The gift of Spirit

As time passed, J.Z. gradually got used to his new state of mind. It manifested itself publicly for the first time while attending a spiritual lecture. (It happened shortly after the war when the communists had not yet managed to prohibit them.) There was a dispute over whether a human spirit could be born back into an animal. The opponents argued about the different evolutionary complexity of the body and the spirit, the advocates claimed, on the contrary, it could be necessitated by karma as fate always teaches through personal experience.

Mr J.Z. then stood up and said: ‘Both sides are right. It is logical that an animal’s body is too primitive for a human spirit, from the evolutionary angle, it is too distant.

In case of a serious transgression against an animal, however, a man has to experience its emotions, pain, helplessness resulting from injustice. Only then does a man understand the profundity of his spirit and change himself. Karma works this way. For this reason, when a man dies and his body stays aside, his spirit connects with an animal’s fate but only by its proportional part, that proportional part which belongs to the animal. After gaining the required experience, both parts of the psyche connect again, this is hard schooling which we sometimes set ourselves up for.’

Mr J.Z. soon starts forming his understanding – the philosophy of Bytí (Existence). We should note that it was in the time of Stalin’s blunders. Society was full of snoopers and snitches. Spiritual literature was persecuted in various ways (for example the agents of the State Secret Police borrowed the books and they did not return them, but also home inspections) and recalled. Nearly all spiritual clubs were infiltrated and checked by the police. The religion of the state - ‘scientific materialism’ (the communist view of the world) was worshiped.

In those days, Mr J.Z. started writing. His manuscripts were secretly copied on a typewriting machine. A team of secret typists and roundsmen established among his closest friends. What they did was a great job.

Simply typewriting in a flat was a problem in itself because you could never know when your neighbour would denounce you for strange sounds coming from your flat. I remember, when I became his disciple, much later on, I would put my typewriter on a folded blanket so as to muffle the transmission of the strokes into the table and the floor.

Thin carbon copy paper would be used and this way several copies were made at the same time. Copying machines were a mere dream in those days, let alone private usage of them. It was a matter of checking. These samizdats were copied again and circulated. People who travelled west on business would take the samizdats together with potential correspondence with them.

They even managed to publish some treatises of Mr J.Z. there. That was not possible, however, in his motherland.