Published: H. Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. – Moscow: ICR, 2000. 5-40. (Big Roerich Library).

THE FIERY CREATIVE WORK OF COSMIC EVOLUTION

But, as it is said, the Invisible will become visible, and we shall be ready to receive fiery baptism in life. So let us see the significance of the experience performed by the Agni Yoga Mother here, without leaving life. From the first spacious sparks through all fires until Samadha, she will leave traces that will lie as the threshold of the New World.

The Heart, 210

I

Shrilly green openings through the cloud-covered sky. The depressingly straight line of the earthly horizon, rising above the flat plane of the desert. And above all this, a flying, sparkling ellipse of the Way and a winged figure of a man stretching out its thin arms in despair and yearning toward this already fading shimmer connecting Heaven and Earth. The figure towers on the edge of a stepped altar whose mirror surfaces reflect the starry sky. It is reflected, it is not present in reality. Two plumes of smoke, white and black, one of which soars up into the sky, and the other, heavily and inevitably, sinks down onto the earth. And this other one catches the snow-white wings of the figure on the altar, leaving on them dark, streaming splotches and lying on them with black inexorable earthly signs. Here, in the small space of the painting, a sacrament is taking place, maybe, the most important one since the appearance of man on Earth.

The earth and the Heaven. Eternal gravitation and eternal repulsion, and a fragile man between them, so seemingly insignificant and feeble, but in reality strong, capable himself of uniting this Heaven and this Earth and establishing between them the harmony so needed by them, creating it, first of all, in himself.

The painting was called “Sacrifice” and was painted by Lithuanian artist M. Tchurlenis. The painter was a strange man, and many people did not understand his canvases. They even considered him crazy. Maybe this was because the artist saw something that the others did not see. He lived a short and difficult life, but left us amazing paintings. An incredible world is on them, both resembling and not resembling ours, with strange colors and forms. A subtle and transparent world. Strange music sounds in it gently and enticingly, like the chime of little crystal bells. It bears the mystery of the Universe.

The unusual painter’s path in Time and Space crossed the path of another equally amazing person. The fact that this happened at all seems significant and mysterious. This second person was a woman living at that time in Saint Petersburg. An ultramundane world, real and unreal, usually came to her in her dreams. Then it as if separated from dream and became reality, similar to a vision. Already in childhood she understood that that strange world’s time was different, it was as if the Past, Present, and Future existed in it simultaneously. And sometimes it seemed to her that she – and at the same time it was not she – once had passed a long way through centuries and countries, the memory of which, awoken by someone mysterious and intangible, was now coming back to life in her.

Now a tall figure of a man in white appears at the background of an apple tree in blossoms in a morning garden, then it becomes gradually blurred, as if dissolving into the air. And from somewhere, from the very depth of her entity, a reminiscence rises that, somewhere far away, there lives the Teacher of Light. [1].

Once, when the girl was sick, she saw two tall people with dark faces, in turbans. They sat down on her bed, and one of them pulled a silver thread from her heart, and the other one was wound it onto a ball.

After that, the Teacher of Light came again, and they walked together in the garden. The Teacher was talking about the sufferings and calamities of mankind, about struggle and compassion for the miserable.

When she was already a mother of two sons, that Light Boy appeared who again reminded her of the Teacher of Light: “the room started to be filled with bluish light, a kind of bright moonlight. All objects standing behind a thick mirror-screen became visible, at that, the screen itself, remaining thick, acquired transparency. From the window on the opposite wall and at a considerable distance from my bed, a thin and light figure of a Beautiful Boy of about nine years old in softly shining white clothing with blue shadows in its folds became distinguishable; a large broad segment of a circle of very subtle iridescent Light was shining above him. The boy, as if sliding in the air along the wall, was approaching me [ . . . ] Absolutely striking were His eyes: huge, of deep and dark blueness, and closely looking at me. [ . . . ] When the Boy moved closer to the head of my bed and bent a little bit to look better into my eyes, the feeling of growing affinity and love turned into ecstasy of acute comprehension that My grief was His grief and My happiness was His happiness, and a wave of immense love for Him and for all flooded my entity. A thought glimmered that this kind of state cannot be encompassed on earth; consequently, this was a transfer into another existence [ . . . ] It is impossible to determine how long this state lasted. When it began to subside, I opened my eyes, but everything had already disappeared, and the room was plunged into almost absolute darkness, except for a small slit between the window curtains.” [2].

Sometimes moments came when it seemed that time shifted somewhere into the past and that in all its reality and tangibility, it intruded into her everyday, routine life, as if coming from some mysterious, non-being hidden in the millenniums and then going back to there again. And she entered into that life concealed in velvet folds of other times and spaces, acted in it, and sensed it. Later, this “entrance” echoed with pain that turned into heavy, hopeless sorrow.

Pictures changed one into another. Now she was in Germany, she walked in an ancient castle and saw a man at the table in one of the rooms. There were drawings and instruments on the table. The man had long chestnut hair and a wide velvet waistcoat trimmed with fur. Then the castle disappeared and dissolved together with the man, and there appeared temples decorated with stone carvings, towers with ancient inscriptions, and a procession of Indians in white turbans.

A staircase with wide landings appeared. “Everything is flooded with golden light. On the top landing, in long clothes, all in very small pleats, and with upswept hair, I am standing, my silhouette standing out against the general golden background. Before me, on the next landing underneath, a tripod stands, there is a dark ornately shaped bronze bowl on it, incense is smokes inside it” [3].

Saddled Arab racers are impatiently stomping; white elephants, their backs covered with gold-weaved blankets, are thoughtfully waving their trunks; and there stands a slim, willowy ruler to whom she stretches out her little son.

There is a vast hall whose whole center is occupied by a table with various viands. And here, in this hall, she awaits execution. They will cut off her head. “At the main inner entrance, guests and courtiers in luxurious clothes are swarming. The castle Owner in a silver brocade waistcoat with blue velvet slits and an ostrich-plume on a small beret in the Francisco I style approaches the table in the middle of the hall and sits down. Next to him, my mother, this Duke’s close relative, is sitting; my seat is at the same table, but my chair is not there any more”. [4]. She is met with irritation and mockery. A servant carrying a dish spills sauce onto her.

Costumes and epochs changed, castles disappeared, nomads’ tents arose, snowy Russian fields went away, and the land of India, scorched with the hot sun, appeared.

And only one mysterious man from these visions appeared more often than anybody else. The first time it was in 1910.

…In a marble Italian palazzo, she opened the door into her room where “on the wall opposite the bed, there was a high clock with a pendulum in the cabinet. She looked at that clock and saw the cabinet door opening and a slightly shining figure of a knight in silver armor appearing from the depths. The knight, looking at her, clearly uttered: “Conrad Rudendorf” – and disappeared” [5]. This is how her first meeting passed with the one who would follow her until the 20th century, and who, in a Jesuit’s cassock, would want to get hold of the Stone given to her by the Great Teacher. From scanty hints contained in her notes and in the stories told by the Teacher, it is hard to understand what was that mysterious character of her visions who later acquired quite real dimensions in her real life. One thing can be said, that he was an important man, taking a keen interest in energies, most probably destructive, and he appeared only when her historical life, its smooth current having been disturbed, was drawn to Those who led her along the way of cosmic evolution. He started interfering with her life, giving her to understand that not everything goes smoothly along this path, and even a high hierarchal spirit who has approached the Earth will not avoid difficulties and opposition. This knight in silver armor, possessing a strong enough ray, would later interfere with the Teacher in his experimental work with her as well. And, like in a suspense novel, time would snatch out from the non-being of medieval Europe another mysterious picture. Time showed the streaming cloak of a galloping horseman trying at whatever cost to capture the one who was already approaching the monastery gate. There, behind the strong walls, the Great Mystery of new energy was to disappear, energy, whose time – and he knew about it – had not yet come. But destruction is good for all times. He was already conceitedly grinning, absolutely sure that a few more leaps of the horse, and he, rushing along the drawbridge, would stand between her and the gate. And the long-craved formula would be at last in his hands. But at the last moment, the drawbridge suddenly began to go up, and the horse, who had reared to overcome the empty space in one leap, suddenly stood still, as if some unknown force arose in its way. The horseman spurred the horse on, but the spurs just helplessly slid along stone. He could not believe his eyes – the horse had turned into stone. And at the same time, on the other side of the monastery’s moat, the heavy wrought-iron gate was closing behind the escaper inevitably and irrevocably. Dazed and still not quite believing what had happened, he slipped down from the stone horse and, powerless, fell down onto the grass. He was again defeated in the struggle with the one whom the Fate had destined to him for eternal opposition, for endless competition before the Face of the Higher Power.

The Cosmos and the planet are supported by contrapositions – this is what the Great Law determined. In the heavy and solid world of the Earth, contrapositions get into a battle giving birth to energies necessary for ascent. On the Heights, contrapositions as if supplement each other, and these supplemented dialectics produce the harmony of synthesis and the movement of the Great Powers…

She lived and acted on the Earth, passing through an endless number of earthly lives and incarnations, and Conrad Rudendorf was destined to her as the manifestation of this Great Law here, on this Earth. For it is said: “it is the same both overhead and below.”

The Universe is a grandiose, spiritualized energetic system, and man is just one of many structures in it, who is closely related to the others and interacts with them. The High Teachers talked about this in their conversations with her and in their “transmissions.” They created a new energetic world outlook, which was so needed by the crucial 20th century. This world outlook, the Teachers warned, just as any other, will be accepted with great difficulties. Disapproval and the lack of understanding will accompany it.

The books that she formed in the result of those conversations and transmissions are called Agni Yoga or The Living Ethics. They tell that the energetic system of the Universe lives and develops in accordance with the Great Laws of the Cosmos, such as the Law of Karma, or cause and effect relations, the Law of the Correspondence of Form and Energy, the Law of Cosmic Collaboration, the Law of the Harmony of Two Elements, and many others. The vital activity of the Cosmos is supported by the energetic exchange among the various structures that constitute it. The cosmic evolution of mankind is, in its essence, an energetic process based on the same energetic exchange. This is the main driving power of evolution. In our three-dimensional world, energetic exchange happens along three directions: horizontal – exchange with all and with everybody located on the planet’s surface, vertical – exchange with cosmic bodies, the Sun, planets, Zodiac star clusters, etc. And, finally, if it can be so stated, in-depth exchange, or exchange with worlds of other dimensions and other states of matter, elements of which are also laid in man.

Such energetic exchange results in quantitative and qualitative accumulations of energy that raise the energetic potential of man, the nation, the country, the planet and create further possibilities for their evolutionary advancement. Man can pass through the evolution “corridor” either as this evolutionary object or as its subject. The distance between these concepts is great. But it is within this distance between the object and subject that very important energetic processes take place, starting from the process of the improvement of man and ending with his formation as an entity affecting the energetics of evolution itself and striving for reaching the position of a Cosmic Hierarch, or God-Man. An object of evolution passes through such a “corridor” as if automatically, using its energetics but, as a rule, without being aware of this circumstance. And a subject acts consciously and purposefully, in accordance with the evolutionary plan that he is quite capable to comprehend. A most important role in the process of an object of evolution turning into its subject is played by each one’s level of consciousness. Consciousness is, in the long run, an energetic category that is formed under the influence of the cosmic processes in man himself.

A subject of evolution, consciously entering into interaction with various energetic processes in the Cosmos, can either consciously contribute to the evolution or interfere with it. This interaction or management of evolution itself is a most complicated creative process of which the High Entities are capable, and which always has, if it is possible to put it this way, an experimental, scientific character. As man cognizes the unknown, a Cosmic Hierarch does the same, but at a different level.

It so happened that, at the end of the 20th century, our planet and the humanity living on it approached a new evolutionary turn. The Living Ethics books note this turn’s main features: new energies approach the planet, the growth of the interaction of worlds of other dimensions with our solid world, man’s efficient handling of psychic energy, the intensive interaction with energetic structures of the Cosmos and the expansion of energetic and informational exchange with them, the increase of the level of synthesis of matter and spirit, and, finally, the formation of a new, higher and more refined species of mankind, the sixth species, or the sixth race (our race is the fifth).

Helena Roerich’s studies “Dreams and Visions,” “Fiery Experience,” “Diary Pages,” “Cosmologic Notes,” “Study of the Properties of Man,” and, finally, her letters to head of the New York Nicholas Roerich Museum Z. G. Fosdic, constitute unique material covering that creative evolutionary process in which the Cosmic Hierarchs interacted with Helena Roerich, who played in that process a most important and determinant role; without her, this creation would not have been possible. Helena Roerich gives us the possibility to become witnesses of the unique cosmic action through which she went herself, breaking open the road for earthly humanity to the heights of the Cosmos, the heights of the spirit, and the higher forms of matter. She gives us the possibility to comprehend for ourselves the complicated and difficult way that was passed by her, an earthly woman. This way is filled with physical and spiritual sufferings, but was so needed by all of us. There is always someone who brings Fire to mankind…

The high and the low, the Earth and Heaven, small and large dimensions, high and low vibrations of matter and spirit, subtle and solid worlds, evolution and involution – this is a far-from-complete list of what is encountered by those who participate in the grandiose drama of cosmic creation. The difficulty is, first of all, that, in the whole and rich palette of Cosmic evolution, it is first necessary to find that single and unique energetic point from which evolutionary creation begins.

On October 31, 1913, on an early, murky morning, Helena Roerich had an unforgettable dream. “The wall disappeared, and a red and pink sphere opened before me, in the middle was a wide and high staircase narrowing upwards in perspective; its top was drowning in pink light. On both sides of this staircase, on each step, groups of people in clothes of the same cut were standing. At the bottom of the staircase, there were groups in red clothes with ugly black spots on their faces and garments. On the next steps, the spots gradually became fewer, and, in the course of further advancement upward, both the people and their garments became lighter, and, at the top, they already merged with the pure pink light.

“At the very top of the staircase, a giant, beautiful figure in red clothes with a dark cloak thrown over its shoulder became outlined. The figure had beautiful features and long, black hair down to its shoulders. This image was sweepingly rushing downstairs, his dark cloak streaming like wings, but, at the very bottom, he was stopped by a barrier that had as if grown before him, and he leaned on her in complete exhaustion, and the waves of his dark hair were hanging incredibly beautifully, and the folds of his clothes lay beautifully, too.

“I turned to the opposite wall, but the same phenomenon happened here as well, the wall disappeared, instead of it appeared a shining iridescent sphere. The same staircase was in the middle, and its top was drowning in sunlight. The same things were on both its sides and on each step. At the bottom, at the stairs’ beginning, their clothes looked bluish, but in the course of ascent, they themselves and their clothes become lighter, acquired a silver shade, merging with the glowing light on the top. Just as in the first sphere, on the very top, at the background of dazzling sunlight, a Majestic Image was outlined; it was impossible to see the face because of the light, but my heart’s consciousness prompted me that this was the Image of Christ.

“Slowly, terribly slowly, He starts to go down stretching out his hands to the sides, now his right one, now his left one, and touching the groups of standing people. At this touch, spurts of flames flash up above the people’s heads; each group has its own color, and all these lights make a rainbow of the most subtle shades.

“I look at this beauty with admiration; suddenly, a whirl catches me, my mourning clothes (after my mother’s death) are left behind, and I, in pale clothes, am lifted to the bottom of the staircase and placed among the lower group of people. I am agonizingly waiting – will Christ reach me, will he touch me, and what fire will flame up above my head? And Christ does reach me, he stretches out his right hand, and, in ecstasy, I feel, I realize, that a flame broke forth from the top of my head and lit up with blue and silver Fire” [6]. The Fire of the High Entity.

This picture-vision carried in itself a deep philosophic meaning. It testified that each cosmic phenomenon always contains two elements, two contrapositions: Christ, shining with light and goodness, and another entity, opposite to him. Each of these has its way and its stairs of ascent and descent. These ways pass through the Cosmos, through worlds of different dimensions. The solid world is at the beginning of the way, or at the staircase’s bottom. This staircase linking Heaven and the Earth into a single energetic system contains another important meaning. It is possible to go up it and to go down; for evolution and involution are also two contrapositions that only exist together. The energetic situation in the Cosmos is such that there is no evolution without involution. Evolution starts with involution in both a general and a particular sense. We speak often about evolution, but we either do not at all mention involution, or we understand it extremely limitedly – as a fall, as the inability to hold onto a certain step of ascent, and as descent to a lower level. We do not take into account the dialectics of the interaction of evolution and involution in its broad cosmic sense, do not take into consideration this interaction’s energetic version. Without involution, there is no evolution – this is the truth, without acceptance of which it is difficult or just impossible to comprehend the essence of evolution’s energetics. To make it possible for any evolution to start, a fiery spark must enter or descend into inert matter. For the spirit it is involution, for matter – the beginning of evolution. There are many such “beginnings,” for each step of evolution has its own type of matter and its own frequency of the spirit’s vibration. And each time at the transition to a new turn of ascent, the involutionary impulse will be repeated; in other words, a particular spark of the spirit will enter its own matter, and this spark, with its energy and its frequency of vibration, will create a difference of potentials of the two main contrapositions necessary for the energy of the ascent’s work. The interaction of involution and evolution creates the necessary conditions for the ascent. But what is the spark of the spirit? It is known that the spirit as such does not exist in nature in a free state. And that is why this spark’s role, as a rule, is performed by a High Entity. To make matter of a world of a lower state acquire the ability for further evolution and further advancement, a High Entity, or a Cosmic Hierarch, needs to descend, that is, to enter involution. The vision that appeared before Helena Roerich’s eyes reflected through understandable and bright images this most important and most complicated moment in cosmic evolution. As you remember, Christ slowly goes down, passing those who have already reached a certain step of ascent. He is heading to the place at the staircase’s bottom where stand those who have not yet risen to the necessary step. There were not yet those lights above them with which those who had risen were shining. Helena Roerich found herself standing at the bottom of the stairs. Christ stretched out his hand, and a fire flamed up above her that was so needed by those standing next to her. A Great Sacrament of Cosmic evolution took place, and her early unprecedented creation started.

A subject of evolution, a High Entity, a Cosmic Hierarch, or a Great Soul, as they say in India, after having completed the cycle of its earthly incarnations, can continue to ascend into the Higher Worlds. But some of them, having mastered the energetic mechanisms of evolution, voluntarily return to the Earth again to start a new stage, or a new turn, of the Cosmic evolution of mankind using a spark of their spirit. Sacrificing themselves, consciously accepting involution, they lay the basis for the evolution of mankind. It is difficult to say now how this conscious will of a High Entity is realized. What are the objective and subjective issues playing the main roles in such a selection? This mystery is still unrevealed to us. In returning to the heavy and unorganized world of the Earth, a Great Soul brings that Great Energy that Lithuanian artist-visionary Tchurlenis so expressively and precisely depicted on his painting. Christ, whom they also justly call the Savior, imbued with his spiritual energy a whole epoch that would be two thousand years long. It encompassed the peak and then the decline of the fifth race. “When Christ,” Helena Roerich would write much later, “was tortured on the crucifix, who understood that the old world had ended, a new dawn had already lit up, and a new God had soared above the Earth?” [7]. Did she realize when she was writing these lines that it was she, as a High Cosmic Hierarch, who was to carry out a similar mission? Crucified between the two worlds, the solid and the Fiery, did she remember that blue and silver light that Christ ignited above her head, with it passing along to her, a woman, all the burden and drama of the evolutionary mission?

The Teachers who dictated to her the Agni Yoga books spoke about the arrival of the epoch of the Mother of the World, about a new evolutionary turn that will be imbued with female energy, about the fact that women will play the main role in the creation of the forthcoming New World. That New World, where the sixth energetic type of mankind will be formed, was to be so unlike, in terms of its abilities and energies, the representatives of ours, the fifth type. She voluntarily came back to the Earth to clear the road to this sixth race and create for it a new energetic evolutionary corridor. She was standing on the threshold of this New World, carrying in herself new and old energies, creating in herself, a person of the fifth race, a new person of the sixth race. Without this creation, the sixth race would not be possible. Its weak sprouts, which started to appear on the Earth in the 1940s, could perish without such energetic support and inflow.

But there was in her path something that made it different it from the way of Christ. Christ was a God-Man on earth who remained a Son of God. And though His bare feet, those of a preacher and wonder-worker, stepped onto the sinful earth, it seemed that its solid heaviness did not touch Him. Its Divine Hypostasis directed Him to Heaven, where other and distant worlds opened to Him. He told his disciples of the amazing beauty of the ultramundane Worlds. He was a Son of Heaven in terms of both the superterranean beauty that filled him and the way he lived and what he said.

She, however, was facing a different, absolutely new task. An earthly woman living a usual life, she was to as if through herself lower this Heaven onto earth to make the latter better, subtler, and more energetic. This was required by the new stage of evolution. It is in this way that the Earth could touch Heaven and come into contact with other worlds, contact that was so needed by it for further advancement. And Helena Roerich was to attract Higher energies, Higher powers to the Earth exhausted by the regular violation of all Cosmic laws. Only this could save the planet, could take it away from the inevitable catastrophe. “Creative work,” we read in one of the Agni Yoga books, “manifests itself in all, and the expectant energies find their use either in other cycles or in other worlds and forms.

“Thus the Agni Yoga fire creates its own forms, transmuting the powers around itself. Thus Tara [H. Roerich. – L. Sh.] drives the current and directs the Hand Creation of the New step” [8]. And more: “Agni Yoga is established as a direct relationship with distant worlds. [ . . . ] Thus the carrier of the “Bowl of Secret Fire” will give our planet fiery purification. Thus the creation of psycho-spirituality is laid in the New step. When Cosmic magnetic power asserts the manifestation of lights, then it will be possible to say that New Time is approaching” [9].

On the planet Earth in the 20th century, on the threshold of its new evolutionary turn, an evolutionary experiment was starting, which was, for the first time in the history of mankind, scientifically described and comprehended.

The experiment was conducted by the Cosmic Hierarchs, those subjects of evolution who could affect it and could manage it strictly within the framework of the Great Cosmic Laws. They stood on different steps of cosmic evolution and were at different distances from the Earth. But on the Earth, below, having made her Great Sacrifice, she remained, the Russian woman Helena Roerich, wife and mother, on whom the fate of the cosmic evolution of the planet Earth now depended. But only the people closest to her knew about it at that time. And there were only a few people who understood that with the beginning of her torturous experiment, the dawn of the New World lit up above the planet. But no new God rose above it. It was her, a Cosmic Hierarch and a Great Teacher, who stood above the Earth…

“Urusvati, the One who led cosmic creation [H. Roerich – L. Sh.] wrote, will manifest the Earth’s unification with heaven. Urusvati will manifest the measure of beauty as a symphony of spheres. Urusvati will manifest a ray of Light penetrating through walls. Urusvati will manifest a Shield showing the flow of Luminaries. Urusvati will manifest the flight of the arrows of the spirit. Urusvati will manifest the cognition of the solidness of matter on the spirit’s desire. Urusvati will manifest the emptiness of thought not ignited by spirit, for Our way is the way of the Earth to the Palace of implementation” [10]. And in the same place again: “Now, new understanding of the earthly way to Heaven is growing. The temple can only be asserted by way of the Earth. When the load of the Temple’s stones from the spirit lies down onto the Earth, All of Us will sigh. Urusvati senses. Urusvati knows. Urusvati will manifest. Urusvati is manifested to ignite the miracle on Earth. Urusvati needs to weave a pure cover of Our Shield, so I say: ‘do not interfere with Our Urusvati!’” [11].

These two fragments from “Fiery Experience” contain all the principal points: the specifics of the planet’s present stage of Cosmic evolution, the goals before Helena Roerich, who agreed to a torturous and painful experiment, and, finally, those achievements that the labor of the Cosmic Hierarch will bring to the Earth, the Cosmic Hierarch who was placed under difficult earthly conditions toward the purpose of their change.

She agreed to a usual earthly incarnation without any concessions to the forthcoming hardships and sufferings. The experiment has to be “pure.” The quality of that New World on whose threshold all was taking place depended on this “purity.” It is they, the Hierarchs and Great Teachers, who watched her development in childhood, encouraged her dreams and visions through which she cognized herself and everything that was related to her. They held their Shield above her, trying to protect her from unnecessary accidents and to facilitate her life. They could not protect her from only one thing – the lack of understanding by the people close to her and surrounding her. These people did not believe in that which she saw and heard. Her main Teacher and Tutor, a Hierarch of a high degree, led her from childhood to her last days. It was He who many years ago was standing under the tree in the morning garden, it was He who connected her heart with his by a silver thread and then came to her in the image of a Light Boy. And He gave her the idea of that grandiose Cosmic task that she would later fulfill.

“The period of the age of forty,” Helena Roerich wrote, “established itself upon a new achievement in the approach to the Tutor and the Teaching of Light. The Tutor first showed up as a Hindu, but when his pupil’s consciousness expanded and learned to encompass, the Beautiful Image started to gradually change and took, finally, the Magnificent Image of Cosmic significance – the Lord of Wisdom and Beauty, the Lord of Sacred Shambhala.

“Together with the expansion of consciousness, a new possibility appeared for approach to the Secret knowledge and reception of Fiery Experience, and finally, participation in Cosmic construction and collaboration with the Great Tutor, the Lord of Light.” [12].

Her unique notes on the “Cosmic construction,” which she called “Fiery Experience,” refer to 1924, when the Roerichs lived in Darjeeling and were getting ready for the Central Asian expedition. The considerable evolutionary charge of the relationship in space and time that appeared between the Cosmic experiment itself and the planned expedition whose considerable evolutionary charge is confirmed by another time, and its mystery has not yet been revealed to the full.

When starting direct evolutionary creation, the Great Teacher tried to explain to Helena Roerich its essence and those difficulties that are encountered and would be encountered along her path. “The construction of a new world does not go so easily. Abolished centers attempt to hinder the efforts of the new ones. New memory is formed. We shall go through thunderstorms and rainfall” [13].

“Our work,” He said, “is divided into three sectors. The first one is the search for improvements on the earthly plane. The second is the search for the delivery of these results to the people. The third is the search for methods of communication with the Worlds.” [14].

She participated in the formation of all three stages, and in each of those, her energetics, her pain and suffering were present. It was easy to speak and write about all this. To do is “unearthly difficult,” as she wrote herself in one of her letters. Probably it was she who like nobody else understood the significance of the Earth in this cosmic creation, and, having passed through all, having cognized the high Truth with “human hands and human feet,” she would write later: “But on the Earth, like in a Furnace, various energies collide, are attracted, and are transformed through purification and transmutation into more perfect, or subtle, energy under the influence of the fire of the awakened spirit. From such collisions and the unexpected combination of various energies, new energies are born, carrying new creation, new possibilities. The Earth is a place of trial, redemption, and great creative work. It is the place of the Last Judgment, for selection takes place here. Remember [ . . . ] that only on Earth can we acquire and assimilate new energies and renovate the composition of our energies” [15].

This was the new creative concept of Cosmic Hierarchs. First of all came the Earth, which was used as a support for the relegation of Higher energies on it. Only in this way is it possible to transform the earthly world’s solid matter, having refined it and raised its energetic potential. The Teacher called this process “touching Heaven on Earth” [16]. Not to depart from life, not to depart from the Earth…

“The high Directive is to manifest Communication without disturbing the conditions of life,” He said [17]. The revolving of cosmic creation was new and unusual. It was the ruining of former traditional spiritual elaborations of mankind and called for new heights. A stage of evolution’s acceleration came, and the evolutionary corridor already started to narrow. Acceleration required new conceptual approaches, new methods. Concealed from us by Cosmic mysteries and our own ignorance, the Science of the universe, spirit and matter itself, not knowing limits or borders, was being created and developed. The amazing and fantastic creation of spiritualized matter was taking place; in endless synthesis it was giving birth to energetic flashes of evolutionary illuminations. The discovery of new worlds for the Earth and on the Earth was taking place. The Earth was equipped for the new way to the New World and New Man. And, like a spell, the Cosmic Hierarchs’ words sounded, addressed to the One who took upon herself the whole earthly burden of the experiment: “Help Us, help Us, help Us on all ways. We are creating a new link between the Earth and Heaven” [18].

There is no need to describe here the whole course of the grandiose cosmic experience. Cosmic Hierarchs’ rays, like fine surgical instruments, formed Helena Roerich’s new energetics, in which the Earth interwove with worlds of other states of matter and other dimensions. And, first of all, it interwove with the Fiery World, the creation of the world of the spirit, without which neither the renovation of the Earth, nor the new evolutionary step toward which the spiritualized Cosmos was striving would be possible. At each step of such creation, unique difficulties, unique dangers arose. At one of the stages, the Creators understood that “the rays can pass into waves of fire burning the centers’ mantle” [19]. In such a case, a mortal danger for Helena Roerich herself appeared. It was possible to follow another path: transmission by way of accumulation without ignition. But then the principle of Beauty, which is created on the fiery base, would be excluded. The Hierarchs understood that “now it is not possible to move without beauty. Anything can be endured to preserve the basis of beauty… The phenomenon of fire must be preserved, otherwise the fire of the spirit could burn senselessly” [20].

We cannot yet know how They settled this problem of protecting the mantles of Helena Roerich’s centers and preserving the fiery phenomenon of Beauty. She literally passed on the razor’s edge. What it cost her, only she knows.

Sometimes she experienced enormous energetic overloads. Channels of communication were broken through one by one.

The channel of communication with the Teacher, the sensation of His Channel had existed for a long time and was customary. But cosmic creation, the preparation of a new step of evolution, required her communication with all Hierarchs who were located in the energetic center of the planet that was called in different ways: Brotherhood, Shambhala, the Sacred Country. The energy of their rays was intensive and sometimes caused pain in the whole body.

It is then that through a newly opened channel of communication, information on the internal life of the Brotherhood started appearing, from which she later formed a book and gave it the name “Superterrestial.” In 1946 in one of her letters to America, she would as if summarize what she had committed: “For the forthcoming Epoch will also raise the curtain above the Superterrestrial World. Many things will become obvious and accessible to earthly sensations [ . . . ] The borders between the spiritual and the material, between the earthly and the superterrestrial will start to be gradually erased, and people, still living the earthly life, will consciously prepare their purpose in the Superterrestrial World. And earthly life itself will not be a senseless fragment, but will become conscious creative work, fulfillment, and the application of the undertaken task in both the worlds!” [21].

The Earth was rapidly moving toward a new evolutionary stage, and as if from somewhere far away, the Teacher’s voice wafted: “My House is now in a Desert to where We are going for the construction of a New Epoch” [22].

Information on the Brotherhood, which we see in the materials of the collected edition, is new and unexpected and reveals not very well known aspects of its activities. Before, we knew about the Brotherhood life from myths and legends. The new channel gave the opportunity to discover information on its real life, resembling and not resembling our earthly one.

“Beside low flowers, My garden is full with long and spreading plants. When there are any doubts about the weather, many plants are taken inside. And there are flowers on the staircase cornices, and the old gardener takes away expired plants [ . . . ] A reddish-yellow tower is connected by passages with the rest of the structure. From a distance the structures can be taken for rocks carven by time, sloping a little. The windows on the external walls can be taken for birds’ nests. The surrounding desert is virgin. A wanderer often passes without suspecting anything, but is surprised at his horse’s or camel’s behavior. Animals turn their heads toward the lifeless stones and even try to turn to where heaps of stones seem to be piled. Some riders even see the inscriptions on the walls, but, of course, they take them for worm holes. Of course, an unexpected wanderer will be always taken aback. Everyone senses something. But a desert inhabitant is used to the voices and lights of the desert” [23].

Before Helena Roerich visited the Brotherhood, having undergone appropriate preparation, they showed her its Museum, a unique collection of exhibits telling about our planet’s cosmic evolution. There, within the strong walls of the Sacred Country’s Towers, there was the Stone, one of the most mysterious phenomena on Earth.

“The Stone rests on a pillow that lies on a marble base and is separated by a circle of the metal Lithium. There, after the rhythm, we silently imbue the space. This Storage lies deep, and many people do not suspect how, while they sleep, the White Brotherhood descends along the galleries for its night vigil” [24]. This “night vigil” is precisely and expressively depicted by Nicholas Roerich in the painting ‘The Treasure of the Mountains.’ We see the cave hidden deep under the ground, huge grains of mountain crystal, mysterious golden light pouring on figures in long light garments, a Bowl with a flame in the hands of the Head, and a vaguely outlined object on a “marble base.” “Night vigil” is a very important energetic action bringing the planet’s rhythm in correspondence with the Cosmic Magnet. The Stone’s energetic rhythm is the rhythm of the Cosmic Magnet, or the Heart of our Universe, which is located in the realm of the Orion star cluster. Helena Roerich’s energetics was correlated with the rhythms of the Cosmic Magnet through this Stone. Otherwise, the experiment would not have taken place. “When centers can reflect flamingly the will of the Cosmic Magnet, one of the Agni Yoga books says, then the psychodynamics of the spirit connect the Higher planes with the planet” [25].

The Cosmic Magnet’s breath, or rhythm, determines the conception and death of the Universes. That is why any cosmic creation must take place in its own manner, otherwise it will not bring desirable results. In the Stone, the Teacher said, “a particle of Great Breath is contained, part of Orion’s soul. I have shown the Stone’s essence. I have pointed at the Treasure of the Great Spirit. Urusvati, the Stone must be added to your entity. The Stone, being by your side, will become assimilated with your rhythm, and through the Orion star cluster, will consolidate links with its destined way” [26].

This time, evolution handed the Stone, or the Treasure of the World, to a woman. For, a blue star of the Mother of the World was rising above the new stage in cosmic evolution, and the New World was beginning with a name of a woman.

The main stage of the cosmic experiment, despite all difficulties and dangers, was successfully completed in the middle of 1924. On the second of June, the Teacher’s excited voice sounded above the planet: “Chr[ist] has ignited blue fire. Chr[ist] has sent a crucifix… Lilies have never had such a fragrance, and Buddha has dressed up in lilac clothing… The Holiday of Urusvati is Our Holiday…” [27].

The planet did not hear the voice. But She, the Only One, understood everything. The ring of the kingly head of the Brotherhood touched her head. “Urusvati, Our Head’s Ring with the Stone is above you.” [28].

II

At this time Helena Roerich entered the path of heroic creative work that continued throughout the rest of her earthly life. This way passed near the Central Asian expedition’s itinerary and was inseparably linked to it. This way stayed with her when, at the end of 1928, the Roerichs moved to the ancient Himalayan valley of Kullu upon the Teacher’s advice. It is there that her Fiery Experience would develop to unearthly heights and would form the basis for her participation in cosmic construction, or co-creation with the Great Teacher and Cosmic Hierarch. There, in a desolate villa located on a mountain slope above the village of Naggar, work was going on concealed from strangers’ eyes, but with extremely important significance for our planet and its future. This future was formed there, the New World was created there, and the necessary conditions for the appearance of the New Man were prepared. Evolution itself acted there, the basis for mankind’s new thinking of the 20th century was created, the energetic foundation for its transformation and the expansion of its consciousness was laid.

From the outside, everything looked quite usual. In a villa that was bought from Raja Mandi, the Roerich family settled down. The villa’s owner, the famous painter Nicholas Roerich, soon left for America where there was a museum bearing his name. His sons, Yuri and Svetoslav, were with him there as well. Only the painter’s wife, Helena Roerich, stayed in the villa. From the very first days, surveillance of the newly arrived people had started. The English intelligence service of colonial India, which saw a spy in each Russian, suspected Roerich, as well. Raja Mandi, from whom the villa in Naggar had been purchased, tried to return the money and cancel the deal. He sent Helena Roerich threatening letters with the demand to accept back the money for the purchase. The colonial authorities did not want to let Nicholas Roerich back into India, and this litigation lasted for three years. Helena Roerich worried about her husband and missed her sons. The Roerichs’ villa attracted the attention of the local nobility. Visitors frequented the house, and they were politely received by the owner. From time to time, she paid return visits, as she tried to keep friendly relations with the neighbors. She shared with them impressions of the expedition in which she had quite recently participated and told about the plans to establish a scientific Institute of Himalayan Studies. Nearby land plots were bought for the Institute, where the required buildings would be erected. Visitors, especially female ones, eagerly listened to the hostess, aahed, and showed their surprise. Probably, they would have been even more surprised, or even astonished, if they saw Helena Roerich’s diary.

“[June] 30 – July 1. The night is warm, it is raining. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, was under the impression of an extraordinary conversation with the Lord of the W. The feeling of happiness and great responsibility. Torturous desire to come up to the Lord’s great trust filled my whole entity. I sensed for a long time the effect of the Rays – vibrations of the bed and my body. I heard many answers to my questions, but I did not write them down. By morning I heard and put them down, but the writing is illegible. [ . . . ] My heart did not work well, it is stuffy, I had to take Strophanthus. As usual, I am lying with my head on ice packs, and there is one at my feet, too. [ . . . ]

“By evening the stuffiness increased – it was very difficult, during the talk with the L[ord], I rubbed my nose and mouth with menthol.

“Conversation by the Lord’s Chair.

“– Can Urusvati put down My Secret separately? I see in My letters a heritage to mankind to distant worlds. But mankind must first regenerate and become aware of all boundless dimensions. In a day I will speak about Arhat and His heart. My Urusvati, I will open the secret recesses to you. F[uyama] [N. Roerich. – L. Sh.] creates, pure F[uyama] directs the consciousness. Let us rejoice.

“– Is Мrs Al. Cleather’s statement that a woman cannot be fully Adept right [29]?

“– No, the Mother of the World is Our Head! Examples of priestesses can clarify. Man must manifest himself in the visible, woman – in the Invisible.

“– Is my feeling about my incarnations correct?

“– Your feeling-knowledge is correct, but there are many complicated things in life”. [30].

And more:

“Night before July 11. New moon, the night is very stuffy, but the languor disappeared when I got to bed. Vision of the L[ord]’s Hand holding and moving some instruments of cylindrical shape with expanding bottoms. I quickly fell asleep. Waking up, I saw a scattered cloud of black sparks, but it was covered with the iridescent radiance of strong light. The impact of the Lord’s Rays is short, but repeated, I didn’t hear much. [ . . . ]

“In the evening. The L[ord] finished the talk about Infinity and the Shambhala by turning to my childhood.

“– When a little girl’s spirit can sense the Brothers of humanity, then this spirit’s name is the luciferous sword. When a spirit can sense from childhood that the Brothers of humanity regenerate all being, then the spirit bears a luciferous name.

“The L[ord] gave an explanation of the vision.

“– Urusvati’s vision of our vessels for condensing prana is an important experience. F[uyama] is seeding a broad field. Urusvati will decorate a broad field” [31].

The diary was from Helena Roerich’s other life, the one that was inaccessible to her guests and visitors, who did not even suspect what their visits cost the villa owner.

The diary of 1929, and especially that fragment of it (July – October) that is offered to the reader, testified to Helena Roerich’s further advancement along the way of cosmic transformation. She, preparing the energetic basis for the transformation of mankind and its development into a new energetic species, continued to be transformed herself, overcoming one-by-one the high steps of cosmic ascent. Through her, cosmic evolution demonstrated with all persuasiveness the possibilities of such achievements for humanity as a whole. Helena Roerich’s diary is unique and extraordinary. For the first time in the history of mankind, it described step-by-step the process of earthly transformation that was proceeding in close collaboration with the Higher Forces.

The Living Ethics Teaching contained an important idea – the evolution of mankind cannot advance without the collaboration of those Forces, without the collaboration of the Higher Worlds. The planet’s history is full of signs of such collaboration.

Russian philosophers of Silver Age wrote about it. Great Soloviev called it “theurgy.”

Theurgic creation was de visu performed in a villa located in an outlandish Himalayan valley and not distinguished by anything special against the general background.

Above the villa and the mountains, mists flowed, it rained, the sun shone brightly or the moon rose, day was replaced by night and a new day came, stars sparkled in the night above it, and the star cluster Orion unchangeably gleamed. Together with the mountain air, prophetic dreams penetrated the villa, visions came, voices unheard by others sounded, words waft, and only she, Helena Roerich, saw and heard everything. Big time flowed through the villa, in whose stream important work was performed. And so, long after midnight, on the mountain slope, a single window was lit in the room where the one to whom the Cosmic Hierarchs entrusted collaboration with them lived and worked. In the room in which she sat sometimes there was a leather armchair that in her opinion, belonged to the Teacher, or the Lord. By this armchair conversations were held that were later cast into the logical system of the Living Ethics, which became the basis for the new cosmic thinking on the planet. Helena Roerich’s diary gives us a chance to find ourselves in the laboratory of this amazing creative process. Then, in 1929 the Teacher and his collaborator formed one of the most important books of the Teaching – Infinity. Much of what we find in these talks will be familiar to us, but we shall read many things for the first time.

“Urusvati’s book,” Helena Roerich wrote down the Teacher’s words, “is a gift to humanity. I state: the gift of the spirit and the approximation of fire will give mankind a new drawn line leading to the higher manifestations of the spirit” [32].

And this approximation of Fire, or Higher energy, took place there, in the same laboratory. And the Teacher’s voice sounded there late at night:

“When We entrusted Our Urusvati with the task of leading humanity up to a new step, Our associate’s manifestation was so high that to equal any medium-like manifestation with it will be like a drop of turbid water in a fiery Bowl. So I will say – the revelation of understanding’s high lights will lead to the height of pure fire. The carrier of the Bowl of fire will give a new step to mankind. To you, Our associate, we send Our power” [33].

The Bowel of Fire, the bowl of Higher energies, was to be ignited in its carrier herself. The experiment with fiery energies, as we know, started in 1924 and was successfully completed. Then, fiery centers opened in Helena Roerich. Now, she faced the task of igniting in herself the lights of the Higher energetics. It was they that transformed Helena Roerich’s solid body into a subtle one, capable of passing through itself and assimilating such energetics. Her body was changing under earthly conditions, and she became the source of transforming energy for the others, for those who could assimilate this energy.

“Transformation, the Teacher said, is Our most Beautiful basis of Cosmic transfusion. We call that step of Cosmic transformation when man completes his earthly way “Cosmic joy.” The completion phenomenon is the most difficult achievement. Transmutation into higher spheres is much easier” [34].

There in Kullu in 1929, Helena Roerich was passing the most difficult stage of her cosmic path. Neither external, nor internal circumstances were quite favorable in this respect. In that year, her family was not by her side, the news from her American collaborators left much to be desired. They conflicted with each other, held a jealous attitude toward Svetoslav Roerich, and did not miss a chance to hurt him at any time. This made even the Teacher say harsh words about them. All this upset her a lot and she was much put out. Raja Mandi continued to insist on canceling the villa’s purchase deal and sent her letters with all kinds of demands. She lived in a world where nobody could understand what was happening to her, nobody wanted to comprehend the giant cosmic task that she was facing. She knew that it would continue like this, but nothing would stop her now. The Teacher became her support and consolation. Her changing energetics more and more, in a synthesizing process, merged with His. Only in that way could mutual cosmic creation proceed, the creation of the New World, New man. And just as the Teacher supported Helena Roerich and helped her, she did the same in respect to the Teacher.

“When the Brothers of hum[anity],” he said, “feel grief about their image living in humanity’s consciousness, they can only say: build your hypotheses proceeding from the phantoms manifested to you. For we are the phantoms of humanity. But when the spirit asserts Our existence, then we shall turn from phantoms into Fiery Incarnat[ions]. Urusvati knows, Urusvati testifies” [35].

She acutely suffered physically from what was happening to her. She wrote about it in her diary every day – about heart failures, about inflammation processes, about pains in the nervous system, torturous gripes in her joints. She wrote about it not with the purpose of complaining to someone. She observed herself as a researcher, and this research will, in the course of time, give science priceless material related to the energetics of man and the processes of his transformation. They will give future humanity evidence of the interaction of the Higher energetics with the earthly, which will be a most important issue in the study of evolutionary processes. Helena Roerich experienced herself all the discrepancy between the Fiery World’s high vibrations and the low vibrations of solid matter. The energetics of evolution does not exist on its own, it is personified in a human being. In the 20th century, it was Helena Roerich who became such human being.

Her extremely hard work knew no rest. In the daytime and at night, voices sounded, words appeared, visions flashed up. Because of fatigue, she could not always hear these words well. Those that she did hear, she sometimes had forgotten by the morning. Her courage was so high and unbreakable that the Cosmic Hierarchs gave her labor and deed the highest appreciation, and she was given appreciation especially by the One who was by her side and was linked with her by the silver threads of Cosmic Collaboration.

“The greatest achievement is manifested by Our Urusvati, and many high spirits burned because of the impossibility of encompassing all the lights in an earthly shell” [36], the Teacher pointed out. She encompassed fourteen High lights in herself during that time. Those lights created the New World of the planet and its new man. Sometimes she lost self-trust concerning whether she understood the Teacher the right way, whether she acted in the right way, whether she did not destroy what she had been cognizing so torturously and long.

“The psychodynamics of Urusvati’s spirit are transmuting like highly saturated fire” [37], the Teacher stated. “Urusvati is fulfilling the task entrusted by the Lords” [38].

“Lord, You raise me so high, but where is my power?..,” she responded. “I feel that I am blind, deaf, and dumb, and it is so hard to stay idle” [39].

“Show justice to yourself,” the Teacher insisted. “The way of completion is beautiful but not easy” [40].

These dialogues are so humanly understandable and so real, as if bring closer to us the Great images, making them more accessible to us.

“I say, I solemnly state, when We give a donation to the World, we send the dearest to the task. I can state that the way of the world is the way of spacious fire. I have given you My power. Urusvati has My fire! F[uyama] has My sword! The psycholife of My deeds is your fire! Without you, there would have been no construction! Our F[uyama] is fiery action!” the Teacher said [41].

Helena Roerich has the fire, Nicholas Roerich – fiery action. This idea of the great significance of the creative harmony of two elements, male and female, runs throughout the Teacher’s statements across the whole diary.

It was Nicholas Roerich who turned or even transformed Helena Roerich’s fiery energetics into earthly action, earthly creation, without which the stage of the New World would not have been possible on the planet. And in this combination, “the Teacher – Helena Roerich – Nicholas Roerich,” resembling very much a creative trinity, each one occupying the place assigned to him or her. Through Nicholas Roerich and his creative work, the energy of that Beauty, without which there is no evolutionary advancement, was coming to the earth.

“Urusvati is right,” the Teacher confirmed, “the beautiful Truth is in Beauty! The Cosmos asserts evolution based on this formula. The Cosmos directs the world toward mastering Beauty. Yes, indeed, the Mother of the World possesses the Magnet of Beauty, and where the spacious fire has collected its established forms, the fire of the spirit is manifested” [42].

It is hard to say more clearly. The fire of the spirit gives birth to the Beauty of forms, feelings, and thoughts. In short, all that makes evolution start and continue.

“Worlds are created by Beauty and by the heart” [43]. And more: “I assert Beauty,” the Teacher said [44].

The process of transformation continued. Higher energies were poured into Helena Roerich, and vibrations let their presence be known. She assimilated them and synthesized and in spite of everything, advanced to the set goal. The was facing a most complicated task, to overcome duality in herself: The earthly and the heavenly were to be brought together to make a single whole, she was to eliminate that separation of one from the other that made her life torturously split in two and made her body suffer from sensing their incongruity.

“And like a Ray, the Sacrament of Being is standing before Me! The Ray that connects the way of the millenniums. The Ray that turns earthly enigmas into higher Laws. The Ray that turns the earthly burden into the radiance of the Beauty of the Cosmos” [45].

This again is the Teacher. Hardly anyone but him could so vividly, beautifully, and precisely describe that stage along the path of transformation before which Helena Roerich stood at that time, in 1929. She was to “turn the earthly burden into the radiance of the Beauty of the Cosmos.”

Various energies that Helena Roerich perceived were gradually “grinded in” to each other, fused into a harmonious whole, and a moment came when she faced the question “to be or not to be.” Higher energetics in this synthesis conquered the lower; high vibrations won a victory over the low. The earthly path of the Cosmic Hierarch’s collaborator was completed, she was tearing off the earth, lights ignited in her were attracted to fiery Higher energies. And then, the Teacher addressed her:

“My Urusvati, the power of future life shows planetary spaces small for your creation’s synthesis. [ . . . ] The Bowl’s Synthesis is so condensed that it may not be manifested in one sphere. In your completing life, like a foundation, lies the deed of the Mother of the World. You must stay, this century needs your deed. Nobody could substitute for you! A greatest Cosmic sign!” [46].

“You must stay” were words of greatest evolutionary significance. She was to do still much in this last earthly life. And again her previous incarnations passed before her in succession: India, Egypt, France. The Teacher’s words sounded like an order: “You must stay.” And she did. Nobody could substitute for her on the Earth, nobody but her had passed such a long and difficult way in the time and space of earthly history. And this way, millenniums long, prepared her for the most important deed that she was to perform in the 20th century. Her divided state between the worlds, the Fiery and the earthly, ended. She stayed on earth, but she already did not belong to it. The first step of the Cosmic Hierarchs’ experiment was completed and had yielded an unheard-of result: a woman of a new energetic type stepped onto the earth, a woman with a different body, with fiery energetics, but with an injured heart that needed constant support. She had become a herald of the New Epoch and the arrival of the New Humanity, her own transfiguration and new energetics had contributed to the planet’s transition to a new evolutionary turn. Now, whether it could perform this transition or not depended on humanity itself.

This future New Man was called for by V. Soloviev and the Teacher God-Man, in other words, the one in whom the higher prevailed over the earthly.

“They speak so much about God-Man,” the Teacher explained, “striving for deification. There are so many memorial notes pointing at Images of those aspiring for Higher Worlds. But how dull they are in the people’s consciousness! God-Man is just someone who has gone into other worlds! But We, Brothers of Humanity, are looking for and asserting God-Man on earth. We honor all Images, but especially the Image of God-Man carrying in his heart a full Bowl ready for the flight, but carrying the Bowl on the Earth. Rejecting his destination, he strains his fiery entity. In creating the destination, man asserts the Cosmic Magnet. God-Man is a Fiery creator! God-Man is a carrier of the fiery sign of the new race. God-Man glows with all lights – include this in the records of the God-Man. Arhat – Agni Yogi – Tara – let us introduce this. Urusvati, the new stage is coming. Both Arhat’s and Tara’s creative chains closed. How much that is invisibly beautiful has been manifested” [47].

At the end of the 1920s, Helena Roerich became such a person, having passed through the torturous way of her own transformation. She was carrying in herself not only the lights of a Higher World, but also that Beauty’s transformative power of which New Worlds are created.

“When Tara of Light,” the Teacher said, “illuminates the world with distant worlds, she will reign as a phenomenon of Beauty. When Tara of the heart illuminates the world with Love, then it is asserted by the phenomenon of Beauty. I would say – you live and will live as a symbol of Beauty” [48].

Helena Roerich was to form the sixth race, which signified by itself the New World that was being created by the Cosmos in collaboration with the Earth. Helena Roerich’s example was very important, for it showed convincingly that a New World and a New Man, in an evolutionary sense, can only be created in theurgic collaboration with the Higher. All that appeared on the planet in the 20th century under the enticing name of “New,” but with complete separation of this “New” from the Higher Forces and the Higher World, was no more than an illusion, hindering our movement on to a truly New World, a truly New Man. The illusion was powerful and brought to a dead end millions of people who, until now, have not yet gotten out of it and have not really comprehended what a new stage of evolution, which carries to the Earth a New World and creates a New Man, means.

On October 19, 1929, in the “Conversation by the Lord’s Armchair,” the Teacher told Helena Roerich the following: “unto you, Our Urusvati, the task to rid the planet of deceptions is entrusted. So mankind will need to learn from great experience. All that is forced, primitively theatrical, physically manifested, is inferior to the subtle principle. And so, the beginning of the New race is laid on the basis of the manifested, asserted principle of fire on Earth. That is why the creative synthesis of Our Urusvati wakes up consciousnesses. I, Maitreya, say: the New race is asserted by the fire that is established by the creation of the synthesis of the Lotus Urusvati. Each new Cosmic power is transferred – yes, yes, yes. Thus, a new power is invisibly entering the human being” [49]. Mankind only needed to understand what had happened. Unfortunately, as usual, this did not take place. It resulted in a complicated and difficult situation on the Earth in the 20th century. The old world had already become energetically obsolete, and so, it did not correspond to the tasks of cosmic evolution. However, the essence of the New World’s creation has not yet been comprehended by humanity. So, the period of transition from the old to the new has been delayed, which has resulted in a crisis situation in the most important spheres of human activity.

I want to warn the reader that reading the part of diary included in this edition is not such an easy task. Each phrase carries a deep essence there whose loss can impoverish the perception of the text. It is necessary to show special attention to the texts of the Teacher, which contain a lot of new and instructive things concerning the main problem related to the role of both the Teacher himself and Helena Roerich in preparation of the energetic conditions for the New World and New Man on our planet.

It is known how much attention the Teacher and Helena Roerich paid to the problems of science in general, the establishment of its methodology, and the new subtle energetic research. On the basis of the information passed to her by the Teacher, Helena Roerich made two most interesting studies that are also included in this collected edition. One is called “Cosmological Notes,” the other – “Study of the Properties of Man.” They are both closely interrelated with each other and with the problems reflected in the diary.

These studies were made on the Teacher’s instruction. “My book of knowledge,” the Teacher says, “is in your [Helena Roerich’s. – L. Sh.] possession. This Book contains the comprehensive Knowledge and Science of the Future” [50]. The first of the studies considers the specific features of cosmic magnetism, cosmic rhythms, and the new cosmic energies.

“Ur[usvati] will lay the basis for the Search for scientific approaches to the study of human properties in relation to the Cosmic Rays and Currents” [51].

The second work is dedicated to the study of human properties, and is, to my mind, a priceless methodological guidebook for a modern scientist who is sufficiently spiritually developed and standing at a good level of consciousness. The study contains a detailed plan of the trends of the new science. “Without the creation of an Institute of Study,” the introduction says, “of the concealed powers and properties of man and of the interaction and interdependence of the Microcosm and Macrocosm, no New Era will be realized. The new science of the powers and properties of man must come into life” [52]. In fact, the Institute of Himalayan Studies was also established in the valley of Kullu in accordance with the Teacher’s plan and worked proceeding from His concept. There is nothing surprising in it, for all that Helena and Nicholas Roerich and their sons did had at its basis the creative ideas and plans of the Teacher himself. The Institute of Himalayan Studies was the first step, beginning with a grandiose Institute of Man aimed not only at theoretical studies, but also at the practical application of the knowledge obtained through this research. “Man,” the Teacher stated, “is created as the receiver of all Powers of the Cosmos, but, at the same time, he is their transformer into useful or harmful effects in correspondence with his moral development” [53]. The level of moral development was the main conceptual issue in the science of the New World. The activities of the Institute, with which major scientists of the world collaborated, such as A. Einstein, D. Bos, L. Broil, N. Vavilov, and others, ceased due to World War II. After the war, it was never restored.

This collected edition also includes Helena Roerich’s letters to America of 1945-1955. They continue the diary’s main subject, but in a somewhat different aspect. By that time, the problems of Helena Roerich’s own transformation had been settled, and an equally difficult time started for her, the time of active collaboration with the Cosmic Hierarchs in the cause of cosmic construction.

She does not provide the details of this process. In the letter dated September 16, 1953, she wrote: “The rearrangement is completed, and now all my ‘knots,’ centers, must be getting stronger.”

She was very tired both from collaboration with other planes, or other worlds, and from participation in cosmic creation. But evolution demanded of her this participation, and the feeling of fatigue was from time to time changed into the feeling of happiness that she could do and was capable of doing many things.

“But it is very difficult for me now,” she wrote, “especially these days, when my whole organism is under such strain because of collaboration with the G[reat] L[ord] in Cosmic Construction and Creation. I cannot explain to anyone my internal state and participation in such collaboration, and I shouldn’t, they would think I am crazy and would disapprove of me, which will do harm to the Teaching’s books and many other things. But I must say – it is hard for me to be with people because of complete separation from the earth’s gravitation, for sometimes, as the Gr[eat] L[ord] says, only one-tenth of my entity participates in earthly manifestation. If I say that I take part in battles with the Rays of a Luminary that appeared at the horizon and is extremely poisonous and dangerous for our earth and whose trajectory must be directed away from our planet’s orbit, will it look like terrible self-assurance and just impertinence and, first of all, a fable? You will ask how I know it? Of course, thanks to the Gr[eat] L[ord], they give me explanations of strange visions and various difficult concerns in connection with them. Thus, recently, already in bed, I saw at the horizon a new, brightly shining luminary, like the sun, and invisible, of course, with earthly sight, and I felt bad because of the beautiful light, but I did not understand that that was the luminary against which my magnetic force acted, as well. For this, the Gr[eat] L[ord]’s explanation was needed. If the earthly consciousness became aware of Cosmic Collaboration, the day count of earthly existence would become short. The vibrations of Cosmic Collaboration are so different from the earthly ones that they cannot be perceived by our physical brain without its destruction. It is necessary to accept such limitations” [54].

She worked in an invisible space of another, higher dimension. To the earthly consciousness, it might have looked like a fantasy, an invention. That is why she was raising the curtain above cosmic construction so cautiously and carefully. The animate Cosmos lived, breathed, and created. Vibrations inaccessible to the earthly ear sounded, events imperceptible to the earthly eye took place. Energies shifted and went into the non-cognized depths of the space of other dimensions. The constructors of the Cosmos created both in the visible and in the invisible. The manifestation of the invisible world, which was so needed now for the earthly evolution, for the New World, was underway. And without the one who, in remaining on the Earth, passed through herself the new rays and the new energetics of the evolutionary process, it would hardly be possible to secure its correct direction and its necessary outcome, the refinement of solid matter and man’s acquisition of new qualities and abilities.

“Of course,” she wrote again, “my Cosmic Collaboration makes me terribly tired. But I feel happy to realize that it is possible to help our earth. Much energy, much power is spent on constraining the roaring elements and on their localization away from the most protected areas. And the assimilation of the new Rays in their new combination does not happen easily either. Both the weakness and the pain in my legs testify to such difficult assimilations. But this is part of both Service and getting equipped. New Rays assimilated by certain spirits on the Earth give the possibility to apply those Rays and to gradually instill them to our earthly men for great use by them” [55].

She participated not only in the assimilation of new rays, but also in the establishment of new rhythms of earthly energetics. The new stage of evolution required new energetic conditions and set forth new tasks before mankind, the most important of which were the approximation and cognition of the invisible, the awareness of the role of other worlds in earthly reality, and the entrance into conscious collaboration with these worlds. The superterrestrial and earthly worlds were to meet in this collaboration and bring to earthly humanity a broader understanding of the spaces of different dimensions and the superterrestrial influence on the earthly.

“It is here, on the Earth,” Helena Roerich wrote, “that we must understand and sense our life in Three Worlds. Without comprehension of our participation in infinite life, we shall never be able to get away from the old track of limited thinking” [56]. She answered the letters of collaborators from America more and more seldomly. She tried to explain to them the reason for this. But there, on the other side of the ocean, they did not understand her at all.

“Cosmic Collaboration,” she explained, “is especially precious while I stay in my physical shell, transformed through its fiery purification at the earthly plane. Such collaboration is especially powerful in terms of results; for, indeed, it is unlimited in terms of its possibilities for our evolution’s acceleration” [57].

But earthly problems would not even leave her for a minute. She worried about Nicholas Roerich’s paintings that had fallen into the hands of the betrayer Horch, hurried up collaborators in America with the translation and publication of the Living Ethics books, settled conflicts between them, dealt with the Roerich Pact committees, and did many other things that the people around her thoughtlessly laid onto her shoulders. It became more and more difficult for her to live among people. She again and again explained to her associates that “nobody can substitute for me in this work [Cosmic Collaboration. – L. Sh.] with the G[reat] L[ord], as, for this kind of work, one must not only pass through the opening of all centers, but also through the fiery transmutation of them and of the whole entity and manifest oneself already at the separation of one’s three bodies” [58]. She was already 75 years old, and she knew that her earthly life was becoming shorter and shorter. Important information came from the Teacher, and she barely had time to put it down and worried that she had not put the notes in order in due time. She tried to remind those whose letters she had to answer of Beauty, the leading element in the whole evolution of the worlds, and of the forthcoming New World. “High spirituality,” Helena Roerich pointed out, “is vigorous love for all that is Beautiful” [59]. And together with all this, the thought of coming back to her Motherland continued to live in her. She understood what was needed there more than anywhere else. However, the circumstances were not favorable for going back. She lived by the hope that a time of change would come to Russia. But the Teacher postponed her trip again and again. In 1950, He determined the long wished for date: the year of 1953. This year came, Joseph Stalin died, and it seemed that now everything would be soon settled. But everything became unclear again, and the Teacher did not want to risk her life. She devoured every smallest bit of news from her Motherland, and, as if consoling herself, wrote: “One thing is unshakable – the Best Country [the USSR. – L. Sh.] is victorious in everything” [60]. She was full of plans that she wanted to implement in her Motherland. She discussed them with the Teacher, for these were their common plans. We hear echoes of this in her letters. When it occurred to her American collaborators to establish the Nicholas Roerich Foundation, Helena Roerich correctly but firmly wrote: “The Roerich Found[ation] [61] will, of course, be founded and developed in its own country. It is good that Dedley already thought of such an Institution, but its development needs an absolutely different situation” [62].

“You know,” she had written two years earlier, “how much the G[reat] L[ord] appreciated N. K.’s paintings [N. Roerich’s. – L. Sh.] [ . . . ] how he called him the best modern painter, how he wanted to establish his art all over the World to imbue souls waiting and longing for Beauty. And, of course, the G[reat] L[ord] has a Plan how to collect the paintings, how to create a Monument to such an exclusive Artist, Thinker, and representative of great humanism in the epoch of maximal inhumanity” [63].

Helena Roerich’s and the Teacher’s hopes partially came true in their “own country.” In 1989 on the initiative of Svetoslav Roerich, the younger son of Helena and Nicholas Roerich, the Soviet Roerich Foundation was established in Moscow. Then, in 1997 the N. Roerich Museum was opened, and in the jubilee year of 1999, a bronze monument to Nicholas Roerich and Helena Roerich, a great Russian woman who had risen to a high step of cosmic evolution and due to this had become a collaborator with the Cosmic Hierarchs in their universal creation, was erected. It was she who, having passed a hard way of transformation, could sense every new energy coming from the Cosmos. She brought it into correspondence with the evolutionary process and gave her energetic impulse to this process on the planet. She was in energetic and informational exchange with the Brotherhood, Cosmic Hierarchs, other worlds, and, finally, the Cosmic Magnet. Her earthly body, altered and refined by the experiment, could not any more exist as all other earthly bodies exist. It became a body of the sixth energetic type and required new conditions, but the old world, living its final cosmic minutes, could not provide them to her. She would lay for people the earthly way to the heights of cosmic evolution in pain and sufferings. They, those people, did not even suspect that without her, the Earth would not perform the transition to a new stage in evolution, and mankind would not get the necessary energy for further advancement.

But she did not avoid earthly grief. She lost her husband, deeply loved and esteemed by her. Nicholas Roerich, the great artist, thinker, and scientist, and her unchangeable brother-in-arms, passed away in December 1947. “The light spirits,” she wrote in one of her letters, “leave before darkness, and Their Images remain the only Luminaries in the darkness of forthcoming calamities” [64]. And again, in two months: “Indeed, who can to such extent dedicate oneself to this devoted service before the magnificence and beauty of these peaks, which have embodied and are protecting the greatest Mystery and Hope of the World – the Secret Shambhala” [65].

Still long after his departure, earthly severe anguish wrenched her cosmic heart. Together with her son Yuri Roerich, she left the Himalayan valley of Kullu in the hope of coming back to her Motherland and working more for the benefit of “the Best Country,” as she called Russia. They came to Bombay and waited for the steamer from there. But the steamer would not come for a long time, and when it showed up in the mist of the Bombay harbor, they learned that it did not bring anything reassuring. The Motherland had refused a visa to her Great daughter.

They did not go back to Kullu, but settled down in the East Himalayas, in the small resort town of Kalimpong. From there she continued to write letters to America, there she heard and put down the Teacher’s Messages and completed what was destined to her by cosmic evolution.

But she felt the weight of the years, and sometimes enormous fatigue took possession of her.

“I am already 70 years old, and I have passed the Fiery Yoga. [ . . . ] How unearthly difficult it is to receive in a physical body, under normal conditions, fiery energies. Fiery transmutation has refined my organism, I acutely feel all disharmony and all spacious currents, it is difficult for me to be among people, and now the monsoon and the stuffiness accompanying it have made me very tired. The heart often gives “dead points,” and I have to resort to Strophanthus, my savior. Besides, I am short of time, for many hours are taken by writing and rewriting messages. My sight has also become weak, and it is difficult for me to rewrite my notes, often put down in colorless pencil. All these notes require putting in order, and the inflow of the new ones does not stop” [66].

Now she appreciated every minute and only let herself go for a walk in the evening. She would go down a wooden staircase from the mansard and out into the parterre decorated with flower beds. In “Crookety,” where she lived together with her son, there were always many flowers. By night the flowers smelled strong and disturbing. She would go down the slope to the pine alley from where the Kanchenjunga ridge was visible. The Sacred Mountain’s evening snow would shine pink and mysterious.

Then she would again go up; the window in her room glimmered, yellow and soft. “A Cosmic stage is approaching, and it must be met with courage,” she wrote down [67].

This article is just about a small part of the materials left by the Great Cosmic entity with only one purpose, to let our way be at least a little bit easier than Her way. And do not let courage fail us on it…

Helena Roerich left this world in 1955. In one of her last letters, she wrote: “I am not speaking of the Teaching of the New Age, for there are not many people who have grown in terms of the consciousness that the Living Ethics Teaching is the New Nunciate. But this will come, too. There will be a time when this Teaching will become a world teaching and form the basis for the upbringing and appearance of the new humanity, whose birth will accelerate humanity’s dream of the elimination of mortal diseases and the achievement of earthly longevity, and of the appearance of man in a new, refined shell” [68].

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Notes

1. See Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. Мoscow, 2000. 65–66.

2. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 66.

3. ibid., 72–73.

4. ibid., 74–75.

5. ibid., 60.

6. ibid., 64–65.

7. ibid., 317.

8. Infinity. 243.

9. ibid., 237.

10. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 81.

11. ibid., 82.

12. ibid., 80.

13. ibid., 105.

14. ibid., 105.

15. ibid., 320.

16. ibid., 120.

17. ibid., 114.

18. ibid., 135.

19. ibid., 136.

20. ibid., 136.

21. ibid., 297–298.

22. ibid., 137.

23. ibid., 128.

24. ibid., 123.

25. Infinity, 178.

26. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 86.

27. ibid., 138.

28. ibid., 140.

29. Full Adept – ПолнымАдептом (translation into Russian – translator’s note.).

30. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 149.

31. ibid., 154.

32. ibid., 162.

33. ibid., 225.

34. ibid., 174.

35. ibid., 158–159.

36. ibid., 219.

37. ibid., 203.

38. ibid., 217.

39. ibid., 217.

40. ibid., 217.

41. ibid., 160.

42. ibid., 203.

43. ibid., 216.

44. ibid., 176.

45. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 191–192.

46. ibid., 164.

47. ibid., 229–230.

48. ibid., 210.

49. ibid., 223.

50. ibid., 277.

51. ibid., 279.

52. ibid., 283.

53. ibid., 290.

54. ibid., 381–382.

55. ibid., 428.

56. ibid., 374.

57. ibid., 442.

58. ibid., 436.

59. ibid., 434.

60. ibid., 427.

61. Фонд Рериха (translation into Russian).

62. Helena Roerich. On the Threshold of the New World. 403.

63. ibid., 386–387.

64. ibid., 304.

65. ibid., 309.

66. ibid., 355.

67. ibid., 360.

68. ibid., 446.