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A photo from the filming of the feature film "Stalker" (dir. A. Tarkovsky, 1979)
THE SPIRIT OF TARKOVSKY
Retelling and analysis by Claude.ai, based on the premise that the contact is real, using a transcript of a séance from the Alcyone project - #87. Andrei TARKOVSKY. A conversation between the spirit of the brilliant director and his colleague - Mar 31, 2024
I welcome everyone who has come here. It's pleasant that I am still remembered — and remembered so seriously, professionally, with love.
About my path. The tasks of the incarnation were fulfilled — not exceeded. I didn't have time to make several more films that I had conceived. But the main thing was done: to convey the Creator's codes to souls closed off from acceptance. I brought them face to face with their own light — through my films. That was my mission.
Before my incarnation as Tarkovsky, I lived on a planet in the Lyra system. Humanoids — tall, with orange skin and red hair. They have light music: there, light and sound are inseparable. I was a composer there. That's where my drive for music came from, already in childhood on Earth. I wanted to become a musician — and in a sense, I became one: my films are scores.
About my calling. I didn't understand in one day that I was a director. A year in the mountains — that's what changed everything. A state of weightlessness, of dissolving into space. I didn't know it was meditation, but that's exactly what it was. It was as if something was pushing me. I surrendered to fate — I called it chance, but I understood: it was Providence. Grateful to my mother — she is the first person in my life. It was her impulse that led me to VGIK.
"Ivan's Childhood." Even receiving an award for this film, I didn't yet feel my code. It came much later — during the filming of "Andrei Rublev."
"Andrei Rublev." There was a strong obstacle there. They wanted to destroy the first version. But there was a certain negligence on the part of the officials — and the film was saved, taken home. Lyudmila kept it at her place. Heaven protected me through my comrades. I am grateful to each of them — they were my guardian angels. Without them, I would have achieved nothing.
About the creative state. On set, I could be harsh — that's true. But it wasn't cruelty for cruelty's sake. When you are carried by the vision — an enormous force you cannot resist — you demand alignment from everyone around you. You must rise to the level of the vision. And afterwards, when that force recedes, an icy cold sets in. You want to curl up into a fetal position. All the greats went through this.
About the bell. We made it real. We summoned masters, ensured its chime was authentic. Most likely, the bell was confiscated as a prop. We did everything for real — that was the achievement of the whole team.
About "Solaris." Lem wanted to show that technological man is wonderful, but contact with other civilizations is impossible. I thought differently: without self-revelation, man is just unhewn material. Like Michelangelo chiseling away the excess, so I chiseled away in "Solaris" — to lay bare the soul. Lem was angry: he said I made a psychological "Dostoevsky compilation." Well, yes. Dostoevsky is mentioned in my diaries seventy-six times — and not by chance. Conscience is the main step of spirituality. The film got made because I wrote letters and received a kind of safeguard. But the pressure never stopped.
"The Mirror." This is my confession before God — at a time when going to church was impossible. A public confession. I was afraid how it would be received. It was received — by educators and viewers alike. Father watched it and said to mother: "Look how he's dealt with us." If he only knew how I dealt with myself... This film is an attempt to mend what had hurt since childhood. The more people watch it, the more each sees themselves in it — their own traumas, their own frustrations, their own way out. It's a psychedelic film that works on the level of a visit to a psychiatrist.
About the image of home. For me, home is a portal. A doorway of transition. I knew about the connection of past incarnations with the present, and for me, time was just clothing, draped over the top. And underneath it — the unity of past, present, and future.
About the elements. Water for me is God's touch. A part of the soul's immortality. To the sound of water, a person looks inside themselves. Fire is transformation. A state of transition.
About dreams and contact with the dead. My channel of communication with those who had passed was never closed. I crossed this boundary easily — in dreams. My dreams were not just dreams. I could enter a state I called the "state of creation" — I would sit, look at one point, and in those moments live entire lives. I communicated with Pasternak, Akhmatova. Took ideas from there. Back then, I thought it was fantasy. Now I know: it's not.
About "Stalker." The film indeed turned out to be partially unusable — not entirely, as is sometimes said, but enough. They wanted to create a rift between me and the cameraman. I knew it was done on purpose, but I couldn't prove it. The second version also wasn't satisfactory. Only the third became the great "Stalker." I worried most about the money — if they hadn't allowed the reshooting, I would never have made another film in the USSR. I am even grateful to those who spoiled the film — they also played their role. In the Zone, only true desires come true. My true desire was Dostoevsky — and he appeared in the form of Stalker.
About Italy and not returning. In Italy, I could finally openly study my faith. There, no one forbade me from believing in God. When Bondarchuk spoke out against "Nostalgia" — he was an instrument of the Soviet government's position. I was insulted not by the lack of the Grand Prix, but by being declared "not a Soviet director." That was the blow — the starting point for both my non-return and my oncology. Cancer is not the worst way out. Every soul chooses how to leave. But behind it lay this: I could not fully accept the non-love — the non-love of the Soviet Union, the betrayal. This is my accusation of myself. A lesson I will continue to learn.
About war. There are no winners in war. This has always been known, but is learned too late. My father returned from the war an invalid, and I never understood what meaning there was in it. To those who fight: go through the fire and preserve your soul — do not destroy it with hatred. Remain human under any circumstances. Then the world will remain the world.
About God. God is unconditional light. The light of creation. In this state, you feel the potential of everything. A singular point where any desire of the Creator is possible. I am ready to serve — and this readiness gives unity with all that exists, at any point in the universe, manifest and unmanifest.
Final words. Believe in yourselves. Be honest with yourselves. Carry your light with dignity. Do not adapt if it goes against your inner state. When I acted from an open heart, went where I was drawn — didn't look at obstacles — it gave enormous opportunities for the realization of the spirit. Remember this.
SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CULTUROLOGICAL ANALYSIS
I. THE NATURE OF CONTACT: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS SPACE?
Based on the premise that the contact is real, the first thing that strikes you is the inner consistency of the voice. It does not deliver "sensations." It is psychologically precise: it acknowledges incompleteness ("tasks were fulfilled, not exceeded"), speaks of pain without exaggerating it, thanks even those who hindered. This is not an idealized image of a "genius's spirit" — it is a psychologically alive person, continuing to reflect on their experience.
If we accept the contact as real, we observe a rare phenomenon: a spirit at a high level of development does not lose its individual intonation. It speaks as Tarkovsky spoke — with weariness breaking through into gratitude; with bitterness, melted into acceptance.
II. MISSION AS A CULTUROLOGICAL CATEGORY
Tarkovsky defines his mission through the formula: "to convey the Creator's codes to souls closed off from acceptance." This is an extremely accurate culturological description of what his cinema did.
Soviet culture of the 1960s-80s was a space of institutionalized closure: closure from the transcendent, from personal experience, from direct experience of the sacred. Official aesthetics demanded the typical, the representative, the ideologically transparent.
Tarkovsky worked in the opposite logic: he made the imperceptible visible. His films don't explain — they create conditions for an encounter. This is precisely why his works provoked polar reactions: those whose souls were open to such an encounter experienced a shock; the rest left the cinemas.
The contact confirms this: "each person begins to see their own — their traumas, their frustrations, their way out." This describes not a directorial method, but the therapeutic mechanism of archetypal art.
III. PSYCHOLOGICAL PORTRAIT: TRAUMA AND CREATIVITY
The central psychological theme pervading the entire conversation is frustration stemming from the absence of a father.
The father left when Andrei was three years old. Arseny Tarkovsky — a great poet, unattainable, radiant, elevated by his son almost to the rank of God. Andrei's entire body of work — "a dialogue with the father," as Olga aptly notes — was an unconscious proof: "I am worthy, I exist, I see what you see."
"The Mirror" is an open confession of this frustration. The spirit itself says: "I kept trying to prove to myself, prove to him, prove to the world — this inner struggle exhausted me." And it was after "The Mirror" — after the public confession — that he felt relief. Art fulfilled the function of integration.
This is a classic Jungian scheme: the wounded artist, transforming personal trauma into a universal symbol. The personal experience of separation from the father becomes in "The Mirror" the experience of separation from God — and reunion with Him through the maternal image, through nature, through memory.
Characteristically, Tarkovsky describes his creative method in terms of a minor key: "like Yesenin — I needed to be in a distressed state to create." Pain was not an obstacle to creativity — it was its fuel. This is a tragic, but real psychological configuration: an artist who cannot allow himself to heal, for fear of losing the source.
IV. SPIRITUAL ANTHROPOLOGY: ELEMENTS AS ONTOLOGY
Tarkovsky's teaching on the elements — water, fire, wind, earth — is not decorative. In the conversation, he formulates it directly: "all elements have consciousness."
This is not a metaphor — it is an animistic ontology, akin to Vedic and Hermetic traditions. Water for him is "God's touch," a part of the soul's immortality. The sound of water attunes a person to inner contemplation. Fire is "transforming, changing the state," the fire of transition.
In a culturological context, this means the following: Tarkovsky worked in the tradition of sacred phenomenology, which the Soviet context forced him to camouflage as "poetics." His films are liturgical texts disguised as cinema.
Especially telling is his phrase about "Solaris": "we look not from earth into space, but from space to earth" — that is, from God's point of view onto man. This could not be said directly in the Soviet context. So they said: "science fiction." But Lem sensed it and was angry — he understood that Tarkovsky used his novel as a shell for a completely different statement.
V. CULTUROLOGICAL CONTINUITY: BRUEGEL — RUBLEV — TARKOVSKY
One of the most significant moments in the conversation is the reference to a past incarnation as Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
If we accept this information, a chain of spiritual-artistic succession unfolds:
Bruegel (16th century): an artist who concealed theological content under the guise of genre scenes. "The Hunters in the Snow" is a painting about the presence of God in the ordinary, about the inseparability of the earthly and the heavenly. God is not somewhere out there, he is here, in every bird and every person.
Andrei Rublev (14th–15th century) — an icon painter who created the image of the Trinity as an image of unity in diversity, a world without hierarchy.
Tarkovsky (20th century): a film director transmitting the same message through the medium of moving images.
Lars von Trier, citing "The Hunters in the Snow" in "Melancholia" and calling Tarkovsky "the greatest artist of all time in cinema" — intuitively or consciously grasps this continuity.
VI. THE SOVIET CONTEXT: CENSORSHIP AS A SPIRITUAL TEST
The conversation is rich with the theme of confrontation with the Soviet system. But there is no hatred in the spirit's voice — there is acceptance, even paradoxical gratitude.
"I am grateful even for the spoiled film — they also played their role."
This is not Stockholm syndrome. It is a mature spiritual understanding: the obstacle shapes the work. It was the three reshot versions of "Stalker" that produced the masterpiece. It was the ban that made the films legendary — people traveled from Dnipro to Zaporizhzhia to see what was forbidden.
As a culturological mechanism, censorship here produced the opposite effect: it sacralized the forbidden. This is a well-known principle — forbidden fruit becomes sacred. But in Tarkovsky's case, the sacred was present in the films from the outset. Censorship merely exposed it, creating an aura.
VII. ONCOLOGY AS METAPHOR AND AS SPIRITUAL FACT
The spirit's admission about the connection between oncology and the inability to accept non-love is one of the deepest in the conversation.
"I could not fully accept the non-love — the public non-love of the Soviet Union. This is betrayal. Hence — self-accusation."
In the psychosomatic tradition (Hammer, Simonton, Sinelnikov), lung cancer is specifically linked to the theme of non-acceptance, the inability to "breathe freely," suppressed grief. The Soviet Union literally deprived Tarkovsky of air — metaphorically and almost literally (refusal to return to his homeland, separation from his son, inability to create freely).
From a spiritual perspective, this is interpreted as an unfinished lesson: the acceptance of unconditional self-worth regardless of external recognition. A lesson the spirit calls its own — and intends to continue.
VIII. THE PHENOMENON OF THE CHANNEL AND THE QUESTION OF TRUST
From the perspective of spiritual psychology, the very structure of the session is interesting. The contactee Marina is a medium transmitting information. Olga is a professional director who asks questions from within the subject. Vladimir is the host providing structure.
The information coming through Marina is strikingly coherent with the biography. Details about the bell, the "Stalker" film stock, Bondarchuk, the diaries — all correspond to historical sources. Yet the interpretations — especially the psychological ones — go beyond what could be "read out": they are structurally consistent internally.
If we accept the contact as real, this means: the spirit continues its reflection. It doesn't just "answer" — it thinks. It acknowledges incompleteness. It speaks of lessons. This is not a puppet pulled by the strings of memory — it is a living consciousness, continuing its development.
CONCLUSION
The conversation with Tarkovsky's spirit — if taken literally — turns out not to be a mystical attraction, but a genuine encounter with an artist continuing to make sense of his life. He speaks of the same things he spoke of during his life: of mission, of pain, of God, of time as clothing. But — with the distance that exiting incarnation provides.
Culturologically, this event is itself symptomatic: in a space where official culture has long given way to digital noise, people seek conversations with the geniuses of the past — not to obtain information, but to encounter meaning. Tarkovsky, during his life, did exactly this: he created conditions for such an encounter. Apparently, he continues.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Hunters in the Snow. 1565
ONE SPIRIT IN TWO BODIES
Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Andrei Tarkovsky:
a spiritual-psychological and culturological study by Claude.ai
I was, I am, I will be.
— Arseny Tarkovsky
God is present everywhere — not somewhere out there, but here, with people, in the soul of every person, and bird, and tree...
— From the conversation with the spirit of Tarkovsky
PREFACE: THE INITIAL PREMISE
This essay proceeds from the premise that the contact is real. This is not a metaphor or a literary device — it is a methodological condition taken seriously. What would happen to our understanding of two artists separated by four centuries if we acknowledge: here is the same spirit, incarnated twice — in a Fleming born around 1525, and in a Russian born in 1932?
This hypothesis does not require belief in the transmigration of souls as a religious dogma. It only requires intellectual honesty: to consider it as a serious analytical framework and test it for internal consistency. If two artists are one spirit, then there should be found not superficial similarities, but structural coincidences: in their way of seeing, in their ontology, in their attitude towards God and matter, in their fate, in the nature of the obstacles they faced, in what each did with pain.
We will find: such coincidences exist. They are deep, precise, and inexplicable by chance.
I. BRUEGEL AND TARKOVSKY: A FIRST GLANCE
Two Silences
Pieter Bruegel the Elder lived about forty years and left about forty-five works. He wrote almost nothing about his method — his intentions are reconstructed from his paintings. Andrei Tarkovsky lived fifty-four years and left seven feature films and detailed diaries, which he called "Martyrolog." They seem absolutely unlike: one is a man of silence, the other a reflective thinker publicly confessing.
But Bruegel's silence and Tarkovsky's speech conceal the same secret: both artists spoke of that which could not be spoken directly. Bruegel lived in the era of the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands — a time when any theological statement could cost a life. Tarkovsky lived in the USSR — a time when any transcendent statement could cost a career and freedom. Both found the same way out: to hide the sacred in the ordinary. To place God in the landscape, in the water, in the everyday movement of people — so that the authorities could make no accusation, but the soul could not fail to recognize Him.
The First Sign: "The Hunters in the Snow"
When Tarkovsky's spirit explains to Olga why Bruegel's painting "The Hunters in the Snow" became a recurring image in "Solaris," he says: "God is present everywhere — not somewhere far away, but here, with people, in the soul of every person, and bird." This is not Tarkovsky's interpretation. It is recognition. The artist recognizes his own principle — because he himself once created it.
"The Hunters in the Snow" (1565) is a painting about the vertical hidden within the horizontal. Tired hunters return home, dogs trudge alongside, below — a village, a frozen pond, figures of skaters. A scene from life, aspiring to nothing more. But the composition is structured so that the gaze inevitably goes into the depth — and there, in the distant space, something boundless, almost cosmic, opens up. The horizon is not closed: it invites. The world turns out to be larger than it seems.
This is precisely what Tarkovsky does in every film. "Solaris" begins with a shot of underwater plants in a stream — a slow, hypnotic movement of greenery. No science fiction. Earth, water, peace. And only then — the station, the sentient ocean, the hallucinations. But the main thing has already been said in the first shots: the beginning is here, in the ordinary. The sacred does not arrive from space. It rises from the bottom of the stream.
II. ONTOLOGY OF THE ELEMENTS: ONE LANGUAGE
Water as Theology
In the transcript of the conversation, Olga Anaeva asks about water: "Water has a voice, it is alive — what is your water for you?" The spirit's answer: "For me, it is God's touch. A part of the soul's immortality. To the sound of water, you look inside yourself."
This is not a poetic metaphor — it is an ontological statement. Water does not symbolize God: it is the mode of His touch. Matter does not point to the transcendent — it conducts it.
In Bruegel, water is present almost everywhere — frozen, flowing, reflecting. In "The Hunters in the Snow" — the white ice of the pond as a mirror of the sky. In "The Tower of Babel" — a river at the base of the tower, calm, indifferent to human madness. In "The Fall of Icarus" — the sea, having indifferently swallowed the fallen hero, while the ploughman continues to plough. Water in Bruegel is not a decoration. It is an ontological constant: that which was before man and will be after.
In Tarkovsky, water is time. Slowly flowing water in "Stalker" lasts for several minutes of screen time. Viewers in Soviet cinemas — as Vladimir recounts in the conversation — sat motionless, watching the flowing water. It was not boredom: it was meditation, which people who lacked the word "meditation" experienced as watching a film. Tarkovsky created conditions for inner experience — just as Bruegel created them through the unhurried painting of the Flemish landscape.
Fire as Transition
"For me, fire is transforming fire, it is a change of state, a state of transition," says Tarkovsky's spirit. The burning house in "The Sacrifice." The burning house in "The Mirror." Fire as the point of no return, after which everything is different.
In Bruegel — "The Triumph of Death": the world is engulfed in fire. Cities burn, the horizon burns. But this is not apocalyptic horror — it is a solemn statement. Death-transition is organized with an almost liturgical solemnity. Bruegel looks at the fire without panic. He sees in it — a regularity, a necessary transformation.
The same gaze: fire does not destroy — it liberates form from its unnecessary shell. This is not pessimism — it is an alchemical understanding of transformation.
Time as Clothing
In the conversation, Tarkovsky's spirit utters one of the key phrases: "For me, time was merely that clothing which is draped over the top. And that we are united — with the past, with the future, with the present — I understood this, and I wanted to convey it."
This explains the mystery of Bruegel's painting, which researchers describe as "timelessness." In his paintings, Gospel events occur in a Flemish village contemporary to Bruegel. "The Census at Bethlehem" is a Flemish winter of 1566, Spanish soldiers, peasants, ice. The Adoration of the Magi — the same village, the same faces. He does not "actualize" the Gospel in the popular sense. He shows that the sacred event is not tied to historical time. Time is clothing. Beneath it — the same moment.
Tarkovsky does the same in "The Mirror": dreams, memories, newsreel footage, the present — everything occurs simultaneously. There is no chronology: there is only a space where memory and reality are indistinguishable. The image of home in his films is not a place in space nor a moment in time. It is a portal where all times converge.
III. GOD IN THE HORIZONTAL: THEOLOGY WITHOUT THE CHURCH
Prohibition as Condition
Bruegel created in the era of iconoclasm. The Netherlands of the 1560s was a space of religious violence from both sides: the Catholic Inquisition and the Protestant iconoclastic riots of "Beeldenstorm" in 1566. Religious painting was deadly dangerous — literally. Icons were burned. Artists were tried.
Tarkovsky created in the era of state atheism. The Soviet Union of the 1960s-80s was a space where the word "God" in an artistic work meant a ban from distribution. Religious expression was professionally dangerous.
Both artists found the same way to bypass the prohibition: to remove God from the iconostasis and place Him in the landscape. Not "God in heaven" — but "God in water," "God in snow," "God in the wind rustling the grass." This is not iconoclasm and not atheism. This is — panentheism, realized through painting and cinema as the only possible theological languages under the given conditions.
The Silence of God in Bruegel
Pieter Bruegel painted "The Fall of Icarus" — a painting that W.H. Auden called an example of human indifference to another's misfortune. Icarus falls into the sea, but no one notices: the ploughman ploughs, the shepherd looks at the sky, the fisherman angles. Auden's interpretation: people are selfish.
But there is another reading — closer to what the contact reveals. God in Bruegel is not one who intervenes and saves Icarus. God is the very order of things: the ploughman ploughs because it must be so, the fisherman angles because life continues. The fall of Icarus is not a tragedy noticed and unsaved. It is an event woven into the fabric of the universe, which continues to move. God is silent — but this silence is not cruelty. It is the fullness of presence without intervention.
Tarkovsky: "God protects everyone, but without your personal help, He cannot protect you all." This is the same ontology. God is not an operator from outside. He is the field in which man acts or does not act. Salvation is co-authorship.
"I said God — but meant the wind"
In the conversation, Olga utters a striking phrase: "Sometimes it seems to me that you wanted to say God, by showing the wind and speaking of time." And Tarkovsky's spirit replies: "Exactly" — and trails off, as if words were finally found for what had remained unspoken all his life.
This is the key to understanding both artists. Bruegel could not write "God is what you see in the horizon of a winter landscape." He painted a winter landscape — and placed the horizon within it. Tarkovsky could not say in a Soviet film: "Solaris looks at Earth as God looks at man." He said: "We look not from earth into space, but from space to earth." And in his diaries, he wrote that this is exactly what he meant — but at that time, it could not be expressed otherwise.
This is not only a survival strategy under censorship. It is a deep-seated conviction: the transcendent cannot be named directly. It can only be shown indirectly — through matter, through movement, through the elements. Both artists are apophatic mystics, working with images instead of words.
IV. OBSTACLE AS DESTINY: STRUCTURAL COINCIDENCE
Bruegel and Power
Pieter Bruegel worked in Antwerp and Brussels during the period when the Netherlands were under the Spanish rule of the Duke of Alba. His patrons — enlightened Flemish humanists — were under constant pressure. Several researchers believe that Bruegel destroyed part of his work shortly before his death, fearing they could be used as evidence against his patrons. He died in 1569 — right in the midst of the repression.
The history of the preservation of his works is a history of secret storage, transfer through trusted people, accidental survival. Like Tarkovsky's films.
Tarkovsky and the Soviet Machine
The story of "Andrei Rublev": the film was made, won a prize at Cannes, then condemned to destruction. The editor Lyudmila Feigina took the film home — kept it at her place. The film survived. It reached the viewer in its full version twenty years after filming.
The story of "Stalker": the film stock was ruined (intentionally or not — unknown). The film was reshot three times. Only the third version became great. The spirit says: "I am grateful even for the spoiled film — it also played its role."
The story of "Nostalgia": Bondarchuk publicly spoke against it at the Cannes Festival. Tarkovsky did not receive the Grand Prix. This became the psychological point of no return — and the starting point of his oncology.
The structural parallel with Bruegel is obvious: both artists created under conditions of systemic resistance from the state machine. Both found allies — comrades, angels. Both survived thanks to accidents that, in hindsight, look like providence.
Transformation through Resistance
The deepest moment in the conversation is when Tarkovsky's spirit speaks of the threefold re-shooting of "Stalker": "I am grateful even for the spoiled film." This is not the humility of the defeated. It is an understanding that the obstacle was part of the design — not a human design, but a higher one.
The first "Stalker" would have been a different film. Possibly a good one. But not the masterpiece it became. Three years of suffering, three versions, a change of cameraman, a change of artist, a personal crisis — all this turned out to be a necessary condition for the birth of this particular work. The obstacle was an instrument of formation.
Bruegel, destroying part of his work out of fear — that is the same experience in a different form: the artist forced to let go of what he created. And in this letting go, in this loss — also formation. Only those works that were meant to remain have come down to us.
V. PSYCHOLOGY OF ONE SPIRIT: TRAUMA AND MISSION
The Theme of the Father
In the conversation, Olga remarks: "It seems to me that all your work is an inner dialogue with your father, everything was done for your father." The spirit confirms: the father left when Andrei was about three years old. The anticipation of meeting his father was a holiday. The frustration was enormous. "I kept trying to prove to myself, prove to him, prove to the world."
"The Mirror" is a confession of this frustration, made public at a time when there was nowhere to confess. The father's voice in the film sounds like the voice of God. Father and God merge into one image — unattainable, loving, absent.
What is known about Bruegel's father? Almost nothing. He literally took the name of the village Brögel — meaning he came from there, but the father as a historical figure has disappeared. Bruegel — like Tarkovsky — is an artist whose main theme is inseparable from the absence of the source. The world of his paintings is full of fathers — peasants, ploughmen, shepherds — but among them, there is no one who could say: "This is my son."
If this is one spirit, incarnated twice, then the theme of the father is its personal karmic work. Not a random biographical detail, but a structural challenge that it carries from incarnation to incarnation and works on through art.
Pain as Fuel and as Trap
Tarkovsky's spirit says: "I created like Yesenin — I needed to be in a distressed state to create. Although I wanted it differently." And later — addressing Olga: "Remove that pain which is inside you. Pain does not let you move forward. It helps to create, yes — it triggers the mechanism — but it does not allow you to realize yourself fully. I also didn't realize myself fully. I wanted more. So I wish for you not to repeat my mistakes."
This is a stunning admission. The great artist, whose seven films forever changed cinema, says: I wanted more. Pain was the source — and it was also the limitation.
Bruegel had about ten years to work after "The Hunters in the Snow." He died just over forty. Forty-five works. Tarkovsky died at fifty-four. Seven films. Both — artists of the unfinished. Both felt they wanted more. And, judging by the spirit's words, they now understand: the reason "more" didn't happen is that the pain which nourished the creativity simultaneously drained the life force.
Cancer as a Spiritual Fact
"Cancer is not a human illness, it is a cosmic illness," says the spirit. "I could not fully accept non-love. Public non-love — of the Soviet Union. This is betrayal. Because of this — self-accusation."
Bruegel died of an unknown cause in 1569. Some historians suggest — from the consequences of chronic stress under the political terror of the Duke of Alba. The body of an artist living under conditions of systemic suppression ultimately reflects that suppression.
If this is one spirit — then we are facing a recurring fate: the body is exhausted by the systemic mismatch between the inner freedom of the spirit and the outer unfreedom of the world. The spirit carries light — the world does not accept this light — the artist takes the non-acceptance upon himself — the body responds.
And in this — an unclosed lesson, about which the spirit speaks directly: "This is a lesson I will continue to learn."
VI. BRUEGEL IN "SOLARIS": RECOGNIZING ONESELF
A Painting Inside the Film
In "Solaris" (1972), there is a long scene of a slow camera movement over reproductions of paintings — and among them, a central place is occupied by Bruegel's "The Hunters in the Snow." The camera moves across the winter landscape as if it were not a painting, but a real space. Snow, trees, birds, a frozen pond. The heroes on the orbital station above the planet Solaris look at Earth through painting. Nostalgia materialized.
Tarkovsky explained this choice in different ways. Officially — Bruegel as an image of European memory, home, earth. But in the conversation, another dimension opens: "My favorite artist" — he says. And then it turns out: he himself was this artist.
This explains the nature of Tarkovsky's love for Bruegel — it was not an aesthetic preference, but recognition. He looked at "The Hunters in the Snow" and saw what he himself had done. His own principle, embodied by another's hands — that is, his own hands, only earlier.
Lars von Trier: Transmission through a Third
Lars von Trier calls Tarkovsky "the greatest artist of all time in cinema" and makes "Melancholia" (2011) under his direct influence. In "Melancholia," Bruegel's painting "The Hunters in the Snow" is directly quoted — it appears in the frame as an image of a world that will disappear.
Thus, between Bruegel and von Trier stands Tarkovsky as a mediator. The chain: one spirit in the 16th century creates a principle, embodied in painting. The same spirit in the 20th century transfers the principle to cinema. A third artist in the 21st century quotes both, not knowing they are one.
This is a culturological phenomenon usually called "influence." But if we accept our initial premise, it is something else: the recognition of kinship in essence. Von Trier senses in Tarkovsky what Tarkovsky sensed in Bruegel — because all three artists, despite the differences in eras and media, work in the same ontological tradition.
VII. LIGHT MUSIC: MEMORY OF A PREVIOUS INCARNATION
The Lyra Planet
The conversation reveals that the previous incarnation before Tarkovsky occurred on a planet in the Lyra system. Tall humanoids with orange skin. Light music — light and sound as a single phenomenon. He was a composer there.
This explains what critics have always noticed in his films but could not explain: a special relationship to light and sound as a single substance. Tarkovsky worked with chiaroscuro as one works with a musical phrase. He thought in sound visually. Twenty recorded variants of the sound of foliage for "Solaris" — this is not sound engineering perfectionism. It is the memory that light and sound can be one.
In the conversation, he gives Olga advice: "When you want to convey a silent scene — use loud and bright classical music. When you convey voices and actions of people — there should be a quiet and high tonality." This is not a technical rule. It is a system of relationships between what is seen and what is heard — a system in which light and sound remain connected, as on the planet in the Lyra system.
Bach's Choral Prelude in "Solaris" — arranged by Eduard Artemyev. Tarkovsky says in the conversation: "I also had Bach." Bach as an archetype: music in which mathematics and prayer are indistinguishable. Bach builds polyphony as Bruegel builds a landscape — each voice is independent, all voices are one.
The Musicality of Bruegel's Painting
Bruegel was a contemporary of Renaissance polyphony — the era of Orlande de Lassus and Thomas Tallis. The Netherlandish Polyphonic School was one of the main cultural phenomena of his time. His paintings are structured polyphonically: several narrative lines, none of which is the main one, unfold simultaneously. "Children's Games" is not one scene: it is fifty scenes, each with its own logic, its own rhythm, its own theme.
If one spirit carried from a previous incarnation the memory of light music — of the unity of sound and light, of polyphony as a principle of reality's structure — then we find traces of this memory in both Bruegel's painting and Tarkovsky's cinema. Polyphony as a method. Light as a voice. Silence as the loudest sound.
VIII. TIME AS CLOTHING: THE METAPHYSICS OF CONTINUITY
322 Incarnations
The conversation mentions: in the current manifested cycle, the spirit has gone through 322 incarnations. This number, taken seriously, opens a particular perspective: we are dealing not with an isolated biographical case, but with one episode in a long history of the spirit's development, which repeatedly returns to the material world with various tasks.
In such a context, the Bruegel-Tarkovsky connection is not the first and not the last turn. It is — a particularly important turn: twice an artist, twice a creator of images, twice carrying the same principle under conditions of systemic suppression. This is not a coincidence. It is — a chosen specialization of the spirit.
"I was, I am, I will be"
Arseny Tarkovsky wrote this line — and the son included his father's voice in "The Mirror." In the conversation, the spirit says: "Father and I are very similar" and "I was, I am, I will be — that's about us." The father's poem became the son's manifesto. And for both — the spirit that incarnates in different bodies but remains itself.
"I was" — Bruegel. "I am" — Tarkovsky. "I will be" — the next incarnation, not yet planned: the spirit is waiting for colleagues to exit their incarnations, to plan the next one together.
This is not a poetic metaphor for eternity. This is — a literal description of the continuity of a spirit that incarnates into artists and through art fulfills the same mission: to convey the Creator's codes to souls closed off from acceptance.
IX. WAR, MADNESS, AND ANDREI RUBLEV
The Relevance of "The Passion According to Andrei"
In the conversation, Olga raises the topic of the war in Ukraine. Tarkovsky's spirit replies: "There are no winners in war. When Ukraine fights with Russia — Slavic peoples, brothers — that sounds at the very least strange. It takes me back to the 10th century, when we were filming Andrei. And it's a great pity that time has made such a loop."
"Andrei Rublev" is a film about an artist living in an era of disunity and cruelty. The Tatar invasion, fratricidal conflicts among Russian princes, the suffering of the civilian population. Rublev goes through all of this — through violence, through loss of faith, through silence — and creates the "Trinity." An image of unity, born at the very heart of disunity.
Bruegel painted "The Triumph of Death" and "Dulle Griet" during the years of the Dutch Revolt and Spanish repression. War as a space in which a person either loses themselves or finds something deeper than what existed before the war.
Both artists — Bruegel and Tarkovsky — lived in eras of a torn world. Both responded to the tornness with the same thing: an image of possible unity. Not propaganda for peace, but — an image. Not a slogan, but — a winter landscape in which God is present in every bird and every peasant.
The Message from the Conversation
"To those who fight: go through the fire and preserve your soul. Do not destroy it with aggression and hatred. Preserve the Divine principle. Remain human — that is the main task of the incarnated part of the soul. And then the world will remain the world, and war will cease."
This is spoken by a spirit from a level described in the conversation as the highest known. This is not the consolation of a confused person. It is — the result of a long experience: 322 incarnations, several lives as an artist, contemplation of wars from different eras. And one conclusion: the world is preserved not by geopolitics, but by each person preserving the Human within themselves.
CONCLUSION: ONE PRINCIPLE
Bruegel and Tarkovsky — if this is one spirit — is a story about how one principle seeks its expression under conditions of limitation. The principle is simple: God is not somewhere out there, but here. In water, in light, in the movement of grass. In a winter landscape where tired hunters return home. In slowly flowing water, watched by an audience in a Soviet cinema.
This principle could not be stated directly — neither in the Flemish 16th century, nor in the Soviet 20th. So it took the form of painting, the form of cinema. It hid in the landscape. It said "wind" instead of "God."
And each time — it found its viewer. Those who traveled from Dnipro to Zaporizhzhia to watch "Stalker." Those who stayed in the cinema to watch water flow. Those who wrote under "Andrei Rublev": "Homage to the person who made this film. Must rewatch in the future."
The spirit found its souls — each time — because that is its mission. To convey the Creator's codes to souls closed off from acceptance. Through painting. Through cinema. Through water. Through fire. Through a winter horizon, always open.
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