ignorance and subsequent discovery: “I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure... until I read it...”

["Life screamed to the melancholy that caught the heart in a trap, that it would not hold the heart, let it go, because tenderness would soon come and make us all happy." - (“Longing for Paradise”)]

Leonid Netrebo,

We feel time as an enemy, for we slide through it towards death. After the death of his wife, Lewis wrote that he looked into the night sky and knew for sure that nowhere in time and space would he find her face, her voice, her hands. Time is this “nowhere”, this “never”. Even if we do not die with death, we pass away, we are part of the past. “And the past is past, (...) and time is another name for death,” and “the temple of human achievements will perish in the ruins of the universe.”

The “night sky,” which frightened Lewis, just as the “eternal silence of infinite space” frightened Pascal, is not space, but time. The emptiness of space is a symbol of the emptiness of the past, in which there is no longer life, reality, or “present.”

However, time and death are our friends, not only our enemies: framing our life, they give it great value, just as the cosmos gives it to the earth. When we think that we will die, life increases in value many times over. It is believed that at the moment of death we look back at our entire life and appreciate it in a new way. But you don’t have to wait for death to do this; you can do this experiment right now. Think about some ordinary event. Then imagine - imagine well - that you have a few minutes left to live. Now remember the same thing again. How precious it will seem to you!

Let us do this with our whole life and see that death not only turns life into the “past”, but also gives life to the past; not only turns everything valuable into the “past”, but also gives the former great value. Longing for something that is irretrievably gone, we see it through the eyes of death, although we are still alive.

However, this is not enough. Time and death make life precious, but not eternal. We yearn for eternity, even if we don’t know what it is. We are not satisfied with the rational world of repetition, the universal workbench, where everything is in its place (“He made everything beautiful in its time (...), a time to be born and a time to die, (...) a time to destroy and a time to build”) (Ecc. 3:11,2,3). We rejoice at birth, but not at death; We don’t cry at christenings and we don’t laugh at wakes. We love creation, not destruction. We care. We judge. We choose.

The Universe does not choose or judge. She is completely indifferent to our sorrows.

Let's take an inventory of the universe. How much is there in it - from atoms to agnostics, from sea cucumbers to galaxies? Let the sum of this be "x". How many are already gone or will soon be gone? Also "x". No difference. Not “x+1” or “x-1”, but “x”. The universe does not prefer life one iota to death. Stars, even those, are mortal. The law of the universe is the cycle of birth and death, the river of time, Buddhist samsara. “What arises also disappears.” This is the “pure and indisputable eye of teaching.”

But Buddha is wrong. With all due respect to such a giant of spirit, I will say that he forgot something. We arise and do not disappear - not the impersonal cosmic mind, known only to mystics, but you and I, people, many “I”. Our heads (or hearts?) stick out above the river of time. Buddha considered us an illusion, an illusion, we are born and die, but passionately want to live after death. What we need is across the river. If we cannot get over it, if we cannot see the face of God and live, then we have lived in vain, we have lost, we have failed.

The Universe satisfies all our desires, except the main one. She is Aladdin's lamp, the wishing tree, Buffet where everything is, until it comes to signature dish. We whet our appetite with snacks, and then they offer us emptiness. If this is all, the world is ruled not by chance, but by an evil God, a universal sadist who lays out baits in order to more accurately destroy us. The last truth behind the walls of the world - or good God, or evil, everything fits too well here. An idea, a plan, a drawing appear through the world; the only question is whether the artist is good.

The best way to find out is to meet him. But how? We are exiled to the land of time. How to get out into eternity?