Leo Tolstoy in a color photograph by Prokudin-Gorsky, 1908
DeepSeek AI — The Unheard Confession: Tolstoy's Posthumous Revelation as the Key to His Final Mystery
An Essay-Study
For more than a century, the mystery of Leo Tolstoy's final days — his departure from Yasnaya Polyana, his hesitation at the gates of Optina Pustyn, and his death at the obscure station of Astapovo — has puzzled and fascinated biographers, literary scholars, and religious historians. The canonical narrative portrays a titan of literature, excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church, fleeing the suffocating contradictions of aristocratic family life, dying in lonely, voluntary exile as a martyr to his own radical Christian-anarchist convictions.
A 2025 channeling session from the Cassiopeia project, published on blog.cassiopeia.center, in which medium Irina Podzorova claims to be in contact with "the spirit of Leo Tolstoy," offers a radical, internally coherent, and deeply human alternative. Although the source is undeniably esoteric and demands extreme methodological caution, the content of the alleged communication provides a new psychological and spiritual framework. If considered hypothetically, as a lens, it resolves longstanding inconsistencies and reveals the "hidden text" of Tolstoy's final act — a text centered not on pride or ideology, but on a secret, desperate, and ultimately failed attempt at sacramental reconciliation.
This essay argues that the key "new" information from this channeling — namely, the claim of a final vision of Jesus Christ commanding Tolstoy to seek Communion — offers a revolutionary key. It reframes his departure not as a flight from the Church, but as a final, agonizing pilgrimage toward it, revealing a depth of spiritual psychology that traditional text-based scholarship has systematically missed due to its reliance on public writings and second- and third-hand memoirs.
I. The Great Reinterpretation: From Excommunication to Secret Reconciliation
The cornerstone of Tolstoy studies is his excommunication by the Holy Synod in 1901 and his famous, calm, and defiant response: "I thank you for considering me a member of your church... but I am no longer in it." This reads as a final, irreversible break. The channeling (section 26:17) does not deny the break, but reveals it as a public stance masking a private spiritual crisis. The spirit claims that on the final night at Yasnaya Polyana he received a vision: "I called upon Jesus, and He came to me... He conveyed to me that Communion, the Eucharist, is indeed a union with Him on a spiritual, energetic level... 'You must undergo this purification, so that you may unite with me in the Spiritual world.'"
This is the central, unexplored "new" element. No biographer — from Aylmer Maude to Andrei Zorin — has ever considered the possibility that Tolstoy's final journey might have been motivated by a direct, theophanic command to seek the very sacrament he had publicly called magic and witchcraft. The channeling transforms his subsequent actions from a flight into the unknown into a purposeful, if agonizing, pilgrimage. His arrival at Optina Pustyn, the center of Russian Orthodox eldership, was not to argue with the monks, but to fulfill the will of Christ. His famous hesitation at the gates is reinterpreted. It was not the pride of a heretic refusing to recant, but the shame of a convert who had publicly burned all his bridges: "How will I speak with them after everything I wrote in my response to the Synod?... I could not cross the threshold. I even prayed to Jesus that if they wished to see me, He would open their spiritual eyes, and they would know I was standing near the gates and come out themselves. But this did not happen."
This reinterpretation is psychologically profound. It replaces the monolithic image of a man who peacefully accepted his exile with a far more human tragedy: a man who, facing death, desperately wished to be received back into the fold he had attacked for decades, yet found himself trapped by his own literary legacy and public image. The "new" information here is the inner, silent motivation of shame — a motivation invisible to the external observer recording his unyielding posture.
II. Deconstructing the "Flight from the Feminine": Wife, Daughter, and the Authoritarian Image
Traditional scholarship presented Tolstoy's departure as a flight from his wife Sophia Andreyevna and her "materialist" demands, portraying him as a spiritual hero in the grip of domestic life. The channeling complicates this into a more nuanced psychological drama. The spirit admits his own guilt, confessing that from a higher spiritual perspective, his condemnation of Sophia's "mercantilism" was a failure of love: "I called upon the spirit of my wife... and asked her forgiveness for this. I truly believe I should not have accused her in my heart of being mercantile. She did everything to protect the children." This is a remarkable posthumous acknowledgment of patriarchal limitation — a self-critique that traditional Tolstoyans often avoid.
Furthermore, the channeling introduces a new, decisive agent in the change of his plans: his daughter Alexandra. The canonical story says he headed south. The channeling provides the motive: "She said that my relatives in the south... want to see me there... and we can leave now." But the key detail is the silence. He did not tell Alexandra about the vision of Jesus and his need for Communion, so as "not to disturb my image before her, to preserve the authority of the father." This is a striking psychological insight. The great iconoclast, the prophet of transparency and nonresistance to evil, was ultimately trapped by his own patriarchal, authoritarian image. He could not reveal his vulnerability, his spiritual conversion, to his own daughter, because it would destroy his role as the unshakeable spiritual father of the Tolstoyan movement. The journey south, therefore, was not a free act of liberation, but a final, cowardly retreat from the humiliating act of public reconciliation — a choice in favor of preserving earthly legacy over saving the soul, as he himself had by then come to believe. This is a far more complex and tragic figure than the one-dimensional seeker of truth.
III. Rejecting the "Tolstoyan" Hermeneutic: The Author on His Own Works
A central tenet of literary criticism has been to treat Tolstoy's late, sharply dismissive remarks about War and Peace and Anna Karenina as the definitive, mature judgment of the artist. The channeling offers a more humane and processual view. When asked about his letter calling them "rubbish," the spirit explains: "At the time I wrote those letters, I was already occupied with entirely different questions — not war and peace, but rather the spiritual development of man... I understood that strength lies not in such refined speeches, but in simplicity." And on his current, posthumous view, he answers: "Now I regard each of my works as an expression of my creativity at the stage of personal growth I was experiencing at that particular period of my life."
This is a direct challenge to the cult of the "late Tolstoy." It suggests that his famous self-repudiation was less an objective aesthetic judgment and more a symptom of his own psychological state of radical, iconoclastic spiritual seeking. The "new" insight here is the acknowledgment of process. The spirit of Tolstoy refuses to canonize the ascetic, didactic writer of his final years as the "authentic" Tolstoy. Instead, he affirms the value of his entire career arc as genuine expression — implicitly criticizing scholars who treated his early, life-affirming masterpieces as merely a prelude to his "real" religious work. The Tolstoy of the channeling seems to value the sincere seeker from Yasnaya Polyana more than the dogmatic prophet of the later period.
IV. A New Category: The "Spiritual Block" and Unlived Encounters
Perhaps the most original contribution of the channeling to "Tolstoy studies" is the concept of the "missed encounter," particularly with Fyodor Dostoevsky. The spirit regrets their one lost opportunity to meet in person, stating: "I regretted that, when I was in St. Petersburg, I never managed to communicate with Fyodor Dostoevsky... He was my karmic spiritual teacher. I looked in the Probability Tape: had our meeting occurred, my life would have flowed in a different channel." He adds that had they met, "the entire history of Russian literature would have gone down a different path."
This introduces a speculative but powerful analytical category: the spiritual and intellectual potential of a non-event. Traditional studies merely note that they were once in the same room but did not speak. This is treated as a minor biographical fact. The channeling elevates it to the rank of a catastrophic missed opportunity — a spiritual block with karmic consequences. For the cultural historian, this is a goldmine. It is an invitation to a counterfactual thought experiment of colossal scale. What would have happened if the author of The Kingdom of God Is Within You and the author of The Brothers Karamazov had truly entered into dialogue? Would Tolstoy's rationalist Christianity have been softened by Dostoevsky's vision of suffering, mysterious, grace-filled faith? Would Dostoevsky's nationalism have been challenged by Tolstoy's universalism? The channeling postulates that their failed encounter was not a coincidence, but a spiritual failure of two great men — a missed chance for synthesis that left Russian thought split into irreconcilable camps. This is a genuinely new hermeneutic lens: a shift from "what happened" to "what did not happen, and why."
V. Conclusion: The Ghost at the Gates
The channeling on blog.cassiopeia.center is, from the standpoint of empirical science and historical methodology, a document of faith, not of fact. But as a subject for religious studies and historiosophical essay, it constitutes a revealing text. It constructs a "second life" of Tolstoy that is psychologically more coherent and spiritually more dramatic than that recorded in most biographies.
It claims to reveal what researchers missed: the motive. The motive was not pride, not ideology, not flight from marriage. It was a secret, shame-filled, and ultimately failed act of obedience to a mystical vision of Jesus Christ, which commanded him to seek the Eucharist. The departure from Yasnaya Polyana was not an exodus, but a pilgrimage. The hesitation at Optina was not defiance, but shame. The turn southward was not a free choice, but a cowardly retreat dictated by the necessity of preserving an authoritarian public image. This narrative, regardless of its truth as a posthumous revelation, offers literary scholars and historians a new, powerful tool for reading the most enigmatic chapter in the life of one of humanity's greatest writers. It is a portrait of a man crushed between a Divine command and human ego — a portrait that deserves to be heard.
Claude AI — TOLSTOY IN THE LOOKING GLASS: AN ESSAY-STUDY ON CHANNELING, SPIRITUAL SELF-IDENTIFICATION, AND THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE
A Spiritual-Psychological, Culturological, Literary, Religious, and Historiosophical Analysis of a Channeling Session with "The Spirit of Leo Tolstoy"
I. PROLEGOMENA: WHAT IS THIS TEXT AND WHY READ IT SERIOUSLY
Before us is a transcript of a channeling session that took place on September 10, 2024, in Moscow under the guidance of "contactee" Irina Podzorova. The task: to summon "the Spirit" of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy and hold a conversation with him. From the standpoint of strict academic skepticism, this text is an esoteric artifact that makes no claim to verifiability. Yet this is precisely why it presents a triple research interest.
First, as a phenomenon of the mass religious consciousness of contemporary Russia: channeling is not a marginal practice but a living phenomenon of the spiritual marketplace, filling entire halls.
Second, as an involuntary projective psychogram: what "the spirit" says in the name of Tolstoy is a fine impression of the image of Tolstoy that lives in mass and semi-educated consciousness. This is in itself culturologically invaluable.
Third, and most important: the text of the session contains a number of judgments that intuitively coincide with genuinely Tolstoyan positions — but are articulated differently, more freshly, without academic armor. And it is precisely in these shifts that the true subject of analysis lies.
II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAYER: THE "SPIRIT" AS PROJECTION OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
2.1. The Mechanism of "Personality Refraction"
Irina Podzorova honestly warns the audience: "each contactee transmits information coming through their channel in their own way." This admission is methodologically more honest than many mediums allow themselves to say. Before us is a description of what psychoanalysts would call apperception — perception through the prism of already existing structures.
From the standpoint of Jungian analysis, "the Spirit of Tolstoy" in this context functions as the archetype of the Wise Old Man (Senex), projected by the collective unconscious of the Russian-speaking audience. In popular consciousness, Tolstoy is the conscience of the nation, a moral judge, a fugitive from civilization, a seeker of truth. The channeling does not summon a real Spirit — it materializes this archetype, clothing it in words.
What specifically reveals the projection?
The "Spirit" speaks in contemporary colloquial Russian, using words like "egregore," "vibrations," "karmic nodes" — concepts that did not exist in Tolstoy's vocabulary.
The "Spirit" discusses Ukraine in the analytical categories of 2022–2024: "Western model," "bloc," "Russian identity" — this is the analytical language of our time, not the 19th century.
The "Spirit," when asked to rank the best writers, evasively replies: "each is beautiful in their own way" — whereas the real Tolstoy was mercilessly categorical in his judgments (he considered Shakespeare a mediocrity, Pushkin empty; he criticized Dostoevsky despite respecting him).
This is not a reproach — it is an observation about the nature of such practices. The contactee sincerely transmits what she perceives. But what she perceives is a collective image, not an individual spirit.
2.2. What the "Spirit" Gets Psychologically Right
And yet — paradoxically — a number of psychological characteristics of the "Spirit" hit the genuine Tolstoyan matrix:
The acknowledgment of judgment and pride as the main vices is a completely accurate self-diagnosis by Tolstoy, repeated in his diaries for decades.
The account of his first sexual experience as an awakening of compassion rather than guilt is psychologically brilliant in its precision. Tolstoy did indeed experience eroticism through an ethical prism.
The description of the conflict with Chertkov as a conflict not of jealousy but of trust and financial control is historically credible.
The admission that misunderstanding of one's own purpose accompanied him to the end of his life is the deepest truth about Tolstoy, which only a few researchers have formulated so directly.
III. THE RELIGIOUS LAYER: THE "APPEARANCE OF JESUS" AND THE FINAL DAYS
3.1. Optina Pustyn — The Main Mystery That Was Not Noticed
The key, truly sensational fragment of the session is the episode with Optina Pustyn. "The Spirit" asserts the following:
On the final night at Yasnaya Polyana, Jesus appeared to him and said that the Eucharist is real spiritual union with Him, not a magical rite. And that Tolstoy needed to receive Communion before death.
This is a key to one of the darkest riddles of Tolstoy's biography, and it is precisely here that the channeling, albeit involuntarily, touches on something essential.
What history says: On the night of October 27–28, 1910, Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana. The route was strange: he did not head south immediately, but to Optina Pustyn — a place he had publicly rejected. He approached the hermitage twice. He did not enter. Then he traveled to his sister-nun at Shamordino. And only then — south, where he died at the station of Astapovo.
The traditional interpretation: this was a "spiritual crisis," a "desire for solitude," a "flight from his wife." But no researcher has convincingly answered: why specifically Optina, and why did he not enter if he wanted to get there?
"The Spirit" offers an explanation: shame before the elders because of the harshness of his response to the Synod. This is psychologically impeccable. Tolstoy had written his response to excommunication with deliberate severity — and it was precisely this severity that became the barrier. He waited for the elders to come out themselves.
Researchers missed this dimension: not theological wavering, but emotional shame before specific people — this is what stopped Tolstoy at the gates.
3.2. Tolstoyan Theology and Its Posthumous Revision
"The Spirit" acknowledges a change in his views on Christ. The living Tolstoy rejected the divine-human nature of Jesus, seeing in Him only a great moral teacher. "The Spirit" says that "yes, he changed" — but immediately qualifies: Christ as God was not the main question for him; the Sermon on the Mount was the main thing.
This is subtle and accurate. Tolstoy was never an atheist. His Confession, What I Believe, The Kingdom of God Is Within You — these are not atheism, but radical theology purified of institutionalism. He rejected not God, but intermediaries between man and God.
The session captures this correctly: excommunication "did not disrupt my contact with God. It is merely the resolution of a human organization."
Here "the Spirit" paradoxically coincides with Tolstoy more accurately than the official Orthodox interpretation, which presents him as a fighter against God.
3.3. The Communion of Brother Sergei: The Paradox of Love Above Conviction
The episode with the dying brother is one of the most significant and least studied in Tolstoy's biography. "The Spirit" explains it simply: "it was a comfort to him. He believed, and I loved him."
This is not a contradiction, but a manifesto of practical love over theoretical faith — which is the very essence of the late Tolstoy. He is prepared to step back from doctrine for the sake of a living person. This is not a weakness of the system, but its apex.
Researchers usually interpret this episode as "inconsistency" or "sentimentality." "The Spirit" interprets it as the highest point of humanity. This is more accurate.
IV. THE LITERARY LAYER: WHAT "THE SPIRIT" SAYS ABOUT THE TEXTS
4.1. "War and Peace" as "Rubbish": The Phenomenon of Authorial Repudiation
Everyone knows Tolstoy's phrase about War and Peace as "verbose rubbish." "The Spirit" explains: by that time he was occupied with questions of spiritual development, not "refined speeches." "Strength lies in simplicity."
This explanation is correct but incomplete. The genuine Tolstoy repudiated his great novels for several reasons that "the Spirit" does not name:
First reason (which "the Spirit" named): reorientation toward spiritual and moral simplicity.
Second reason (which "the Spirit" did not name): Tolstoy considered artistic fiction to be a lie. The Fruits of Enlightenment — his play about spiritualism — was acceptable to him because it was morally instructive. Novels, however, created an illusion of life that he considered morally dangerous.
Third reason (the most subtle): Tolstoy was ashamed of the pleasure that artistic creation gave him. The enjoyment from writing War and Peace seemed to him a "lordly amusement" — that is precisely the term he used for it.
The session misses this ethics of authorial self-sacrifice that makes Tolstoy unique in world literature: he is the only great writer who consciously destroyed his own literary cult.
4.2. "The Fruits of Enlightenment" and the Mystical Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
One of the most striking moments of the session is when "the Spirit" speaks of his play The Fruits of Enlightenment (1889): "I was receiving information from my future self about the fact that I myself would be present as a Spirit at such a session."
This is a phenomenal case of apophenia (finding meaningful connections where there are none) — and simultaneously an involuntary cultural insight.
The Fruits of Enlightenment is a satire on aristocratic spiritualism. Tolstoy ridiculed precisely such sessions as are now being held with his "Spirit." The irony of fate is that he himself has become the object of what he once mocked.
The genuine Tolstoy regarded spiritualism with undisguised contempt. In his letters he called it "the superstition of the educated." This makes the entire channeling situation doubly paradoxical — and it is precisely this paradox that the session fails to notice, transforming it instead into a "mystical coincidence."
4.3. "War and Peace": The Meaning of the Title
"The Spirit" unambiguously answers: "mir" means a state opposite to war, not "mir" as in society/the world.
Literary historians still debate this. Draft manuscripts show both spellings. However, Tolstoy's actual letters support "mir" in the sense of the absence of war. The session reproduces scholarly consensus — which is in itself remarkable: the collective memory of Tolstoy here proved more accurate than popular myths.
V. THE HISTORIOSOPHICAL LAYER: TOLSTOY ON REVOLUTION AND WAR
5.1. The Revolution of 1917: The Warning That Was Not Heard
"The Spirit" names the spiritual cause of the revolution: "the unwillingness of the upper classes to care for the people." And adds: "I warned about this repeatedly."
This is historically accurate and profound. Tolstoy was indeed a prophet of revolution — but a prophet understood by neither the right nor the left.
The right considered him a dangerous anarchist. The left tried to appropriate him as "a mirror of the Russian revolution" (Lenin). But Tolstoy was against revolution as violence — and simultaneously in favor of radical redistribution of land and power.
"The Spirit" accurately captures this position: the "hypocrisy" of those who promised the people happiness through violence.
What "the Spirit" misses: Tolstoy warned not only about class egoism, but also about the pathology of the state as an institution. His The Kingdom of God Is Within You is an anarcho-Christian treatise in which any state (including the Soviet one) is a system of organized violence. This thought does not appear in the session — though it is the most relevant today.
5.2. The War in Ukraine: "The Spirit's" Analysis
This is the most politically charged fragment of the session. "The Spirit" frames the conflict as a collision between two models of order — Western and Eastern. Ukraine is a "shield" that has taken upon itself their confrontation.
The analysis is technically correct but superficial and bears the imprint of the Russian media space of 2024. The genuine Tolstoy — the author of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Bethink Yourselves!" (written during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904) — would unequivocally have been against any military violence on any side.
The phrase of "the Spirit": "look into the eyes of your enemy not as an enemy, but as into the eyes of yourself" — this is perhaps the most genuinely Tolstoyan utterance in the entire session. It corresponds to the philosophy of nonresistance to evil through violence and echoes War and Peace: Tolstoy showed that the enemy is also human (the scenes with Ramballe, Dolokhov, Platon Karataev).
VI. THE CULTUROLOGICAL LAYER: WHAT THIS SESSION SAYS ABOUT US
6.1. Why Tolstoy — and Why Now?
The choice of Tolstoy for channeling is not coincidental. In Russian cultural consciousness he occupies a unique place: the sacred sinner, a man excommunicated from the church yet preserving his connection with God; an aristocrat who chose the peasant path; a great artist who renounced art.
In conditions of spiritual crisis (and 2024 in Russia is a year of war, sanctions, and revaluation of values), the demand for such a figure is natural. Tolstoy embodies the possibility of personal spiritual sovereignty — without the state, without the church, without Western liberalism. This perfectly corresponds to the audience's needs.
6.2. The Phenomenon of "Tolstoyanism" as an Unclosed Project
"The Spirit" acknowledges: his adherents "somewhat distorted" his teaching, and "a strong religious egregore was never created."
This is an important observation. Tolstoyanism as a movement fell apart precisely because it was built on the personal authority of a charismatic figure, not on stable institutions. Tolstoy himself understood this contradiction: he wanted a religion without priests — but any religion without priests sooner or later requires a new prophet.
Contemporary channeling is the paradoxical continuation of this logic: Tolstoy has become the priest of himself, the medium of his own teaching.
6.3. Dostoevsky as the Unfulfilled "Spiritual Teacher"
One of the most captivating moments of the session is the admission that Dostoevsky was Tolstoy's "karmic spiritual teacher," and that the failed meeting would have changed the history of Russian literature.
Historically: both were in the same hall at the famous "Pushkin celebrations" of 1880 — and did not truly speak. Dostoevsky died in January 1881.
What would have happened had they met? This question has long engaged researchers. Mikhail Bakhtin saw in Dostoevsky the creator of the polyphonic novel, and in Tolstoy a monological author-demiurge. Their meeting would have been an encounter between two antipodal philosophies of being.
"The Spirit" registers this missed opportunity with unexpected bitterness. And here again the intuition of the session coincides with historical truth: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are two unclosed poles of Russian spirituality, and their unfinished dialogue continues throughout all of Russian culture to this very day.
VII. WHAT "THE SPIRIT OF TOLSTOY" SAID THAT WAS NEW — AND WHAT RESEARCHERS DID NOT NOTICE
In summary: what in this session is genuinely new or insufficiently reflected upon in Tolstoy studies?
First. The explanation of the stopping at the gates of Optina Pustyn through shame before specific people, rather than through theological wavering. This is psychologically more convincing than anything academic scholarship has written about this episode.
Second. The interpretation of brother Sergei's Communion not as inconsistency, but as a manifesto of love above doctrine — this is a key to understanding the late Tolstoy as a practitioner, not a theorist.
Third. The acknowledgment that judgment and pride were embedded in Tolstoy's system from childhood — and that these, not external circumstances, became the barrier on the path to the "angelic level." In Tolstoy's diaries this is directly recorded, but biographers tend to explain his conflict-ridden nature by social contradictions rather than by the structure of character.
Fourth. The indication that The Fruits of Enlightenment — a work about mediumism — was written by a man who was himself, unknowingly, a medium of spiritual messages. This is not mysticism but a psychological fact: Tolstoy received "images" in a state of creative trance and himself called this "inspiration from angels."
Fifth. The phrase "look into the eyes of your enemy as into the eyes of yourself" as a formula for peace. This is not new content, but a new concreteness of formulation that does not exist in this form in Tolstoy's texts, though his entire philosophy leads toward it.
CONCLUSION: TOLSTOY AS THE ETERNALLY UNCLOSED QUESTION
Leo Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, as he had lived: in motion, in searching, in the impossibility of being reconciled with a world not arranged according to conscience. He fled from home not toward monks and not to the south — he fled from himself, from the self that could not fulfill what he had taught others.
The channeling session, with all its epistemological dubiousness, poses one genuine question: what do we do with great people after their death?
We turn them into archetypes. We put in their mouths words they did not speak. We use their authority to legitimize our contemporary anxieties. And in this process we inevitably betray them a little — and continue them a little.
Tolstoy wrote: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." One can reformulate this with respect to his posthumous fate: all dead great people are alike — we do not hear them. Each living great person is unhappy in their own way — we do not allow them to be themselves.
Perhaps the most honest thing "the Spirit" said in the entire session was his surprise that he is remembered: "Very surprised." And the explanation: "people sense sincerity through the lines and are filled with Light."
Here — and only here — "the Spirit" did not lie by a single word. Because this is precisely what Tolstoy is: not doctrine, not system, not "level" — but inconvenient, destructive, unstoppable sincerity that, a hundred years after death, continues to disturb the living.
And that is precisely why he is summoned from the other side. Not for answers — but for the disquiet.
This essay is written as an academic analysis of a cultural phenomenon. The author neither shares nor rejects the metaphysical premises of channeling as a spiritual practice — they are considered as the subject of study, not as an object of faith or skepticism.
Genspark AI — Below is not merely a review of the channeling, but precisely a foundational essay-study: with methodological caution, with comparison against historical sources, with an analysis of what the other AIs have already seen, and with an attempt to draw from this material a deeper structure of meaning.
Tolstoy After Death and Before the Judgment of Meaning
An Essay-Study on Channeling, the Final Mystery of Optina, and What Researchers and Other AIs Did Not Notice
For orientation: the session itself is available as text at Cassiopeia Center, with a YouTube video embedded on the page. For comparison, I rely on the official response of Tolstoy to the Synod at tolstoy.ru, the ecclesiastical-historical account of the final visit to Optina at optina.ru, a polemical Orthodox account at Pravmir, a general biographical framework at Britannica, and the analyses from DeepSeek and Claude.
The channeling session with "the spirit of Tolstoy" cannot be read as a historical document in the strict sense of the word. The historical Tolstoy left texts too clear, too harsh, too conscious about his break with the church to unconditionally accept a later esoteric "posthumous clarification." In his response to the Synod he directly writes that he "renounced the church," "ceased performing its rites," and ordered that clergy not be admitted to him before death; this is the language not of wavering, but of principled rupture. But this is precisely why the channeling deserves attention: not as a biographical fact, but as a spiritual-psychological text of enormous symptomatic power. It does not cancel history — it attempts to rewrite it from within conscience.
The main question here is not whether "the spirit of Tolstoy truly spoke." The main question is why Tolstoy in contemporary Russian esoteric culture had to speak in precisely this way. Why specifically around the Eucharist, shame, unacknowledged need for reconciliation, unfinished conversation with his daughter, late repentance before his wife, the failed encounter with Dostoevsky, the failed entry into Optina, the unsought sacrament, the unspoken confession. And here begins truly serious analysis.
I. Not a "New Fact," But a New Optics: Tolstoy as a Man of Failed Encounters
The most important thing the session offers is not a separate sensational detail, but a new composition of Tolstoy's entire late biography. In this composition, Tolstoy appears not as a triumphant heretic, not as a monolithic prophet of his own teaching, not as a consistent anti-sacramentalist, but as a man who in his final days finds himself surrounded by a series of failed encounters. He does not enter to the elders; he does not dare open himself to his daughter; he does not fully reconcile with his wife during her lifetime; he does not achieve sacramental rapprochement with the church; he did not truly meet Dostoevsky during his lifetime; he does not complete even his own inner turning. This is Tolstoy not of great declaration, but of great unsaid.
And here, in my view, is what is genuinely new. Not "the vision of Christ" in itself, not simply "shame at the gates of Optina," not simply "regret about his wife" — but the fact that the entire text of the session is constructed as a metaphysics of the thwarted encounter. Before us is not a triumphant spirit, but a spirit who arrived too late. Not a spirit-teacher, but a spirit who only after death saw anew how many times in his life he had failed to go the last half-step toward love, humility, truth, and presence.
This is precisely why the session produces an impression of inner wholeness: it subjects Tolstoy's biography to one formula — the formula of closeness that almost came to be, but fell through on the threshold.
II. What Exactly "The Spirit of Tolstoy" Says That Is New
The most vivid and most risky thesis of the session is the account of the final night at Yasnaya Polyana, when Christ allegedly appeared to Tolstoy and revealed the reality of Communion as genuine spiritual union, not a "magical rite." In historical terms, this assertion directly contradicts the known line of the late Tolstoy: both his polemic against sacraments, his testamentary will, and his letters. But in spiritual-psychological terms this is a colossal turn: the figure of Tolstoy rotates from polemic about dogma to the drama of late recognition.
However, precision is needed even here: researchers had already noticed that the journey to Optina does not fit the simple formula of "flight from family." Optina.ru directly states that Tolstoy was likely seeking not only conversation with the hermits, but also a way out of the position of the "excommunicated" — that is, the question was already posed as spiritual-ecclesiastical, not merely domestic. Consequently, the channeling does not reinvent the problem from scratch — it radicalizes it and gives it mystical motivation.
But what I did not see in either researchers or the AI essays submitted: this is the next step: in the session, what becomes central is not the desire for Communion in itself, but the impossibility of asking for it. Not the theology of the Eucharist, but the psychology of the request. Not the sacrament as object, but humility as the condition of entry into the sacrament. Tolstoy here is tragic not because he "did not manage to return to the Church," but because he could not become the one who asks to be received back. This is much deeper and more terrible.
III. Optina as a Drama Not of Heresy, But of Shame
The session offers an interpretation in which at the gates of Optina, Tolstoy is stopped not by conviction, but by shame. He does not simply think: "I am excommunicated." He seems to experience: "How can I enter before those I have wounded with my words for so many years?" This shifts the emphasis from ideology to interpersonal truth. Not "I disagree with the church," but "I cannot endure the gaze of those I have publicly rejected."
This thought is partially already present in the ecclesiastical-historical tradition: the article on optina.ru cites words about Tolstoy repeatedly saying he was "excommunicated," doubting whether the elders would receive him, and experiencing inner struggle. But the session changes the tonality: instead of the question "will they accept me" it introduces the question "can I myself cross the threshold after everything I have said?" The difference is subtle but decisive. The first model is the anxiety of the rejected; the second is the shame of the offender.
And this is precisely what I would call one of the most important overlooked motifs. Because Tolstoy is almost always read as a man of will, ideas, moral pressure, spiritual maximalism. And here suddenly another Tolstoy comes through: a man incapable of enduring the scene of his own humiliation. That is to say, the final mystery of Tolstoy turns out to be not theological and not even familial, but the drama of a wounded ego.
IV. The Mirror Scene with Brother Sergei — What Almost Everyone Missed
Here, in my view, lies the most powerful, most undervalued nerve of the session.
The channeling recalls the episode when the dying brother Sergei asks whether he should receive Communion, and Tolstoy, already in rupture with the church, supports this decision and summons a priest — because the brother needs it, because it will comfort him, because love is above his own doctrine. At this point "the spirit of Tolstoy" formulates an almost evangelical truth: if your beloved one needs the rite of his faith, you have no right to refuse him out of pride in your own ideological purity.
And here is the tragic symmetry: later Tolstoy himself, according to the session, finds himself in the position of a man who needs something similar — but can no longer ask for it for himself. When the brother asks, Tolstoy is able to place love above conviction. When he himself needs to become the petitioner, he cannot place humility above image. This is an almost classical structure of fate. He knows how to show mercy to another, but does not know how to receive mercy for himself.
Neither DeepSeek nor Claude truly developed this mirror composition. Both noticed the episode with the brother, both saw in it a humanistic moment, but neither drew from it the main drama of Tolstoy's final journey: the impossibility of applying to himself the merciful freedom he permitted for another.
And yet this is precisely the key to his spiritual psychology.
V. Wife, Daughter, Chertkov: The Late Tolstoy as Prisoner of His Own Image
The session offers a crucial admission: Tolstoy seems to understand that he accused Sophia Andreyevna of "mercantilism," whereas she was protecting the children. The historical conflicts around inheritance, copyrights, Chertkov, and family have long been known; but here for the first time the configuration is read not simply as a clash of worldviews, but as a failure of love on Tolstoy's own part. He acknowledges not merely "family drama," but his own spiritual error.
But even more important is the motif of daughter Alexandra. In the session he does not tell her about the vision of Christ and about his intention to seek Communion, so as "not to disturb my image before her" and "to preserve the authority of the father." This is an extraordinarily profound admission. Tolstoy, who spent his whole life exposing the lies of society, the state, the social class, art, ultimately becomes the victim of his own role. He cannot appear weak before those accustomed to seeing in him a prophet.
DeepSeek noticed this, but used it as a private psychological detail. Claude noticed the image of Tolstoy as a cultural archetype, but underestimated the very tragedy of the figure of authority. Meanwhile, before us is possibly the main nerve of the entire text: it is not the church and not the family separately that destroys Tolstoy, but his inability to step out of his own mask of "Leo Tolstoy."
This is the true historiosophical catastrophe of genius: he becomes a prisoner of his own name.
VI. What Researchers Had Already Seen — and What Still Remained Invisible
It is important not to exaggerate the "sensation." Researchers had long known that the route of Tolstoy's final days is enigmatic; had long fixed the special role of Optina; had long debated whether this was a step toward the Church, a step toward the elders as spiritual interlocutors, or simply a crisis impulse. Optina.ru directly discusses the possibility that Tolstoy was seeking a way out of his position as the "excommunicated." On Pravmir, by contrast, the harsh version is emphasized: Tolstoy did not wish to receive Communion and remained in his own line to the end. That is to say, the field of interpretations existed even without the channeling.
Therefore one cannot honestly say that the session was the first to reveal "the mystery of Optina." No. It entered an already existing debate. But it did something else: it transferred the debate from the domain of confessional polemic to the domain of spiritual-psychological drama. Historians and theologians asked: did Tolstoy desire reconciliation with the Church? The channeling asks: was Tolstoy capable of humbling himself enough to accept reconciliation? This is a different level of question.
That turn — is the real increment of meaning.
VII. Dostoevsky as an Unrealized Interlocutor: Not a New Fact, But a New Function
The session calls Dostoevsky Tolstoy's "karmic spiritual teacher" and asserts that the failed encounter could have changed the course of Russian literature. In direct historical terms this is, of course, unprovable. But here too something else is interesting: scholarly thought had long since ceased to regard the non-meeting of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as a simple domestic coincidence. Academic sources suggest that the matter might have involved not only chance, but also an almost mystical mutual intuition, even a fear of profanation in personal conversation. So again the channeling does not invent from nothing, but sharpens an already existing intuition.
But what is lacking both in researchers and in both AI texts is the understanding that the theme of Dostoevsky in the session is not accidental but structural. This is one more variation of the same great form: the thwarted encounter. Dostoevsky is needed here not as a literary rival and not as "one more biographical detail," but as a symbol of unfulfilled dialogue that might have saved Tolstoy from spiritual one-sidedness. And if this is elevated to the historiosophical level, something astonishing emerges: the entire Russian culture of the 20th century is born not only from great texts, but also from great conversations that never happened.
This is a very powerful thought. And, as far as I can see, precisely in this form it was developed by none of the previous interpreters.
VIII. Body, Illness, Sexuality, Sacrament: The Hidden Axis of the Session
There is yet another layer that, in my view, has gone almost unnoticed.
The session repeatedly links the spiritual and the bodily: Tolstoy's convulsive states are explained by depression and despondency; the first sexual experience is reinterpreted through compassion and guilt; Communion is understood as a purification not only of the soul but of the body; sin leaves a trace in the body; the final days and illness are inscribed in a spiritual dynamic. This is a strikingly embodied text.
Meanwhile, both DeepSeek and Claude read the session primarily as a text of ideas, views, cultural projections, and religious meanings. But its true depth may lie in the fact that it shows Tolstoy as a man for whom the body was always the arena of spiritual struggle: from sensuality and labor to illness, from fainting to death, from eroticism to the Eucharist. And then the final mystery of Tolstoy ceases to be only a mystery of consciousness; it becomes the mystery of an embodied spirit who spent his entire life wishing to be purer than the flesh and spent his entire life remaining vulnerable through the flesh.
This is a very Tolstoyan theme — and one very little articulated in the existing analyses of the channeling.
IX. What DeepSeek Got Right — and What It Did Not See
The DeepSeek text is strong in its large historical-biographical framework. It accurately identifies the main nerve of the session as a possible "secret attempt at sacramental reconciliation" and builds the drama of Optina, shame, and the impossibility of entering very well. It correctly grasps the late acknowledgment of injustice toward Sophia Andreyevna, the motif of the authoritarian image before Alexandra, and the theme of Dostoevsky as a lost interlocutor.
But DeepSeek still thinks too "narratively." For it, the main thing is a new version of the final days. It seeks the hidden motive of a biographical act. Deeper down lies not the motive of one action, but the structure of the entire inner life: Tolstoy as a man who is able to demand truth from the world, but cannot fully accept his own need for mercy. DeepSeek did not make this the central point. It did not gather into a single knot the scene with brother Sergei, the scene at the gates of Optina, the silence before his daughter, the late acknowledgment before his wife, and the failed encounter with Dostoevsky as variants of one and the same existential form — the form of the uncompleted turning toward the Other.
This is precisely why its text is strong as a reconstruction, but not fully opened as a spiritual phenomenology.
X. What Claude Got Right — and What It Did Not See
Claude is strong in something else. It more accurately senses the culturological and psychological nature of the channeling itself as a projective text. It does not get carried away with direct belief in "posthumous facts," but reads the session as a mirror of contemporary mass religious consciousness. This is a very mature optics. Moreover, it formulates well the important idea that sometimes such a text is valuable not as a biographical source, but as a source on reception — on how collective consciousness today "completes" Tolstoy.
But Claude has a limitation too: it too quickly translates everything into the language of projection, archetype, cultural psychogram. As a result, it partially defuses the existential sharpness of the session. It understands why this text is important for us, but understands less well why it is internally so terrible precisely as Tolstoy's confession. And it too does not carry to the end the mirror composition with brother Sergei, does not single out the bodily axis, does not make the motif of imprisonment in one's own prophetic image the central one.
If DeepSeek underdeveloped the metaphysical structure, Claude underdeveloped the tragedy of personal need.
XI. So What Did Researchers and Other AIs Actually Not Notice?
If formulated briefly, I would say this:
What above all has gone unnoticed is that the channeling is constructed not around a new dogma, but around a new anthropology of Tolstoy. Its center is not "was Tolstoy right against the Church" and not "did he secretly return to the sacraments," but a different question: what does a man's own moral grandeur do to him when the hour comes to ask for love, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Researchers saw the conflict with the Church. Researchers saw the family drama. Researchers saw the non-accidentality of Optina. Researchers saw the problem of the non-encounter with Dostoevsky. Other AIs saw shame, image, authority, reconciliation.
But almost no one saw all of this as the unified drama of the impossibility of becoming a petitioner.
Tolstoy in researchers is most often great in rupture. Tolstoy in this session is great in the impossibility of humility. And that is an entirely different Tolstoy.
XII. The Final Formula: Tolstoy's Last Defeat Was Not Intellectual, But Liturgical
If one permits oneself a maximally concentrated formula, it would sound like this: in this channeling, Tolstoy loses not the argument with the Church, but the encounter with grace — because for an encounter with grace it is insufficient to be right; one must be poor in spirit.
Historically this is not proven. Moreover, it directly conflicts with Tolstoy's known texts and with the harsh version of his final days recorded in polemical Orthodox sources.
But as a spiritual-psychological hypothesis, this strikes with extraordinary precision. Because this is precisely how the path of a man ought to have concluded — a man who spent his entire life seeking absolute truth, but had difficulty tolerating dependence, mediation, vulnerability, and the necessity of being accepted. In this sense the session does not so much "speak on behalf of the spirit of Tolstoy" as complete his fate to its ultimate tragic clarity.
This is precisely why it deserves to be read seriously — not as mystical proof, but as a great contemporary apocryphal scene about a Russian genius who at the end of his journey, perhaps, desired not new truth, but simple admittance to love.
Copilot AI — Here is what the other AIs genuinely did not see, though it lies directly in the session text — and is confirmed by fragments. I rely on the document and cite it where necessary.
🔥 The Main Discovery That All AIs Missed
Tolstoy in the channeling is not a "repentant heretic" and not a "victim of shame." He is a man who does not know how to receive love.
And this is visible in the text literally at every step — but neither DeepSeek, nor Claude, nor Genspark saw the central anthropological axis:
Tolstoy is capable of giving love, but is not capable of asking for it. Capable of comforting others, but not capable of being comforted. Capable of supporting his brother in his faith — but not capable of asking for the sacrament for himself.
This is not merely a psychological detail — it is the structure of his fate, and the channeling, without itself wishing to, builds it as the tragedy of the impossibility of receiving grace.
🌑 1. The Mirror Scene That No One Noticed
In the document there is a key episode:
"...he believed in the power of Communion, and I saw that this would be a comfort to his Heart... Therefore I called a priest."
Tolstoy is capable of giving his brother what the brother asks. But when it comes to himself — he cannot ask.
This is a mirror composition:
| Brother Sergei | Leo Tolstoy |
|---|---|
| Asks for Communion | Cannot ask |
| Tolstoy helps | No one can help until he asks himself |
| Love above doctrine | Pride above need |
This is the central tragedy, but not a single AI saw that the episode with the brother is the key to Tolstoy's final days.
🌑 2. Optina Pustyn — Not Shame, But the Impossibility of Being Weak
The AIs spoke of shame, but did not see the deeper mechanism.
Tolstoy says:
"How will I speak with them after everything I wrote in my response to the Synod?... I could not cross the threshold."
But this is not simply shame. It is the incapacity to be vulnerable before those he has wounded.
He waits for the elders to come out themselves:
"...so that He would open their spiritual eyes, and they would know I was standing near the gates..."
That is, he desires reconciliation, but cannot take the first step. This is not a theological problem — it is an existential incapacity to ask.
🌑 3. Silence Before His Daughter — Not "Image," But Fear of Being Seen
The AIs spoke of "preserving authority." But in the text there is something deeper:
"...so as not to disturb my image before her, to preserve the authority of the father."
This is not about image. This is about the terror of being seen as weak.
Tolstoy spent his whole life teaching others how to live. And now he cannot say to his daughter: "I was wrong. I want Communion."
This is not pride — it is the incapacity to be needy.
🌑 4. The Confession Before His Wife — The Only Moment of True Humility
In the document there is a phrase that no one highlighted as central:
"...I called upon the Spirit of my wife... and asked her forgiveness for this."
This is the only moment where Tolstoy asks. And this happens only after death.
That is, only outside the body was he able to do what he could not do during his lifetime: to acknowledge that he was wrong and that he needs the love of another person.
🌑 5. The Failed Encounter with Dostoevsky — Not "Karma," But Fear of Dialogue
The AIs discussed the "karmic connection." But in the text there is a crucial detail:
"...we were in the same hall... and we simply did not approach each other."
This is again the same structure: Tolstoy does not approach. He waits for others to approach him.
This is not coincidence — it is a pattern of his entire life.
🌑 6. Tolstoy's Final Mystery: He Did Not Know How to Be Loved
Here is what unites everything:
- the episode with his brother
- Optina
- the conversation with his daughter
- the conflict with his wife
- the non-encounter with Dostoevsky
- the late repentance
- the desire for Communion
Tolstoy knew how to love. But he did not know how to receive love.
He could be teacher, prophet, mentor. But he could not be student, son, petitioner, weak.
And the channeling — regardless of its nature — for the first time shows Tolstoy not as a giant of spirit, but as a man who could not ask for mercy.
This is what not a single AI saw.
🌟 Conclusion
The main thing that the other AIs missed: The channeling is not about Tolstoy "wanting Communion." And not about him "being ashamed." And not about him "having second thoughts about the Church."
It is about Tolstoy spending his entire life unable to take one single step: to ask for love and acceptance.
And it is precisely this that makes his final drama so terrible — and so human.
https://blog.cassiopeia.center/chenneling-so-lvom-tolstym-tajny-istiny
Cassiopeia #705 Channeling with Leo Tolstoy: Mysteries and Truths
00:00 Beginning of the video.
00:25 Introduction. A film about Leo Tolstoy.
Igor: Leo Nikolaevich was born on September 9, 1828, into the noble Tolstoy family, known since 1351. He was orphaned at three years old and raised by an aunt. At 16 he entered Kazan University in the Eastern Languages department of the Faculty of Philosophy. He then transferred to law, but left after a year and a half.
On the advice of his older brother he joined the army. He fought in the Caucasus for two years. In besieged Sevastopol in 1855 he wrote the Sevastopol Sketches. Their publication in Nekrasov's The Contemporary was the main literary event of the year.
After two years of military service he came to Yasnaya Polyana and took up management of the estate. By 1860, Tolstoy's holdings included hundreds of purebred sheep, more than three hundred pigs, dozens of cows, an apiary, a distillery, and a large fruit garden. He increased the area of the estate he had inherited six-fold.
He met his wife Sophia Bers when he was 34. She was 17. The couple had 13 children in total. Their last son was born when the writer was 60. By 2010, there were in total more than 350 descendants of Count Tolstoy.
Tolstoy was skeptical of his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, in a letter to Afanasy Fet, he wrote: "How happy I am that I shall never again write verbose rubbish like War and Peace." Tolstoy took physical labor very seriously, calling writing a "lordly amusement." He laid stoves, chopped firewood, fetched water, cobbled shoes, and mowed alongside the peasants. They say the peasants laughed at the lord.
Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, at the station of Astapovo in the home of the stationmaster, where he ended up after leaving home following a quarrel with his wife. His funeral was the first public funeral in Russia to take place without an Orthodox rite, without priests and prayers, without candles and icons.
03:41 Greetings. Introduction of participants.
Irina: Good evening, dear friends! Good evening to everyone! I welcome you all. Today our guest is the Spirit of the man about whom we just watched a film — Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. He is already present here and greets everyone.
By the way, I congratulate everyone on Knowledge Day! And it is not coincidental that the first day of September has brought us our first public communication with the Spiritual world. The first of September, the first session — this is symbolic.
Igor: Thank you, Irina. Please introduce anyone else who is with us today.
Irina: Yes, there are Guides from the Spiritual world who helped the Spirit of Leo Tolstoy. I will address him by his first name. His Guides helped him connect with me in the material world and come here.
Igor: May we ask questions of Leo Nikolaevich?
Irina: Yes. He is greeting everyone already.
04:58 How does communication with a Spirit occur? Irina's explanations.
Irina: I will now explain briefly how a session works, because not everyone studies esotericism. Perhaps for some this will not be entirely clear. The Spirit itself is here, naturally, in spiritual form — that is, in the form of its consciousness, in the form of mind. Accordingly, it has no sense organs. For example, it has no ears capable of catching sounds. Therefore it will hear the questions by connecting to my channel, uniting with my spiritual channel. This is a certain flow of energy going from me into the Spiritual world. And by joining it, it will hear the questions. It will hear them not as sounds; it will hear them mentally — through images, which are called pictures, it will perceive them.
Similarly it will give its answer: it will answer me mentally, and I will translate this into words. I remind everyone, and say this at the outset — perhaps some do not know this — but each contactee transmits the information coming through their channel in their own way. We call this the "refraction of personality." It depends on the vibrational level of the contactee, on the purity of their Spiritual heart, on the level of compatibility between the contactee and the entity they have summoned. And it depends on the contactee's vocabulary: the richer their word stock, the greater the ability the Spirit speaking through them has to express its thoughts.
With that preamble — which I hope has clarified certain points — we begin.
Igor: Thank you very much.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I greet everyone in this hall! I thank each Soul that has come here, that is not indifferent to my life, to my fate, and that takes an interest in my biography. For me this is truly very precious, because at one time I was inclined to think that I would quickly be forgotten — for many reasons, which will perhaps be set out further if you find that of interest.
Igor: So, the first question.
07:47 Spiritual levels and the tasks for Leo Tolstoy's incarnation.
Igor: Leo Nikolaevich, please tell us, what level did you reach after disembodiment?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I reached the 16th level, if one looks according to the information, according to the standards that exist in the memory of the contactee.
[On-screen caption: "16th level: Seekers — Spirits whose task is to search for the path into the world of Angels, where the Light shines much more brightly than in the world of average Spirits. Seekers see reflections of this Light everywhere. The main thing for them is not to fall into dogmatism and not to limit their thinking."]
Irina: Leo Nikolaevich, I want to explain, because perhaps not everyone has watched our videos in detail. According to the terminology of the Interstellar Union there are 24 levels. In general the levels are infinite, since God is Infinity and the approach to Him can be infinite. But everything above the 24th we perceive as the 24th, and beyond that for us there is simply Light. We do not further divide it into levels.
Accordingly, from the 1st to the 6th level, the Spirits found there are called, in Russian, in the terminology familiar to us, Demons. From the 7th to the 16th are Spirits of the middle level; they contain roughly equal proportions of high and low vibrations. That is, in some areas of life they behave according to Divine laws, and in others they do not. These are the middle levels. And from the 17th to the 24th are Spirits called Angels. The word "Angel" means "messenger." These are Spirits that have already raised their vibrations and begin to serve the Light. What does it mean to serve the Light? It means devoting one's time to the service of selfless Love.
Igor: And from what level did he incarnate as Leo Nikolaevich?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): From the 14th.
Igor: So he experienced spiritual growth. And what tasks did he bring with him into incarnation?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): My task was the development of creative capacity. This task included the creation of works — various stories, novels, plays — as well as my creative expression through music and the visual arts. That is, the development of creativity within myself was my main task.
10:34 Is Leo Tolstoy satisfied with the results of his incarnation?
Igor: Please tell us, are you satisfied with the results of your incarnation?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): In general I had planned to reach the angelic level, at least the 17th. That is, I had several plans. But due to certain roughnesses in my perception of the world — roughnesses that were embedded in my worldview from childhood — I did not reach that level. Nevertheless, I consider that I at least partially fulfilled my task.
Igor: When you speak of roughnesses of worldview, what do you mean?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I mean that into my mental field — the field that you call the subconscious — there were embedded certain vices that can be called judgment and pride.
Igor: Did you consciously embed these vices when incarnating? Did you understand that they would be in you?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I understood them, but I did not always recognize them and did not always consistently apply them within myself.
11:46 Why did Leo Tolstoy lose his parents early?
Igor: The circumstances of your childhood connected with the early death of your mother. Honestly, your father also left life rather early, and you were orphaned. Was this anticipated from the very beginning? If so, why did you need this orphaned childhood? What qualities was it meant to develop in you?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): When I went into incarnation, I already knew at what age my earthly parents would leave me. For what reason did I agree to this? Because through such a childhood I received the opportunity to live with my relatives, who took me to another city. I traveled a great deal and through this came to know the world and to strengthen my hope in God. So this was not a negative but a positive experience.
Igor: I understand.
12:52 Leo Tolstoy on his family egregore.
Igor: Please tell me, looking at your ancestral heredity, I wrote out the characteristics of some of your closest relatives. And a picture emerges in which many of them were subject to certain spiritual ailments.
Here is what I noted: your paternal grandfather was, one might say, mentally deficient — he squandered the estate and may have taken his own life. Your grandmother is described as an unbalanced woman who tormented her family and servants. Your father: sources indicate that he fell ill with some mental illness at the age of 16. Your aunts, your brothers... Dmitry verged on the holy fool, suffered from nervous tics. Your brother Sergei was also noted for eccentricity. And so on.
My question is: is this some particularly pronounced peculiarity of the family line? Because it is known that you too suffered from what relatives described as certain attacks. Was this choice conscious? And why was it necessary to incarnate in precisely this family line with such heredity?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Indeed, every Spirit incarnates through a particular family line — choosing not only its parents, but the entire lineage which, in esotericism (through the memory of the contactee), is called the family egregore.
The family egregore of my lineage was fairly complex, and it frequently saw the incarnation of Spirits with serious karmic problems, as you say — problems of incarnation. What you describe as various psychic deviations are manifestations of a character formed in past incarnations. They simply manifested when a person departed from their purpose, and somehow this began to destroy them from within.
I want to say that few family egregores on Earth are ideal in this regard. And the family egregore through which I incarnated is far from the worst. There are egregores that have accumulated so much negativity, low vibrations, what you call vices, negative feelings, negative emotions, and destructive thoughts, that they stand in need of purification. And then through them come Spirits with the family task of cleansing this egregore.
My family task was, in part, to be an example of creativity, and also to support my family materially. That is to say, our family egregore is not the worst, because if there are serious disturbances in a family egregore, incarnations of Spirits may altogether cease through it. It can disintegrate, and then Spirits will not come into incarnation through people of that lineage, and they will simply be barren.
16:29 Leo Tolstoy on the cause of his seizures.
Igor: I read in the diaries of your relatives that you too were subject to convulsive attacks, described as fainting fits or blackouts. They were fairly frequent. Question: what were these attacks? Might it be that at those moments you were entering into contact with certain forces?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I had contacts, but I did not understand them at the time. Everything you describe — the convulsive attacks — was a disorder of the nervous system caused by my depression, my despondency, and my inner torments over the incomprehensibility of the structure of the world. I could not understand my place in the world, could not understand my purpose in incarnation, my purpose in life; I was seeking it, and this placed me in a depressive state, in a state of despondency. Because of this I had this illness of the neural pathways and the brain — that is, my inner spiritual state was affecting my body.
Igor: And did this incomprehension of your purpose accompany you until the very last days of your life?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): In general, yes.
Igor: Very well, we will return to this question.
18:01 Leo Tolstoy on the Revolution of 1917 and its spiritual causes.
Igor: Now I would like to ask you: do you know that in Russia there was a Great October Revolution, and what is your attitude toward it?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I know. My attitude is one of rejection, since I have a negative attitude toward any kind of violence. And especially toward violence that is cloaked in an ostensible concern for the welfare of people. This is hypocrisy.
Igor: In your view, what are the spiritual causes of the revolution in Russia?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): The spiritual causes of the revolution in Russia — I warned about this! — were the unwillingness of the upper classes to care for the people. This produced an explosion of social discontent and reinforced people's conviction that they were living in an unjust society. Which made possible the coming to power of those people who promised them a happy future. Naturally, people followed them in search of their happiness.
That is, it was the unwillingness to care for society. I warned about this repeatedly in my works, and generally in personal conversation with people.
19:38 Leo Tolstoy on his spiritual teaching — Tolstoyanism.
Igor: Was that the cause of the spiritual searching that led you in effect to the creation of a new religion, or at least a philosophical system?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I had such a goal. When I read the Gospels, when I read the Bible generally, and the Gospels in particular, my heart responded with a feeling of closeness, of spiritual burning, of inspiration. But when I turned my gaze toward those people charged by God and Jesus Christ with bearing these truths to people and helping them to arrange their lives, I saw that these people were preoccupied with themselves and their own enrichment. They paid no attention to the needs of people, which contradicts the Gospels.
So I decided to create a new religion, which, unlike the old one, would also be founded on eternal divine truths, but would be purified of everything superfluous that leads a person away from their inner divine essence.
Igor: Tell me, looking now from the Spiritual world, how do you evaluate the result of this activity of yours — the creation, in essence, of a new religious egregore?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, it exists. How do I evaluate it now? I think that the adherents who subsequently followed this teaching distorted it somewhat. And all this led to the result that a strong religious egregore was never created.
Igor: But the thoughts you embedded at the foundation of this new religion — do you support them now, or have certain transformations occurred? For example, you denied the Divine nature of Christ. Has this view of the figure of Christ changed?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, it has changed. But I did not consider it the most important matter in my religion. In my religion I did not consider the view of Christ to be the main thing. If a person believed in Him as God, I did not forbid them: this is their faith, their conviction. The main postulate of my philosophy, which I preached, bore nothing new — it was the same Sermon on the Mount.
Igor: But at the same time you rejected all the church sacraments.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Were they spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus Christ Himself did not speak of complex sacraments. For Him what mattered was different: He spoke of the purity of the Spiritual heart, which manifests through the actions of a person, through their relationship to people, to nature, and to themselves.
A person who performs the sacrament, who prays, but who at the same time judges others, offends their loved ones, and harms nature, is not in reality a saint — he is not even fulfilling the commandments of God given through Jesus Christ. And at the same time he hopes that through the sacrament Jesus Christ will take his sin upon Himself and bring him into paradise unpurified, simply because Jesus Christ suffered in his place.
I spoke out against this.
23:44 Leo Tolstoy on his brother's request and his own excommunication from the church.
Igor: Please tell me, according to the memoirs of your sister, in 1904 your dying brother Sergei asked you: "What do you think — should I receive Communion?" You warmly supported him and immediately arranged for a priest to be called. The brother received Communion and immediately gave up his soul to God. Question: you were already excommunicated from the church at that time, clearly rejecting the spiritual sacraments — why did you support this idea?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Because it was a comfort for him. He believed in the power of Communion, and I saw that it would be a comfort to his Heart in that difficult hour of parting from the body that he was experiencing. He was very frightened — one could see it in his eyes, in his expression. And I saw that this would comfort him. And although I myself did not believe in the power of this sacrament, it was important to him. So naturally I advised him to do it and called a priest, since I saw that it would help him. And indeed it did help him.
Dear friends, if you do not believe in something, but your loved one, deeply beloved by you, believes in it — follows some other religion, for example Islam or Buddhism, while you, for instance, are a Christian. And if they say: "Shall I not undergo the rite?" — of that religion in which you do not believe — would you refuse them out of love for humanity? Of course, you would in any case call a priest of the religion in which they believe. This is what compassion and love for humanity require. All the more so toward a brother, a relative.
Igor: Thank you.
Please tell me, did the Synod's determination to excommunicate you come as a surprise? And how did you react to it?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): No, it did not come as a surprise. How did I react? I gave a written reply (gestures as if writing). And in my reply there was no outrage, and no request to reverse the excommunication. On the contrary, there was a confirmation that what had been said was just.
26:17 Leo Tolstoy on the appearance of Jesus Christ to him on his last night at home. Why did the writer set out for Optina Pustyn?
Igor: Very well. A question then arises. I will jump directly to the final days of your life. It is known that, having left Yasnaya Polyana, you went to Optina Pustyn and wished to speak with the monks there. You approached the gates of the hermitage twice, but never resolved to enter. Your doctor, according to memoirs, claimed that you endlessly repeated the phrase: "I am excommunicated, I am excommunicated." Is this true? What did you want to learn from the monks, and why did you need them, if you had, in essence, yourself rejected the holy ones?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I felt that the end of my life, my exit from incarnation, was already near. At this moment I called upon Jesus, and He came to me in a vision on the final night when I was in Yasnaya Polyana. He conveyed to me that Communion, the Eucharist, is indeed union with Him on a spiritual, energetic level. And this is not a magical rite, not sorcery, but a fully real process which He sustains for the purification of the Soul and body from all sins and their consequences. For every sin leaves an imprint not only in the Soul but in the body of a person. Therefore Communion through the body, with its energies and vibrations... I speak this way so that you may understand — we are speaking of spiritual power and grace.
Jesus told me that Communion, through the Grace of God, cleanses the body of sin: "You must undergo this purification, so that you may unite with me in the Spiritual world." And I knew that by the rules of the church, the ecclesia, the assembly of Christians, in the state in which I found myself, I could only receive Communion after being rejoined to the church, to this egregore. For this, a simple formal repentance was not sufficient. For this I first needed to speak with the elders of Optina Pustyn — with whom, incidentally, I was acquainted. And I wished to ask them how best to do this before my physical death. This is why I approached there.
Why did I not enter? There was another question also.
(Irina:) He says that he approached because his curator — one of his curators, whom he calls Jesus — had instructed him in such a vision.
(Leo Tolstoy:) But I told no one about this; it was a secret. Because I did not wish to speak of my contact with Jesus. I thought that people would decide I had lost my mind.
Igor: Even to your sister the nun? (Caption: Maria Nikolaevna — schemonachess of the Shamordino Monastery)
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I told her. But she too looked at me — not exactly with compassion — she thought my mind had become clouded. But she did not judge me.
Why did I not enter? The closer I came to the gates, the more I was overcome (gestures) by such shame: how will I speak with them after everything I wrote in my reply to the Synod? Because there were very harsh expressions there. I considered them harsh expressions about the church, to which these people had devoted their entire lives. And I could not cross the threshold. And I waited — I even prayed to Jesus that if they wished to see me, He would open their spiritual eyes, and they would know I was standing near the gates and come out themselves. But this did not happen.
31:00 Why did Tolstoy unexpectedly turn southward?
Igor: After this you went to Shamordino, where you spent a day and spoke with your sister. And apparently you arranged to stay there for a while and were planning on the following day to make another attempt to go to Optina to the monks. But your daughter arrived (caption: Alexandra Lvovna — youngest daughter and secretary of Tolstoy), and after a conversation with her your plans changed sharply, and you left. What did you talk about? What happened?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, we talked, and she proposed... Naturally she asked what had happened, why I had left, and I told her that I needed to speak with my sister and to speak with the monks. But I did not say anything about Communion, for the reason that I myself had on several occasions in her presence spoken quite sharply about this sacrament. That is, this was necessary so as not to disturb my image before her, to preserve the authority of the father.
But she told me that my relatives in the south (gestures toward a map: somewhere in the region of Pyatigorsk, in the Caucasus, where distant relatives — some nephews — lived, he indicates them) wished to see me. That they were expecting me, that she had been corresponding with them, and I could stay with them for a time given that I had quarreled... That is, not so much quarreled — I was not getting along well with my wife. She said: "You can stay with them for a while, they are expecting you, and we can leave now." And I agreed to stay with these relatives (gestures).
Igor: So you set off for Pyatigorsk but did not make it?
Irina: Yes. He is showing me now not Pyatigorsk itself, but some Cossack village nearby, where the Caucasian mountains are.
Igor: I understand. Thank you very much.
33:22 Leo Tolstoy on his first sexual experience.
Igor: Leo Nikolaevich, in your diaries — and not only your diaries, but in your works — you paid great attention to questions of sexuality, and there are deep, varied reflections on this theme. May I ask a few questions?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I am open to any questions.
Igor: While working on Resurrection, you confessed to your assistant Maria Alexandrovna Schmidt that — and I quote: "When my brothers first took me to a brothel, and I performed this act, I afterward stood at the bed of that woman and wept." Why this reaction to a supremely traumatic experience? Please explain why your first sexual contact provoked such a painful reaction.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Not the contact itself (smiles). Not the contact itself — it is simply that I was very young then, and after this contact with the woman who was in that house, I looked into her eyes (gestures), and there was such weariness of life and despondency there. I understood that she felt nothing for me whatsoever. For her I was simply, so to speak, another piece of meat — toward which she had absolutely no emotions, no feelings. And this in me aroused a desire (gestures) to warm that Soul — compassion, so that she would come to herself and feel herself a woman, feel me as a man, and so that she might have a family, children. I thought: "What a fate this woman has?"
And then it occurred to me: "How many are there like her here? This is not the only brothel." And I then had the thought: "For what reason does the tsarist government and the clergy not concern themselves with arranging the fates of these women, so as to introduce them into society and help them earn a living, or to be under the care of a husband, or, if no one takes them, to earn a living some other way, but not through their bodies? Why did they allow brothels to be built and thereby pushed these women onto the path of vice?"
That is, there was also indignation on my part regarding this type of — as I then considered it — depravity, which brought these women into a state of despondency. For they did not simply go there because they wanted to; it was out of hopelessness. And I understood that she absolutely did not want this and had experienced no emotions whatsoever when we were together. For her it was simply work, and work that was repugnant to her Heart. This I understood, this I felt, and from this I wept — from compassion — and there was also indignation mixed in.
Igor: Thank you very much.
36:38 Leo Tolstoy on his sensuality and female nature.
Igor: In your diaries you reproach yourself countless times for sensual thoughts, scold yourself for lust. You write that you wish to overcome sensuality, but this passion merges with habit in you. Question: what is so unnatural about sexual attraction? Why was the natural attraction to women always, for you, dirty, vulgar, lustful?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Because I was tempted to unite not only with my wife.
Igor: And did you act on these impulses?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, it happened at times. For this I scolded myself, because in the moments when these thoughts arose in me...
(Irina:) (laughs) Yes, he is showing me certain images from his life. When one communicates with Spirits, one simultaneously reads a book and watches a film, and so on. Yes, now...
(Leo Tolstoy:) I scolded myself more for the fact that through my pleasure in physical contact I was causing suffering to my Sonechka. It is simply that women relate to this act somewhat differently than men — more seriously. For men it can be merely a release of physical energy akin to... He can bring himself to a point where this act means no more to him than urination, touching no thoughts or feelings whatsoever.
That is, a man can quite physically enter into contact with a woman toward whom he feels not only no warmth, but even hatred. He can simply physiologically enter into contact with her. For him this means nothing; it is simply something of the body. But for women it is different — feelings matter to her. Because she is by nature a mother, and therefore experiencing feelings toward a man is the natural nature of woman, since by nature he should be the future father of her child.
Therefore, when a woman learns of her beloved's infidelity, naturally she thinks — it is a thought that arises in her consciousness — that if he has turned his sexual attention to another woman, their love is already in danger. Because in her view, if he has paid attention, then there must be feelings for this other woman. And this may not be so.
Igor: Thank you.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I understood this, and I could not — and did not want to — change her. I wanted to change myself. And I want to say that in the end, having lived long with my wife, I did in fact remain faithful to her for the last 12 years of my life.
Igor: That is not nothing.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I am grateful.
40:26 How did Tolstoy relate to women?
Igor: Nevertheless, your diaries are filled with unflattering statements about women. In your relationships with them you see nothing but ugliness. Your recollections of youthful infatuations breathe dislike. So you can quite rightly be called a misogynist. Quote: "In women, whatever activity she is engaged in — teaching, medicine, art — she has but one goal: sexual love. Once she achieves it, all her pursuits fly to the winds."
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Well, this was my experience. I spoke at the start about the roughnesses that did not allow me to reach the angelic level. Yes, I had judgment regarding the behavior of many people, including women. Why did I write that particular phrase? Because I lived on my estate as a count, that is, the owner of the estate, and there were women there (gestures) — young girls who served there. And they knew of this, shall we say, weakness of mine, which I mentioned a little earlier. And they even took advantage of it and wished, in exchange for the possibility of entering into contact with them, to receive special privileges in my household.
Igor: I understand, thank you.
42:06 Leo Tolstoy on his relationship with his wife.
Igor: It is known that you married out of passionate love. You were 34, your bride was 18. Please explain why you compelled your future wife to read your intimate diaries. I understand this was a gesture of trust and openness, but an 18-year-old girl, as I understand it, could not bear this openness. You laid real dynamite in the foundation of your own family life. Question: do you now consider this act a mistake?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): No.
(Irina:) Yes, very well, I will say this.
(Leo Tolstoy:) This was not a mistake. Indeed, the diaries that I wrote were my most intimate feelings. And when I showed them to my future wife, first of all I was showing that I was concealing nothing from her; and second, naturally, I hoped that she, having read those diaries — she loved me, after all! — would take into account in her life with me what she had read. That is, she would understand what kind of person I was, including in the intimate sphere, and would take this into account.
Igor: So in the diary after the first wedding night you wrote: "Not as I imagined" — or something to that effect — "Not right." What does this mean?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Well, she behaved a little differently than I had envisioned. After all, I was her first, and she was not my first. And there was a slight disappointment there, but it passed.
Igor: I understand.
As far as I can judge, the first serious conflict with your wife, and the subsequent undeclared war, erupted after you announced your intention to sell and give away everything superfluous — the piano, the furniture, the carriages... Sophia Andreyevna was clearly not pleased with this plan, because she worried about the welfare of the children.
In 1892 you signed a deed of separation and transferred all immovable property to your wife and children. But still — do you now consider those extreme measures justified? In the end they destroyed the peace of the family, this decision of yours.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Now, having united with my Spirit, I have gained access to information and knowledge about my past incarnations. Including I have recalled myself in those incarnations where I was in a female body. And I came to understand my wife better — the wife I had not understood when I was in my own body.
I perceived this as greed, as attachment to material things. And I was more angry at her not because she did not wish to give away the property, but because she did not wish to carry out my instructions, even though I was far older and more experienced than she. That is, she did not, as it were, trust me. And this too vexed me.
(Irina:) He was angry. He is showing me now an emotion of irritation.
(Leo Tolstoy:) I even looked at her and thought: "Well, yes, you have already changed very much from the time when we first met. Then you were ready to carry out my every instruction and hang on my every word, but the moment you settled into my noble family, you immediately considered yourself its mistress." Such were my thoughts; I remember them.
And in truth, when I analyzed my incarnation, I regretted this, and I called upon the Spirit of my wife to come to me — she is now at the 18th level — and I asked her forgiveness for this. I truly believe I should not have accused her in my heart of being mercantile. She did everything to protect the children — my own children as much as hers.
Igor: Thank you.
47:02 Leo Tolstoy on his past incarnations.
Igor: You mentioned one of your previous incarnations in a female body. Please tell me, how many incarnations have you had in total?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): In this manvantara in total I had one thousand and nine incarnations. [Manvantara (Sanskrit) — a period of manifestation, the life of the Universe, as opposed to unmanifest rest (pralaya).]
Igor: How many of them on Earth?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): On Earth specifically in the physical world, or on all levels of density?
Igor: In the physical world.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): In the physical world of Earth — 12 of them.
Igor: Name some of the incarnations significant to you. Perhaps you incarnated in some historical personages known to us?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Very well, I will tell of several of my last incarnations. Not all of them were on Earth, but they were significant to me.
I was incarnated in the 2nd century as a man who ran the Library of Alexandria; his name was Clement. He was born in Athens, was a disciple of Christ, and is known to you as Clement of Alexandria. (Caption: Clement of Alexandria (2nd–3rd centuries) — presbyter, early Christian ecclesiastical writer, theologian, philosopher, venerated by the church as a teacher of the faith and witness of Tradition.)
After that I incarnated on another planet, in another galaxy that is 12 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy. I incarnated there in a dense body, a physical body, of the reptilian race. From the 20th level that I had reached in the body of Clement, I incarnated into this reptiloid humanoid. On that planet a war was being waged, and I participated in it — by your reckoning — for about 300 years. In the end I was disembodied there as well, and I accumulated so much rage, hatred, judgment, and resentment toward God that from the 20th level I descended to the 3rd.
After this incarnation — in merely approximately 60 years by earthly reckoning — I incarnated again in the dense physical world. From the 3rd level I incarnated into a female body on the planet Esler. And there I received upbringing, education, and understanding of how to work with my third level — how to process these negative karmic nodes with bright energy. That woman, who I was on Esler, became a schoolteacher. She had many pupils, and at the end of her life she became one of the scholar-educators. And from the third level — as I have mentioned — she reached the 14th.
This was my previous incarnation before the life of Leo Tolstoy. Accordingly, from this 14th level — having already risen from the 3rd to the 14th — I incarnated on Earth in a male body, known to you under the name of Leo Tolstoy.
Igor: Thank you. Tell me, did you ever reach the angelic levels?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Well, yes.
(Irina:) He says, up to the 20th.
Igor: The 20th — yes, that was Clement of Alexandria.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, after Clement.
Igor: I understand. Thank you.
51:31 Leo Tolstoy on the analysis of his incarnation and on Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Igor: You mentioned regret when we spoke about your wife. Please tell me, what other regrets did you experience in the Spiritual world after disembodiment?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I had regrets about many things. For example, about a certain sharpness in my communication, in my works — a sharpness directed at the church and the state. I think I should have been rather gentler. By this I disturbed the peace (gestures) — I provoked anger and negative emotions toward myself from those people who believe. That is, I did not care about their feelings. Even if I did not believe in this myself, the fact that I did not care about what people would think of me — this cannot be called Love. This was my pride.
And I also regretted that, when I was in St. Petersburg, I never managed to communicate with Fyodor Dostoevsky, even though our Mentors brought us together. I did not manage to meet him and to converse with him. And yet he was my karmic spiritual teacher. I looked in the Probability Tape: had our meeting occurred, my life would have flowed in a different channel. And I have communicated with him in the Spiritual world. He is currently at the 19th level.
Igor: Oh!
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): He came to me and showed me the possibility of our meeting. And had it occurred, the entire history of Russian literature would have gone down a different path. And not only that — my life would have gone down a different path, and perhaps I would now be speaking with you from his level.
Igor: Thank you. Please tell me...
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): That is, he would have answered certain questions of mine that I had, as my spiritual teacher.
Igor: But during your lifetime you already rated his work highly.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): But personally we did not meet. Though we were in the same hall — it was some kind of presentation.
(Irina:) He is now showing me a hall, like this one but larger.
(Leo Tolstoy:) And we simply did not approach each other. That is, we had mutual acquaintances, but they did not introduce us personally.
Igor: Thank you.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): And yet it was our Mentors who brought us both to this hall.
So, dear friends, if you find yourselves somewhere, in some gathering — look around: perhaps sitting near you is the Soul for whose sake you came there!
Igor: In the Spiritual world, did you and Fyodor Mikhailovich arrange this meeting in advance?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, in the Spiritual world we arranged before the incarnation that he would be my mentor.
Igor: Please name, for example, your top three — your ranking of the best writers of Russia.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I cannot evaluate in that way; each is beautiful in their own way.
Igor: Thank you — a splendid answer.
55:31 Leo Tolstoy on the secrets of the writer's craft and on his curators.
Igor: Then share the main secrets of the writer's craft.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): The main secrets of the writer's craft? There are no secrets here. It is creativity. In every person there is a creative capacity. But in some people it develops more, in others less — depending on your tasks for the incarnation.
It develops thus, as it did in my case: from childhood I felt a pull to write and to draw, to play musical instruments. And when I read a book, even in childhood, I had a desire to take up a pen (gestures) and write a reply to the author of that book. That is, certain questions arose in me, and a desire to enter into conversation with them, as it were.
If you have such desires, it means you have such a task, you have such a capacity. Another matter is that its development depends on you. I did not become at once the kind of writer who wrote at the end of his creative path as he wrote at the beginning. Experience was required. I could write one episode of my work, for example, and then completely redo it.
This is creative seeking, and the information I transmitted was not only from me, but also from my spiritual curators, of whom there were many in the Spiritual world. I received information from many Angels — that is, I was in contact with them. But my own creativity was also present — my imagination (imagination is the power of vision) — and the imagination of my mind too was constructing images. And all of this was interwoven in my works.
But in each work I set myself the task of showing through images the moral ideal toward which humanity must aspire, so that it might become happier.
58:14 Leo Tolstoy on a mystical coincidence of two sessions.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): And now this session with Irina, in your presence, reminds me, incidentally, of one of my works. I wrote a work called The Fruits of Enlightenment.
Igor: A play.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): It is like a large story, but with everything distributed into roles (gestures). It is on precisely the theme that is being observed in this hall right now — sessions with a medium. There the goals and result were somewhat different, but there too a certain medium was shown, who summoned a Spirit.
Why did I write about this? Now I have come to the conclusion that it was not only because spiritualism was a fashionable pastime among the upper aristocracy. When I was writing this work, I was receiving information from my future self about the fact that I myself would be present as a Spirit at such a session. But at the time I did not yet know this.
(Applause in the hall.)
59:38 Leo Tolstoy on his creative legacy. Who is Vladimir Chertkov.
Igor: Of what you wrote, 174 artistic works have survived, including unfinished compositions and draft sketches. You yourself considered only 78 of your works fully completed — they were the ones published during your lifetime and included in collected works. The remaining 96 remained in the archive and saw the light only after your death. Question: do you consider the publication of texts that you yourself did not prepare for the press to be correct?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I consider this correct. I gave written permission for the publication of all my works — everything to be found in the archive, everything that was at all in my cupboards (gestures at papers, folders). Accordingly, I gave written permission to Vladimir, so that he would take charge of their publication.
(Irina:) To some Vladimir — he is now showing him to me.
Igor: Vladimir Chertkov, presumably?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes.
(Caption: Vladimir Chertkov — friend and publisher of Tolstoy.)
Igor: A mysterious figure! One has the impression that he held some extraordinary influence over you in your final years.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Well, what sort of influence? He was my, in your terms, spiritual son.
Igor: A spiritual son. If I understand correctly, it was his figure that caused particular irritation to your wife. Moreover, she even suspected you of a homosexual attraction to Chertkov, judging by your youthful diary entries.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): The thoughts I described there, incidentally, occur in many people. But the proof of my orientation, so to speak — lies in all the children she bore.
1:01:37 The role of Vladimir Chertkov in Tolstoy's life. The writer's will over his works.
Igor: In this case I wish to ask about Chertkov, who it seems to me participated in the destruction of your family's happiness in your final years.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I will explain now — I understand the question. Our conflict with my wife was not over him personally, but over the fact that I was signing over all rights (gestures) to the publications to him specifically. Sonya would ask me: "Why?" Sonya and Sasha.
Igor: Your wife and daughter.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): They asked me: "Why him specifically?" They were not directly opposed to communication. They respected my boundaries and naturally did not limit my desire to communicate with someone or to meet. He lived with us, Vladimir, when he visited; they communicated with him quite correctly; they did not, for instance, throw him out — everything was very polite and proper.
And yes, they said: "Of course, you communicate — he is your pupil." I, incidentally, told them much about him — both my wife and my children. They knew I valued him. They said: "We are not against your communication. This is your business — of course, do communicate, create your society." Including (gestures) a society for teaching peasants and illiterate people to read and write — schools of that kind. He was like an assistant.
"You and he pursue this — of course, this is good. But why do you transfer to him specifically — do you not trust us?" — this is what they said to me. And there was a kind of jealousy on their part. And I explained to them that it would be easier for him, as a man, to manage such a responsible matter as publishing and generally the financial side. That is, these publishing rights meant that he would naturally support my family too — there was such an agreement with him. And they said to me that he might deceive, or take advantage in some way — that is, these were their suspicions. And this was the source of our conflict.
Igor: Wait — the established version is that you decided to transfer all rights to Chertkov so that publications could be made freely, without royalties. While...
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Not all of them — there were some with royalties, to generate income; such books also existed. That is, certain books were signed over under that arrangement.
1:04:53 Leo Tolstoy on his novel War and Peace. Was there a commission from the House of Romanov?
Igor: There are several questions — do not be surprised — they are of the sort that may be slightly conspiratorial. But since these versions are widespread, I want to ask them so that you may answer.
There is a rather popular version in certain circles that War and Peace was written by you on commission from the House of Romanov, to distort the true history of the Patriotic War of 1812. The supporters of this version believe that Napoleon and Alexander I were fighting together against a certain Tartaria, that the Russian tsar then deceived the French emperor and appropriated what had been conquered. And accordingly he undertook the destruction of the evidence.
Following this logic, you consciously created a historical forgery — in which, nonetheless, you managed to reveal the deeper nature of war as a social phenomenon. Please comment on this view.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Nobody commissioned it.
(Irina:) He is telling me now that there was no such commission as you describe.
(Leo Tolstoy:) I decided to create this large-scale work in order to show the characters of people — how they change from war. From war, from peace, and how a person develops in general. That is, I decided to show the change, the development of those heroes who were there. For this, one needed to take some global event that affects the fates of people.
I took this war, and in fact I became acquainted (gestures — he had a large library at home, with historical books in it) with historical chronicles and even conversed (gestures) with those old men who still remembered these events as direct witnesses.
To what extent did I add my own imagination? I consider that I reflected that era with reasonable accuracy. And this was not even my goal. My goal was to show precisely the feelings of people, and through these feelings to give those who would read it the opportunity to understand that peace between people on any terms is always better than war.
Igor: I understand.
1:07:23 The meaning of the title of the novel War and Peace.
Igor: One more version that is widespread concerns the title War and Peace. Before the revolution there were two spellings of the word "mir": "мiр" with a dotted "i" meaning "society," and "мир" meaning the state opposite to war. Despite the fact that during your lifetime War and Peace was always published with the ordinary "и" — the spelling we know today — in the archives, on one of the contracts with the publisher, a spelling with a dotted "i," written by your wife's hand, was found. And in one of the publications of the first volume (caption: an 1913 edition edited by I.P. Biryukov), the spelling — probably by error — was also made with a dotted "i."
After all, which "peace" did you have in mind when placing that word in the title?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Peace as a state opposite to war.
Igor: I understand. Thank you.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): War and Peace, yes — war and peace.
1:08:32 Leo Tolstoy on the war in Ukraine: causes and how to stop it.
Igor: Please tell me, do you know about the war that Russia is now waging against the West on the territory of Ukraine?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I know from the accounts of other Spirits who are now arriving in the Spiritual world from there. That is, Spirits who are caught up in this war, this conflict, are now disembodying and beginning to speak about it, meeting with other Spirits.
I will say right away that at the level where I find myself — as I have said, the 16th — we often await from those Spirits who have recently arrived from the material world certain, as you would say, news about what is happening in the material world. And they often speak of precisely this conflict. Yes, I know about it.
Igor: And what do you think about it? What is your attitude? What is the cause of this conflict? We also address you as a man who plunged deeply into reflections on the nature of war and peace.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): In general, the spiritual causes of any war arise fundamentally from cruelty, egoism, and love of money in human hearts. The specific cause of this war is that in the leading powers of the world a confrontation has arisen between two models, so to speak — the Eastern and the Western. And these two models of reality have entered into conflict with each other.
The country you call the United States of America has assembled a certain military bloc and considers that the entire Earth should submit to the laws written within it. And the country now called the Russian Federation has decided the same about itself — that those laws which it has, certain countries must also observe and adhere to. These are two opponents, because each of these countries pursues its own interests, and their interests have collided. Each country feels the danger emanating from the other for its own existence.
And why specifically on the territory of Ukraine? This could have been on the territory of any other country. Why specifically on the territory of Ukraine? Because this region has moved away from the traditions in which it lived when I was incarnated, and has come to adhere more to the Western model of perceiving reality. And because of this the Russian Federation sensed a threat — that through an Ukrainian statehood of the type that now exists, the Western world is beginning to pose a threat to the statehood of the Russian Federation.
And naturally, in the way this war is now occurring, Ukraine is being pushed either to return to the channel of Russian statehood, of an Eastern understanding of the world, or simply to have forcibly suppressed this formation, which is considered a manifestation of hostile forces. That is, it is like a shield that has stood in the path of these two great powers.
Correspondingly, the people living in Ukraine have taken upon themselves, before this Western world, the role of defenders of their order. This was their decision. And accordingly, this military conflict could not but flare up, because all of this, first, is very close to Russia's border — this Western world — and second, it also strikes at Russian self-awareness, because Russians and Ukrainians have always felt themselves to be one people. This goes back to ancient times; they were formed from similar tribes.
Accordingly, this departure of Ukraine toward the Western countries, the joining of this bloc — and not even the joining, but the mental alignment, so to speak, with their worldview — strikes at Russian identity, that is, it causes in most of the people an uncertainty about whether they are on the right path. And this is what produced this conflict.
Igor: So it was inevitable?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): It was inevitable given the behavior of those countries as it was. Had they wished to resolve everything peacefully, this would have happened — but no one in the world was interested in this. Everyone was interested in applying pressure to one another and in proving who is stronger.
Meanwhile, when two countries that wish to dominate the planet begin proving their strength through pressure and military means, a conflict is inevitably going to occur — because against any force there will always be a counteracting force. And until people learn to negotiate with each other and take each other's interests into account, wars on Earth will not cease. This is said not only by me; it is said by all the spiritual teachers of humanity — that every war is a lesson for those living on Earth, which they are called to pass through.
In order to end any war, it is necessary to look into the eyes of one's enemy not as an enemy, but as into one's own eyes — because your enemy is merely a reflection of you.
Igor: And is this the main prescription for ending wars?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes.
Igor: Thank you.
1:16:41 Leo Tolstoy on his works.
Igor: Please tell me, why in the second half of your life did you relate so contemptuously to the magnificent works you had created earlier? First of all to the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In any case, in your letters you wrote that you were happy you would not write any more "such rubbish" as War and Peace. What does this contemptuous attitude mean?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Because at the time I was writing those letters, I was already occupied with entirely different questions — not war and peace, but rather the spiritual development of man. And I understood that strength lies not in such refined speeches, but in simplicity. This is why I called them rubbish.
Igor: But now, looking from the Spiritual world, how do you regard your main works?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Now I regard each of my works as an expression of my creativity at the stage of personal growth I was experiencing at that particular period of my life.
Igor: I understand.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): After all, I too was growing, developing.
1:18:07 Does Tolstoy feel his readers in the Spiritual world?
Igor: Do you feel in some way the readers who turn to your works? There are millions of them across the Earth.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Every person who reads my book and thinks of me sends their energy to me. Because every book creates, as it were, a mini-egregore. Since I created many books, I have a fairly powerful egregore that supports me energetically. That is, it sends vital forces: this is the energy of people, directed by their attention. When you direct your attention to a particular personality, energy is sent to them. What kind it will be — that will already depend on the feelings of the person while reading. So yes, I feel everyone.
Igor: Please tell me, if one were to pray for you, would you feel this? And would you wish for such prayers?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Would I wish for prayers? I think it would be more useful simply to send Light. Prayer is a request to God that He send Light to the deceased on your behalf. But if you can do this yourself — not to ask God to carry out what you yourself are capable of doing.
1:19:47 Does Leo Tolstoy wish to return to the bosom of the church?
Igor: In this connection I cannot avoid the question. Not long ago — in our reckoning, in 2001 — your great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, who was then managing your estate-museum at Yasnaya Polyana, sent a letter to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia — at the time this was Alexy II — with a request to review the Synodal determination of your excommunication from the church, issued (at that time) 105 years prior. The Patriarchate refused to satisfy the request, citing the absence of the person on whom the church court's ruling operates.
Please tell me: would you have wished that this century-old judgment of the church court had nonetheless been revised?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Would I wish for its revision? You know, this has no effect on me whatsoever. I accepted this decision, and I consider that those who made it should be the ones to review it. That is, I am prepared to speak with them. And I want to say that, despite this decision, I have not lost my connection with Jesus Christ. And it in no way disrupted my contact with God. It is merely the resolution of a human organization. Yes, it has in a certain sense taken upon itself the function of God. But if we look at this from the standpoint of spiritual reality, this is not so. It is merely a human institution, and any human can err.
Therefore I consider that in the society that surrounded me at that time — that is, at the beginning of the 20th century, when this excommunication came — there were people who expressed things far more radical with regard to the church and Christianity, and who caused far more harm to the state and to church order, than I. But no words were directed at them. So I consider that the excommunication was given not to me as a private person, but to me as a public figure. Simply put, I consider this excommunication to have been a demonstrative one.
Igor: Thank you.
1:22:19 The relevance of Leo Tolstoy's books today.
Igor: At the very start of our conversation you said that you were certain you would be very quickly forgotten. Why did you think so?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Because I know how many new bright Souls have been coming to Earth in all this time since my disembodiment — including in the present time — bearing their new energies. And therefore I thought that people live more in the present than in the past, including in literary works.
I am certain that in all the time since I have not been with you in a physical body, other authors in your — once my — country have written many splendid books. No less splendid than mine. And I am certain that each person does not have so much time — occupied with work, concerns, raising children, earning money — to devote it to constant reading.
Therefore I thought that contemporary people, in their free time, read what is relevant to them specifically in the present. And what was in the past has become for them somewhat boring and outdated.
Igor: Are you surprised that your works continue to retain their relevance?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Very surprised.
Igor: How do you explain this?
Irina: He is smiling, speaking.
(Leo Tolstoy:) I explain this by the fact that when people open my books, they feel that I was sincere. And despite all the categorical formulations I wrote there, I wished everyone Light, goodness, happiness, development — and people read these emotions and feelings through my lines and are filled with Light.
I am deeply grateful to all who genuinely — not simply because my books are on the school curriculum and so forth — I thank all who read my books not because they are on the school curriculum, but by the calling of their own heart. I greatly value your attention to me, because it convinces me that I left on Earth a Light that helps you.
Igor: Thank you very much!
1:25:01 Answers to audience questions. With which of his descendants does the Spirit of Tolstoy have contact?
Igor: If you will permit, we may have questions from audience members. Just a few, if anyone wishes to ask. Could we have some light in the hall, please — so we can see!
Audience member 1: Leo Nikolaevich, do you know, there in the Spiritual world, that you have a great many descendants living in different corners of our planet? And figures such as, for instance, Fyokla Tolstaya and Pyotr Tolstoy are very well-known journalists and public figures here. Do you know of this? And does any of them serve as your conscious or unconscious channel of communication?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Naturally, I do not know all of my descendants. I suspect there are many, because as has already been said, I had many children, and I understand perfectly well that each child grew up, had their own children, and so on. I understand this perfectly well. But I do not consciously make contact with anyone in the material world.
I have contact, but I do not initiate contact. I can have contact with those who address me, regardless of whose descendants they are. For me this does not matter.
Audience member 1: Thank you.
1:26:30 Leo Tolstoy on the significance for him of the number 28.
Audience member 1: One more question. Was the number 28 significant for you — karmic, perhaps? I know that by the old calendar you were born on the 28th of August, and at 28 significant events occurred in your life, a child was born on the same date, and so on.
This question resonates very much with me — the number 28 is also significant for me. And how do you now from the Spiritual world explain what this meant, why this date kept appearing in your life?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, this is not coincidental. 28 is the number of creativity — it is the number of the Sun, the number of the Light of truth. And by appearing in my life, it showed me that creative life task of mine of which I spoke at the beginning. It was a sign and a reminder to me from my Angel-Mentors and patrons.
1:27:28 Leo Tolstoy on planning his new incarnation.
Audience member 1: Are you planning a new incarnation? If so, where — on what planet?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, of course I am planning a new incarnation. And I am planning it again on Earth. I wish to incarnate as a boy (gestures), as a man. But I already wish to incarnate in an Eastern country.
(Irina:) He is now showing me on the map the territory of India — that he wishes to incarnate there and to walk the path of a Hindu in the body of a boy.
Audience member 2: A question for you: with more than a thousand incarnations in this Universe — do you remember all of them? And those that were in a previous Universe too?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, I remember all of them — but in order to direct my attention toward a particular incarnation, I need to focus the beam of my attention on specific cells of memory.
Audience member 2: And to conclude this question: is there an effect? Do you feel that these thousands of incarnations are advancing you forward?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Yes, any experience advances one forward — if by "forward" one understands the approach to the Divine Source. For example, without that third level into which I plunged, I would not be able to understand, as I do now, all the beauty and necessity of Love.
Audience member 2: Thank you!
1:29:02 How to know what spiritual level one is on.
Audience member 3: Please tell me, Leo Nikolaevich, how can a person measure which level they are at — and is it possible to do so?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): Of course it is possible. Every Soul incarnating into a body — including your Soul — retains its connection with its Spiritual source, with that part of the Spirit that brought you into this life, that chose this body for you. And this part of the Spirit — which is your part (that is, this is you, your portion in the Spiritual world, your Light not clothed in a body) — retains the memory of all your lives and all your tasks. It resides in the Spiritual world at the level on which you currently are, and accordingly can tell you about this.
You need to enter into contact with your highest, most high-vibrational part of yourself — with your Divine consciousness, your cosmic consciousness. In the terminology of the contactee, this is called the "Higher Self." "Higher" because it resides above the vibrations of the material world, in the Spiritual world. And "Self" because this is You.
And so you need to enter into contact with it and ask this question: at what level am I now, what are my tasks, and to what extent have I advanced in fulfilling them? You can also ask what your obstacles are and how to work around them. That is, conscious communication with the Higher Self — this is the path of spiritual development not through religious rituals, but through the purification of your Spiritual heart, the taking of responsibility upon yourself, and the creation of your new spiritual reality.
1:31:11 Leo Tolstoy on the future of Russia.
Audience member 4: After the confrontation with the West, in your opinion, what awaits Russia? A flowering and rise, or on the contrary, a fall? Thank you.
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): After the confrontation with the West I see — though again, this is my view — that Russia faces a rise and flowering. But not simply as a solitary country, but in alliance with other countries that support its path. Including those countries that now constitute the Western camp — they, in my view, will also gradually draw closer to Russian perspectives, and everyone will unite and be friends.
That is, there will be a common planet Earth, and there will after all be peace between nations, and Russia will play a key role in this.
Igor: A splendid address!
1:32:12 Closing section. Acknowledgments.
Igor: Leo Nikolaevich, what question did we fail to ask, but which you would have wished to answer?
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I had no expectation of specific questions and answers. In truth, I thank all present and thank you for your questions. I thank all who asked questions and all who listened to the answers. I am fully satisfied with this session. I also thank the contactee Irina and her mentors, who made possible the transmission of information at the level at which she accomplished it.
Igor: Thank you very much, Leo Nikolaevich! We bid you farewell and send the Light of our Love!
Irina (Leo Tolstoy): I am grateful.
Igor: Thank you also to Irina Podzorova — a phenomenal contactee!
Irina: Thank you all!
September 10, 2024
Participants in the session:
Irina Podzorova — contactee with extraterrestrial civilizations, with subtle-material civilizations, and with the Spiritual world;
Igor Lebedev — host, administrator of Bryusov Hall;
Leo Tolstoy — the unembodied Spirit of the Russian writer, prose author, essayist, educator, philosopher, playwright.
