Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852). Quotes

“I am who I am and that’s who I am.”

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”

“We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.”

“There are occasions when a woman, no matter how weak and impotent in character she may be in comparison with a man, will yet suddenly become not only harder than any man, but even harder than anything and everything in the world.”

“…nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book…”

“They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.”

“Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.”

“But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.”

Good Reads Collection of quotes from The Dead Souls, The Mad Man’s Diary and Gogol’s Short Stories.

The Author’s Note. During Gogol’s life, his works were translated in Czechoslovakian, German, Polish, French, Sweden, Serbian and English languages. During the following 160 years, this list has expanded including Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Greece, Finnish, Norway, Persian, and Arabic languages. The formerly named countries have presented new versions of translations of Gogol’s works. Marc Chagall created 96 etchings to illustrate “The Les Âmes mortes (Dead Souls), the French publication, 1948. A copy of this edition is kept by MoMA, New York — collection.

Meditation on Gogol’s Spirit Heart

My meditation is in full swing. In the purple light of the “Third Eye” area, I see a black marble slab, a stand for a sculpture trending in the 60’s. It depicting a hand with long thin fingers typical of a man born under the auspices of the constellation of Pisces. This was how the otherworldly forces showed the Writer’s afterlife. His name is Nikolai Gogol, he is a Russian Ukrainian-born writer who reached immortality by the deceptive simplicity of his stories and merciless laugh at the cost of his characters and their miserable spiritual aspirations, as if dictated by the Russian national soul always chastising itself for indulging the weaknesses of its favorite creatures. Or maybe I was given a hint that Gogol’s unforgettable characters were written more by the master’s mind, his pitiless eye than the voice of his heart? His Akaki Akakievich the shy, quiet clerk from “The Overcoat,” a complete nobody, the hand-copier of documents in an important office in the icy capital of Imperial Russia, Saint Petersburg. This smallish minion put pennies aside during a decade or longer dreaming about a warm overcoat. Finally, he showed off his overcoat at work, and lost it the same day being robbed on a cold and dark and windy street returning home from a theater. He attended the theatre out of fear to vex with declining bosses invitation, as the custom was to keep the boss company during +his theatrical outings.
Or Gogol’s immortal character – Chichikov from “The Dead Souls”, who visited provincial landlords and buying cheaply their dead serfs. The transfer of these names onto his list of serfs would build the impression in Saint Petersburg of being a rich landlord. It would imply automatically the ownership of big land and grant unlimited loans that would make our swindler rich! Of course, this plan of Chichikov would never materialize… By the way, during 2016 presidential election, one party accused the other one of adding to their voters’ lists the names of the dead voters, I forgot which party was the perpetrator, and which one was the whistler-blower.

From Alami collection of illusratins to “Dead Souls”. “The Dead Souls’ hero Chichikov 

The meditation continues. The weak light of candles breaks barely through heavy darkness of the evening sermon in an empty astral church, the orthodox choir’s sweet chants are softening the feel of gloom, but the Tsarist Gate** covered by Byzantine classic, strict and so minimalist icons of saints in richly gilded frames, probably to empress the poor, was tightly closed emanating waves of unease and secrecy.

My concentration was dissipating. I started my prayer beckoning the golden light to see the upper chakras… What I was hoping to see in the world beyond where past, present and future merge into something that we would never understand completely, and be always left with more questions than venturing out into meditation? Was I thinking clearly when was asking for a look at Gogol’s chakras who was already in spirit! Nevertheless, the golden ray seemed to oblige, as it gave me picture of a non-existing chakra. Was Almighty golden light improvising, or it had reproduced these chakras from Writer’s past on earth? Whatever it was, in my third eye, there were picture of Gogol’s chakras. The golden ray encounters a thin, impenetrable shell around the “spiritual heart” of the spirit. Can it be that instead of a picture of the real heart, I saw the picture of Gogol’s spiritual heart?  Does it exist? Either the access to Gogol’s problems was denied to me, or I was getting off the right track made available to me by my guides? I decide to follow the direction where ever it would lead me.

Unexpectedly, I find myself at the throat chakra, or rather, at the slice of this chakra – given as a picture of a cream fancy collar on portraits of Hispanic or Venetian grandees. Out of the neckline of the luxurious garments, a fine corrugated collar was falling onto their shoulders. But, alas, the edges of this magnificent “collar” were burnt and looked like the net of thin channels, clogged and burned. The channels became blocked to the energy coming from outer space.

Writer’s biographers testify that at the end of his short earthly path the Writer complained that what was coming through was not exactly what he was looking for, in other words he was speaking about the writer’s block. … I remember reading about the famous writer’s crisis in my youth, I perceived these complaints as coquetry of a genius. The harsh era of the proletarian dictatorship with its postulates of Marxism clouded not only my perception. Even at school, children were taught that “Dead Souls” are “social criticism of the landlord class”. Then, on the eve of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, more advanced readers appeared, as a gift from behind the cordon, a collection of lectures on Gogol read by Nabokov in America that did not exist for us. The author of “Lolita” and “The Gift” claimed quite different. In other words, Nabokov reevaluated the Gogol’s aesthetics, and as a result, the splendid writer became again fashionable and re-readable by that part of the Russian advanced literature loving public which dictated hard (way harder than in America) what to read and what to ignore.

And it happened exactly when the Soviet government, to the astonishment of the whole world collapsed overnight. Not a single tear was shed over that collapse, and the red “knizhechki” – covers of membership in the CPSU, were amicably returned to the party committees throughout the country. Today, the faithful descendants of the cowardly and thievish heroes of The Dead Souls had forgotten their unanimous zeal of renouncing Communism. While continuing to plunder the country, they accuse Gorbachev of betrayal, and are pining for Stalin’s strong hand. Well, we truly are the family of Bobchinskys and Dobchenskys, Chichikovs and Hlestakovs, the Gogol’s heroes.

But I who meditate have been distracted, let continue! …The mystical scissors in my astral hand were gently cutting the charred edge of the “collar”. Now I see the net of thin channels running from throat chakra, the “control panel” of communication, down to the heart chakra with the tender Vedic name Anahata. Here I see a withered hand and an elongated jar with dried jam on the bottom. The hand barely enters it the sleeve touching the inside wall of the can. Thin fingers, twisted with rheumatism, long lost their former flexibility and dexterity, try to extract from the dry brownish jam something like fly or spider. Probably, once this preserve was fresh and attractive, and exuded the smell of forest berries … I ask for more light, and I see that it was not a spider but Egyptian Scarab that I found in the astral vision of Gogol’s heart chakra.

I break out of mediation and jump to my computer, the source of our superficial knowledge about everything. The Internet explains: “Scarab is a symbol of the Egyptian god Keper, the deity of the Sun, who rolls the Sun’s globe across the sky. It was a symbol of rebirth. On some mummies heart were put ‘heart scarabs’ as a sign of rebirth. ”

Alternative names of this insect god are Khepera, Khepra, Khepri, Khopri, Kheprer, or Chepera. The Scarab was the most potent symbol of the ancient Egypt, primarily symbolizing the sun, resurrection, transformation and protection. It was also the symbol of immortality and rebirth. And scarab amulets and talismans, carved from valuable stones, were buried with mummies. www.landofpyramids.org/khepri.htm.

I return to meditation. In that jar, fingers release the scarab, and the black beetle smoothly sinks back to the bottom of the jar, which – at least for me – personifies the Gogol’s mummy. Once, the spirit of Marlene Dietrich, while I was working on the manuscript of “Prisoners of Fame,” talked about her conviction that Gogol’s souls and hers originate from the same batch of aliens who were sent to help earthlings in their development. She personally did not meet Gogol, as they lived in different centuries, different countries, served different cultures. Nevertheless, Marlene Dietrich’s surprising claim regarding resemblance of their faces is obvious. Where they both coming from the same stock of aliens? Yuktesvar said, “Hard to confirm, easy to deny, but I would not, because in spirit world everything is possible!”

Maybe eons ago, an earthling or alien who loved the soul that evolved into Gogol, put on “heart” of his mummy, maybe at the last minute of the burial ceremony, a scarab to guard the deceased in the land of the dead! Who was that someone whom Gogol’s soul hold so dear that he still had not found his soulmate? Why I did let the scarab to sink back to the bottom of the jar? Maybe I was supposed to do the opposite, threw the scarab into the cosmic dump of useless memories and rid Gogol of this annoying reminder of someone who once stole his soul? But was it my duty to judge? In short, the scarab returned to the mummy to guard it from earthly accidental attachments.

I listen to the silence. It looks like Gogol’s angels have not much to say…  However, I was spoken to anyway! My spirit helpers encouraged me to continue. They invited me to help to ease Gogol’s “walking cloud” from some heaviness caused by the negative images that were “archived” in his spiritual heart.  There were pyramids, desert, hot sand and guilt observing slaves who were doomed to work under the scorching sun.

For a medium turned into an untrained healer this was not an easy job. For the starters, I had to get rid from the feeling of exorbitant gravity that aroese automatically only thinking about the pyramids!  How to let go such images? I was advised in my mind to transfer the images of “real pyramids” into two-dimensional pictures — sketched, or painted, or photographed pyramids on any kind of paper, whatever – newspaper, photopaper, electronic screen image, illustrative images in books or magazines — whatever comes first into your mind. Then play with the pyramid, throw it in the air, turn the other side, make it bigger, smaller, color it into different colors… Finally , then set an imaginary bonfire into your room, and threw your imaginary pictures with pyramids into fire, and burn it to ashes, then put out the flames of your bonfire. It is important, because your mental images will attract a lot of similar images from the universe. When they accumulate enough, they will find a way to materialize.

The spontaneous cleansing continued until I saw the clean blue water, from which rises … an emerald green gentle hue, a very light and pure steam of cardiac energy. Was the Gogol’s spirit heart purified? Who was the healing angel who did the job using me for establishing contact with earth energies?

Now I found myself in the same empty church. The long evening sermon was still in progress. I saw a young handsome deacon. Maybe once, a forbidden gay love blossomed under the roof of this church, or it was shown to me for no reason at all. The Russian Orthodox Church choir’s singing was sweeter than ever.

The Tsar’s Gates to the altar started to open. But in place of the altar, there was a mountain of sarcophagi … in some of them there were mummies, or rather, what was left of them after eons of undisturbed rest? I was looking for more scarabs, but was not able to detect them.  Do I need them to connect past and present times as  a symbol of eternal renewal of life through the power of motherhood?

The Internet article http://www.landofpyramids.org/khepri.htm explain:

“The life of the scarab beetle revolved around the dung balls that were eaten by the beetles, they laid their eggs in the dung balls, and fed their young on the content. The dung ball of the scarab. When the eggs hatched, the scarab beetle would appear from nowhere to be a symbol of spontaneous creation, resurrection, and transformation.”

The image of motherhood, mother, too close to be compared with anything, and completely incomprehensible to understand, is too often inspiring fear, guilt and sometimes pure madness! Here it is, this thin and impenetrable veil around the heart, the veil of fear of the incomprehensibility of earthly motherhood. There is a desire to be accepted by the simple earthly life, and clear understanding that it is impossible without the plunge into the vulgarity of existence what leads to the eternal question “to be or not to be?” Or it would be safer to escape back to the astral life, as soon as possible. Or this problem can be resolved by developing aversion toward a woman, or women who once offered him eternal love demanding confirmations in form of forced vows and promises. Can these vows be broken, or can this way bought freedom be marred by guilt and faintheartedness forever?

How to accept being a reject for all these governors’ spouses, their daughters* wearing so provincial pink bows all over their dresses and coiffures? How to tolerate being a refuse in the eyes of all these invincible whores and prostitutes, whose spirit cannot be broken, as they do not have one, or it seems so! Is the suffering for broken vows to carry flames of the eternal love through eons justified? Maybe Scarab has been mistaken, and motherhood does not stand for spirituality at all, as it stands literally for making new bodies for renewal life? So they say! I think that new bodies are too often made for suffering called evolvement! I hope to be wrong!

Probably, only the idea of immaculate conception can solve this riddle … And was it our church that has established this image? Or it stemmed from the deep – from the prehistoric mythology – where the forever immaculate goddesses give birth to the heroes from ears, nostrils, moths, armpits… until the great image of Mother Mary’s immaculate conception, her spotless sinless life was born and glorified by the church, literature, music and paintings that confirmed repeatedly Mother Mary immaculate and incomprehensible, and holy conception of The Savior of humanity Jesus Christ. Because otherwise neither we nor the gods will evolve or rise, if holiness of birth would be not confirmed against all odds… Do not start me listing these odds that try to overrule this most universal principle of holiness of life. You knew them by heart, wars, revolutions, poverty, partners are not equal socially (Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy”), too young for birthing, sinful conception, if mother was not married (Goethe’s Faust, Shakespearian bustards’ characters). The image of the Holy Virgin seems to address all of them defending life itself… maybe doing our part in this defense line starts with a simple thing – acceptance mother who gave us life!

Raise not to demand anything from your mother, but do not lift her image above the height established by the holy image of Mother Mary.

Recognize the effort to create a new body – put it above yourself, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Saint John and the other Gospel writers. Let her remain blameless, whatever she was, beautiful or ugly, thin or plump, rich or poor, clean or a filthy woman, smart or stupid, educated or uneducated, refined or a rude, called a whore, or exalted as a goddess. The time comes when you will let her go! She gave body to you, and now is your turn to give her freedom back. Acknowledge that charging her with this and that you are clinging to her, expecting to take care of you forever! Do not blame her, do not judge her, the only thing you have to do, is letting her go free! If you do so, you may discover that stopping judgment made you free as well! You are freer than ever! Your heart will open to the boundless love, universal love that suffices all, and to which no living soul is deprived… Let go of the mother’s hand, do not cling to it, when you shout to her, leave me in peace … And she will smile at you, and disappear, simply slip out from her secret life where you have no place and never will, because her life, her destiny is not yours … She gave your body, now honor her freedom. And you will get rid of terrible loneliness, from a painful condition to be misunderstood. Life will shine to you with all its wonderful and terrible colors – your life! And you will find in it the Creator, the one to whom you owe your existence!

While cleaning the sarcophagi from the church, someone accidentally pushed the jar, it fell and crashed, and the scarab disappeared.

The darkness begins to dissipate. I see Gogol in a white nightgown, with a rope around his neck being unhappy with himself, his life, his unfulfilled obligations. I’m calling the most strange and terrible of all his creatures, Viy, and I order him to remove this rope from Gogol’s neck. But this is not Viy who appears.

Jesus Christ appears in that church. He embraces Gogol. The light of Jesus Christ the Savior removes the dust of terrible sarcophagi from Gogol, the pain of the burial of dead and alive slaves, the otherworldly beautiful mother’s authority over him, his strange love for the ugly images from which the heroes of his “Dead Souls” are woven, the impossibility to open his spiritual heart to unconditional love to embrace the world as it is given to him, as it unfolds his destiny.

Christ touches his heart: the protective shell around Gogol’s spiritual heart breaks and the light pours out of his heart. Jesus takes him to Christianity as a brother, as a son, as a grandson, as a human being, as a child of Almighty God.

My chakras close themselves. The church rests in quietude. The words dry out. The quiet, peaceful light streams through the church cupola down on us washing away fear and restlessness.

For a medium turned into an untrained healer this was not an easy job. For the starters, I had to get rid from the feeling of exorbitant gravity that aroese automatically only thinking about the pyramids!  How to let go such images? I was advised in my mind to transfer the images of “real pyramids” into two-dimensional pictures — sketched, or painted, or photographed pyramids on any kind of paper, whatever – newspaper, photopaper, electronic screen image, illustrative images in books or magazines — whatever comes first into your mind. Then play with the pyramid, throw it in the air, turn the other side, make it bigger, smaller, color it into different colors… Finally , then set an imaginary bonfire into your room, and threw your imaginary pictures with pyramids into fire, and burn it to ashes, then put out the flames of your bonfire. It is important, because your mental images will attract a lot of similar images from the universe. When they accumulate enough, they will find a way to materialize.

The spontaneous cleansing continued until I saw the clean blue water, from which rises … an emerald green gentle hue, a very light and pure steam of cardiac energy. Was the Gogol’s spirit heart purified? Who was the healing angel who did the job using me for establishing contact with earth energies?

Now I found myself in the same empty church. The long evening sermon was still in progress. I saw a young handsome deacon. Maybe once, a forbidden gay love blossomed under the roof of this church, or it was shown to me for no reason at all. The Russian Orthodox Church choir’s singing was sweeter than ever.

The Golden Gates to the altar started to open. But in place of the altar, there was a mountain of sarcophagi … in some of them there were mummies, or rather, what was left of them after eons of undisturbed rest? I was looking for more scarabs, but was not able to detect them.  Do I need them to connect past and present times as  a symbol of eternal renewal of life through the power of motherhood?

The Internet article http://www.landofpyramids.org/khepri.htm explain:

“The life of the scarab beetle revolved around the dung balls that were eaten by the beetles, they laid their eggs in the dung balls, and fed their young on the content. The dung ball of the scarab. When the eggs hatched, the scarab beetle would appear from nowhere to be a symbol of spontaneous creation, resurrection, and transformation.”

The image of motherhood, mother, too close to be compared with anything, and completely incomprehensible to understand, is too often inspiring fear, guilt and sometimes pure madness! Here it is, this thin and impenetrable veil around the heart, the veil of fear of the incomprehensibility of earthly motherhood. There is a desire to be accepted by the simple earthly life, and clear understanding that it is impossible without the plunge into the vulgarity of existence what leads to the eternal question “to be or not to be?” Or it would be safer to escape back to the astral life, as soon as possible. Or this problem can be resolved by developing aversion toward a woman, or women who once offered him eternal love demanding confirmations in form of forced vows and promises. Can these vows be broken, or can this way bought freedom be marred by guilt and faintheartedness forever?

How to accept being a reject for all these governors’ spouses, their daughters* wearing so provincial pink bows all over their dresses and coiffures? How to tolerate being a refuse in the eyes of all these invincible whores and prostitutes, whose spirit cannot be broken, as they do not have one, or it seems so! Is the suffering for broken vows to carry flames of the eternal love through eons justified? Maybe Scarab has been mistaken, and motherhood does not stand for spirituality at all, as it stands literally for making new bodies for renewal life? So they say! I think that new bodies are too often made for suffering called evolvement! I hope to be wrong!

Probably, only the idea of immaculate conception can solve this riddle … And was it our church that has established this image? Or it stemmed from the deep – from the prehistoric mythology – where the forever immaculate goddesses give birth to the heroes from ears, nostrils, moths, armpits… until the great image of Mother Mary’s immaculate conception, her spotless sinless life was born and glorified by the church, literature, music and paintings that confirmed repeatedly Mother Mary immaculate and incomprehensible, and holy conception of The Savior of humanity Jesus Christ. Because otherwise neither we nor the gods will evolve or rise, if holiness of birth would be not confirmed against all odds… Do not start me listing these odds that try to overrule this most universal principle of holiness of life. You knew them by heart, wars, revolutions, poverty, partners are not equal socially (Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy”), too young for birthing, sinful conception, if mother was not married (Goethe’s Faust, Shakespearian bustards’ characters). The image of the Holy Virgin seems to address all of them defending life itself… maybe doing our part in this defense line starts with a simple thing – acceptance mother who gave us life!

Raise not to demand anything from your mother, but do not lift her image above the height established by the holy image of Mother Mary.

Recognize the effort to create a new body – put it above yourself, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Saint John and the other Gospel writers. Let her remain blameless, whatever she was, beautiful or ugly, thin or plump, rich or poor, clean or a filthy woman, smart or stupid, educated or uneducated, refined or a rude, called a whore, or exalted as a goddess. The time comes when you will let her go! She gave body to you, and now is your turn to give her freedom back. Acknowledge that charging her with this and that you are clinging to her, expecting to take care of you forever! Do not blame her, do not judge her, the only thing you have to do, is letting her go free! If you do so, you may discover that stopping judgment made you free as well! You are freer than ever! Your heart will open to the boundless love, universal love that suffices all, and to which no living soul is deprived… Let go of the mother’s hand, do not cling to it, when you shout to her, leave me in peace … And she will smile at you, and disappear, simply slip out from her secret life where you have no place and never will, because her life, her destiny is not yours … She gave your body, now honor her freedom. And you will get rid of terrible loneliness, from a painful condition to be misunderstood. Life will shine to you with all its wonderful and terrible colors – your life! And you will find in it the Creator, the one to whom you owe your existence!

While cleaning the sarcophagi from the church, someone accidentally pushed the jar, it fell and crashed, and the scarab disappeared.

The darkness begins to dissipate. I see Gogol in a white nightgown, with a rope around his neck being unhappy with himself, his life, his unfulfilled obligations. I’m calling the most strange and terrible of all his creatures, Viy, and I order him to remove this rope from Gogol’s neck. But this is not Viy who appears.

Jesus Christ appears in that church. He embraces Gogol. The light of Jesus Christ the Savior removes the dust of terrible sarcophagi from Gogol, the pain of the burial of dead and alive slaves, the otherworldly beautiful mother’s authority over him, his strange love for the ugly images from which the heroes of his “Dead Souls” are woven, the impossibility to open his spiritual heart to unconditional love to embrace the world as it is given to him, as it unfolds his destiny.

Christ touches his heart: the protective shell around Gogol’s spiritual heart breaks and the light pours out of his heart. Jesus takes him to Christianity as a brother, as a son, as a grandson, as a human being, as a child of Almighty God.

My chakras close themselves. The church rests in quietude. The words dry out. The quiet, peaceful light streams through the church cupola down on us washing away fear and restlessness.