I will bring you back your youth, will fill your existence with joy, will give you such knowledge and will teach you such skills, arts that our life with you will run in luxury and pleasures.”
“But which payment will you take for this?” I asked with fear. “Will it be my Hun soul?”
“Oh no!” with triumph exclaimed the Gui spirit. “The Hun spirit is yours! Don’t worry about it. It will follow you and you will pass your life without fear and anxiety. But I have one rule, one condition: I will always go one step in front of you.”
I reflected a while. And not seeing anything bad in it, I agreed, “Alright.”
We immediately happened to be in primeval forest, in the most impassable thicket. The Gui spirit was bravely going ahead, moving apart for me prickly branches, so that I was able to advance freely, without injuring me even one time. And I thought, “How stupid is my Gui spirit. Let him go ahead. It’s even very good for me. Let him do all dirty work for me, and I will just enjoy the life.”
We reached the abode of the powerful dragon. The Gui spirit came close to him first and the last one touched him with his sting and filled up with power. I have seen that nothing bad happened to my spirit and also came close to the dragon. He touched with his sting my body and it became young. The dragon hit with his tail the ground and we found ourselves in the world grown younger with us which was full of heady aroma of wonderful flowers and where marvellous birds were singing their songs. I rejoiced about the feeling of life fullness and went to people.
It happened so as Gui had promised. He shared with me his knowledge. In a flash I raised above among the joy of public emptiness and amazed all by my knowledge, mastership in handy-crafts and arts. Though I became the weak-willed servant of my Gui spirit. Since whatever I thought, the thoughts of the Gui spirit always dominated in my, whatever I said, the words of my Gui spirit flew out first. And whatever I did, the initiator of all my doings was always my evil Gui spirit. So I couldn’t do anything good for my Hun soul, neither with a thought, nor with a word, nor with a doing. I couldn’t even stay alone with it in order to gain myself and my way. And the whole world faded in my eyes. I couldn’t feel the aroma of flowers or listen to birds songs. I understood that the evil Gui spirit cheated me since I let him go one step ahead of me, became his weak-willed servant and enslaved this way in his power my Hun soul. I felt terribly sorry for that and cried. Since that time under the tree I needed to make one more step to gain for my Hun soul Peace and Harmony. That very moment I awakened and saw the light cognizing the essence. I took a shovel and began to dig a tomb for the body and the Gui spirit in order to come here every day and to remember about the Hun soul and its Great Home of Peace till my death.”
The disciples were wondering at his sincere story. And Tang Qiao uttered a wise saying, “Human vanity is fruitless. People rush, torment themselves with fears and anger cast by Po. Meantime the Great Dao remains in divine serenity. He, who has desires and thinks about them, is born in this world again because of his desires. Only he, who is perfect in spirit, who is free from desires and fear, hewill learn the secret of the Great Dao and leaves this world for ever. A wise man goes along the way of understanding the Highest in self-immersion and spiritual cleansing one step ahead of himself... For everything is called forth by the laws of the Highest. The Highest guides all things in existence and leads all things in existence to perfection. Perfection in turn implies acquiring the ultimate goal, the Peace. For the Peace is the very source of the innermost spirituality.”’
And Tang Qiao uttered a word of wisdom which remained in the memory for ages, “If you wish to gain Peace of the Great Dao, remember that birth leads to death but only through death you may come to life.”
Having narrated this legend, Sensei cast an inspecting glance at us. And we silently looked at him. Though there reigned silence, I have still heard in my ears the voice of Sensei who was saying the last phrase, “… remember that birth leads to death but only through death you may come to life”. “It’s expressed so precisely,” I thought. “Even if to regard my life: hadn’t my Destiny brought me so realistically with oncoming Death, I would probably not cognize that there is a genuine life. These words are a universal hint for those who in on the spiritual way! For example, if to regard my material wishes, when they are born in me sooner or later I begin to understand uselessness of these wishes and their emptiness that means that in fact these wishes die in me. And when I stop wishing such stupid things, my attention concentrates on really more important values of the life. Or if to regard instead of ‘wishes’ my ‘fear’. Again, when different fears appear in me it pushes me to finally start looking for a reason of these fears and ways how to get rid of them. So, in the end it will result sooner or later in ‘death’ of my fears. And having ceased fearing, as Sensei said, the human becomes free of fear, and it means that he starts to understand what is the genuine life. Right, if to study globally the human essence it turns out that unless we master our Animal nature, we will not feel what our soul wants and why we were given this life. As it was correctly said in this legend: in order to go the spiritual way, you should always be one step ahead of you, ahead of your Ego, so that your soul would lead you, then you will never be wrong with the direction and sooner or later will reach your innermost goal.”
My considerations were interrupted by Sensei who continued his narration.
“… The same notions about the soul and other elements of the human existed in ancient China… Or let’s take, for example, the conceptions of Turkic nations of Siberia, of that very Altay people. They also differentiate between almost five elements in the human: ‘kermes’, what literally means ‘not seeing’, it’s the spirit of the dead man. It could be ‘aru-kermes’, that is ‘pure’, or could be ‘diaman-kermes’, that is ‘dirty, evil’. Beside ‘kermes’ there is also ‘tyn’, breathing, an inseparable part of the human, ‘sur’, the ghost, double which can part from the body, ‘kut’, the vital force, if to steal it the man will be dead…” And thinking for a while he said, “Greeks also had a dichotomy of ‘bodysoul’…”
“What?” Andrew didn’t quite catch. “Tichotomy?”
“No, dichotomy,” repeated Sensei and explained immediately. “This word originates from Greek word ‘dicha’ which means ‘in two parts’ and ‘tomē’, which means ‘section’. That is the consecutive division of the whole in two parts, and then of each part again etc.”
Nikolai Andreevich nodded confirming the words of Sensei and summarized again making his own general conclusions.
“Now it’s a little bit clearer why the soul was equated to ‘breathing’ in the Old Testament. The Egyptian source is evident.”
“By the way,” remarked Sensei. “Pay attention that ancient Jews had a conception of the soul and body as of one and indivisible.”
“Really?” with a slightly visible smile uttered Nikolai Andreevich. “Obviously someone needed to impose this opinion to the whole nation.”
“There are no doubts,” Sensei agreed to him.
“Wait, I didn’t quite get it,” Victor began to investigate this case. “What does it mean, ‘the Egyptian source is evident”? Does it turn out that ancient Jews plagiarized from ancient Egyptians and somehow forgot to indicate the source of their information?!”
In reply Sensei remarked, “First it were not namely ancient Jews as a nation who ‘plagiarized’ since in majority it was a wild nomadic nation that time which was busy mainly with cattle-breeding. It was ‘plagiarized’ by Jewish priests heading the Jews and exploiting already that time their nation almost like slaves. And second, they plagiarized not only ancient Egyptians.”
“Well, bu they didn’t plagiarized everything!” emphasized Victor.
