About the source and the essence of spiritual serenity in Dostoyevsky and the Cathars
It was one of those peaceful, early mornings, when sleeping children come to one´s mind and with all the beauty that it promises; the air clear and soft, as if moved by angel´s wings. A maidenly day rising, radiant, cheerfully blushing; cool, ignited with chaste courage.
Giovanni PapiniA person´s cheerfulness is the most outstanding sign of their character […] When laughing, a person suddenly becomes sincere and their whole character becomes fully visible […] If you want to meet the soul of a person […], then see how they laugh. Only a good person can laugh well (sociably and open-heartedly).
Fyodor DostoyevskyIf we want to engage with the essence of cheerfulness we should make friends with the idea that cheerfulness is not a mere toneless emotional state. Regarding the diversity of the meanings of cheerfulness, we would like to distinguish between different facets of those meanings: e.g. a serenity, a quiet, calm serenity, a spiritual serenity, a healing serenity. All these characteristics and even more can be found in the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. We collect the molecules of serenity drop by drop, as it were, from his novels, stories and novellas, which depict the psychology of the human being with all complex connections and knots of experiences, life paths and stories, relationships and dreams. Then one day we suddenly become conscious and free of our ideas, expectations and goals as we discover the source of spiritual serenity in the depths of our multifaceted being. Dostoyevsky´s enigmatic, unrecognised heroes drew the healing power from that source recognising an opportunity for the spiritual salvation in the midst of all their afflictions. In the Middle Ages, the Christians in the South of France, the Bonhomme, drank from that same well. Fearlessly and willingly, in quiet serenity, they went into the fire in order to fulfil their spiritual mission [1].
What is serenity and what is its secret magic? How can we recognise its relationship to joy, to gladness, cheerfulness, delight and bliss? Let us try to discover the hidden magic of cheerfulness, let us ask about its ingredients, its measure and scale.
According to Sri Aurobindo, complex human characters have different, mostly contradictory traits, contradictory “Is”, egoes, which struggle with each other. Despite the contradictions, a cheerful mood can spontaneously arise when a person manages to look behind the scenes of his personal states of mind. True cheerfulness requires the right measure: “Excessive cheerfulness and unnecessary chatter undoubtedly dissipate vigour. Great moderation is required in these things“, said Sri Aurobindo. [2]
A “molecule of cheerfulness” consists of “atoms” of various kinds. Depending on their quantity and quality a palette of different expressions of cheerful moods is formed. Thus cheerfulness can become the joy “without which the world cannot exist” [3]
The Light of the Cheerfulness of the Heart
The mystery of life gradually transforms all the sorrow of the past days into a calm serenity.
Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky [4]
How often do people confuse their personal and spiritual dimensions! This is how they use their creative capacity to turn high values into dogmatism and abuse of power. The same can be done with cheerfulness.
Without compassion, it becomes a weapon that can hurt and destroy. It is different when, despite suffering or injustice, it rises from the depths of the being and helps to heal wounds. Such healing serenity, combined with a zest for life, is a purifying spiritual force. Anandamayi Ma, a spiritual master from India, was friendly, calm and cheerful in her nature. She lived unbound joy, uninhibited by anything, joy that found its expression in cheerfulness, “joy that knows no obstacles because it is deeply rooted in the absolute, beyond the duality of good and evil, of “I” and “Not-I”, of pleasant and unpleasant, because love and wisdom form its unshakeable foundation”. Anandamayi Ma loved to tell stories, she sang, danced and laughed a lot. This is one of her messages: “Whenever you have the opportunity, laugh as much as you can”. [5]
Even His Darkness Is Luminous
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, the famous Russian writer who also had Ukrainian roots (his grandfather was a Ukrainian priest in Brazlau), created works in which he depicted a broad spectrum of “molecules of serenity”, of cheerfulness. He was “a burning man, burning in his inner spiritual passion. His soul was burning and from this hellish fire it was lifted to the light”.
In spite of his hard fate, Dostoevsky became a patient and cheerful person, filled with light. He and his literary characters find salvation in the faith in Christ – the luminous and radiant Light of Christ, in the words of Christ, who says: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted”; and: “Rejoice and be glad!”(Matthew 5:4,12).
Dostoyevsky´s characters with their spiritual “chasms, full of goodness and joy and full of evil and suffering” are fascinating because of the honesty and sincerity with which they explore their inner worlds. The fateful entanglements in which they find themselves cannot ultimately withstand the moral judgement of truth. So, apart from the injustice, stupidity, suffering, moral judgement and torment that the characters in Dostoyevsky´s novels have to endure, there is also the spiritual joy and cheerfulness [7].
Cheerfulness Behind the Melancholy
One should delve deeply into Dostoyevsky´s works in order to discover and to understand the bright, joyful power of Christianity contained in his works. Dostoyevsky´s main characters are never harmonious and never at peace with themselves. One of the strongest contrasts, for example, can be seen in Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, when he is overcome by an abysmal grief and despair after the death of his beloved teacher, Starez Zosima, on the one hand, and the jubilant cheerfulness after his vision of the Starez´s resurrection on the other.
Dostoyevsky´s literary characters only become clear and sincere when the transformation of their personality is complete and the soul has taken over. Then all that was contradictory merges into spiritual equanimity, in which the person is characterised by joy of life and unshakeable faith. It is the belief in God who loves humanity, it is the faith in the miraculous, in life itself, in the ever-present life, in the ever-present possibility of emerging from every difficult situation, the possibility to be taken up again into the flow of life. Dmitri Karamazov, Alyosha´s brother, feels devastated when he is condemned for having committed patricide.
But then he realises that “the old man in him has died and the new man was born”. Touched by this tremendous inner transformation, he agrees to innocently take on the guilt of another, to always remain close to the new man within him, to serve him and not to lose the connection to the new man within. His cheerfulness touches the people around him who share his fate and his joy gives their souls the “vibrations of serenity” too.[8]
For Nikolai Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky is a gnostic of a special kind: “His world view equals his brilliant intuition regarding the human and worldly destiny. It is an artistic intuition, and not only an artistic one, but also an ideological, cognitive, philosophical intuition; it is gnosis”.
Berdyaev does not see dogmatic Christianity in the development of Dostoyevsky´s thought, but the radiant Johannine principle of “the light in darkness”.[9]
The Quiet Serenity of Perfect Faith
Suddenly, a dove rises from the centre of the pyre, a snow-white dove, the dove of the Paraclete. It flies to the castle, circles it once and for a moment follows the “path of the Cathars” in the direction of the Cave of Sabarthes. Then it shoots eastwards like an arrow […] Her mission is accomplished.
Antonin Gadal
Gnostic thinking and living groups of people exist in every age. Their fates are often tragic, worldly power fears their influence and tries to destroy them. However, their spiritual heritage always accompanies humanity, it is being inhaled with the air, as it were, and it transforms human hearts into vessels open for the spiritual serenity.
Thus, on March 16th 1244, the Bonshommes of southern France, the Pure Ones, Parfaits, joyously singing, voluntarily mounted the pyre.
The long line of 205 Cathars who were imprisoned in the castle [Montségur] […]. Bertrand d´en Marti, the patriarch, walks at the head of the glorious procession, which he calmly leads to the place of execution. Not one has denied his past. Not one shrank back from the stake[10].
What was the source of their peace?, we can ask ourselves. Where were the bitter tears and despairing looks in their eyes?
Why did those people, young and old, men and women, not cling to their lives? They, who understood so much about life, who mastered the healing arts and were respected and loved by the people around them as much as they were hated and feared by the crusaders. Why did they not stand against their fate? Those questions were never uttered out of respect for the inner silence, the greatness of the spirit that guided and inspired these people.
I see them pass by in dignity, calm and joyous, safe on their path to the “good end”. They are delighted at the thought of their imminent ascent on the “path of the stars”. As faithful disciples of Christ that they were, they were filled with the joy of giving their lives for the glorification of their Master: the highest goal of their long, rigorous initiation![11]
Antonin Gadal
Like the bees flying from flower to flower gathering nectar, so the seeker of all times seeks the precious moments to be quietly touched by the serenity. Those moments come unexpectedly, at the times when they are needed.
[1] Giovanni Papini, in: The Life of the Lord (Storia di Cristo), quoted in: William P. Giuliano, Spiritual Evolution of Giovanni
Papini, in: Italica, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1946, pp. 304-311.
[2] Sri Aurobindo/ The Mother, Handbook of Integral Yoga,
4th edition, Gauting, 2010, p.186
[3] Oscar von Schoultz , The light, cheerful Dostoyevsky
(translation of the Russian title), Petrozavodsk University Publishing House, 1999
[4] In: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Happiness Lies in Cheerfulness, quotations compiled by Baum und Völker, Leipzig
[5] Sri Anandamayi Ma, Words of the Blissful Mother, Anandamayi, Chandravali D. Schang ( ed.), 2010, 3rd edition, p. 2
[6] Berdyaev, Nikolai, The Worldview of Dostoyevsky, 2023
[7] Oscar von Schoultz, op. cit.
[8] Echo and resonance: Dostoyevsky in medial contexts, Annual book of the German Dostoevsky Society, 2013, S. 330-346
[9] Berdyaev, op. cit.
[10] Antonin Gadal, The Triumph of Universal Gnosis,
Amsterdam 2006, pp. 35-36
[11] Antonin Gadal, op. cit.
