Soul after death: there was no tunnel
At first, Ustyuzhanina, or rather her soul, saw the same thing that R. Moody repeatedly mentioned: an operating room, doctors bustling around, everything is clearly visible and audible, but only from the outside. But then there was no tunnel and there was no flight through it, and there was no “wonderful light” at the end of the flight. Further, Ustyuzhanina’s story will have to be quoted verbatim for reasons that will become clear later.
“Suddenly I found myself in an area completely unfamiliar to me, where there were no residential buildings, no people, no forests, no plants. And then I saw a green alley - not very wide and not very narrow. Although I was in this alley in a horizontal position (i.e., as if lying on my stomach), I was not lying on the grass itself, but on a dark square object approximately 1.5 x 1.5 m. However, what material is it made of? I couldn’t tell because I wasn’t able to touch it with my hands.”
Let's stop and look at some of the nuances of Ustyuzhanina's story. The area is without plants, but almost immediately a green alley and grass are mentioned. Based on this, atheists will accuse Ustyuzhanina of lying, which will be a mistake. At first, there may indeed have been no greenery, which could have caused the Soul an instant, unnoticed anxiety or even fear. “Someone” reacted to this instantly: Claudia didn’t even have time to understand how an alley and grass appeared to calm her down, because... calm nature always has a beneficial effect on the human soul. The soul, which for a moment showed concern, immediately calmed down when it saw the alley “neither wide nor narrow,” instinctively realizing that this alley was a pedestrian one! It follows that Claudia guessed that they would not come to her on some kind of transport, but would come on foot, and people would come!
The soul was “weighed” after death
The dark square on which her soul was located, according to Ustyuzhanina’s definition, had dimensions of 1.5 x 1.5 meters. Here Claudia could have been mistaken, however, not by much - the square could have dimensions of 1.618 x 1.618 meters, which corresponds to the (“golden ratio” in a square). This dark square of the “golden ratio” could be some kind of... scales, where her soul was “weighed” to find harmony and beauty in it, because... The proportions of the “golden section” always symbolize beauty and harmony!
The dark color was probably not accidental - real gold is always washed in a dark tray so that every piece of gold is clearly visible! She could not touch with her hands, because... they simply were not there, just as there was no body as such - “on a dark object” with the “golden ratio” the soul of Claudia Ustyuzhanina was examined very carefully, from all sides, and, perhaps, literally “saw right through”, trying to accurately understand, whether a given soul has undergone “natural selection at an intermediate stage of development.”
What is the difference between the arrival of death for an Orthodox and a Protestant?
Let's continue quoting. “I didn’t see the sun shining there, but it couldn’t be said that it was cloudy. I had the urge to ask someone where I was. On the western side I saw a gate, reminiscent in its shape of the Royal Gates in the Temple of God. The radiance from them was so strong that if it could be compared with the radiance of gold or some other precious metal, then it would be compared to the Gates of coal.”
“Resurrection” of Claudia Ustyuzhanina - a miracle or a deception?
“The Barnaul Miracle” - this is how journalists lightly called the incredible incident that happened in the capital of the Altai Territory in 1964.
A woman suffering from terminal cancer died under a surgeon’s knife, and three days later was resurrected in the morgue. The story was passed down from mouth to mouth, became a real legend and still excites minds. The surgeon who performed the operation had a completely different opinion about death and resurrection. He tried to bring it to the public. True, the people in love with miracles did not want to listen to the doctor.
Version
Israel Isaevich died in old age in 1998, just in the year the article was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda. The outrageous lies on the pages of the newspaper forced him to write a letter with his version of what happened. They sent the letter to the editor with a request to publish it, but they did not consider it necessary to do so.
For the fact that Neimark’s letter saw the light, we should thank journalist Natalya Vasilyeva. In 2004, she decided to get to the bottom of this strange and deceptive story. She contacted the son of the surgeon, Alexander Izrailevich Neimark, who at that time headed the department of urology at ASMU and was also a practicing surgeon. He told the journalist the story as he heard it from his father. I also gave a copy of the letter that I sent in 1998 to the editor of the newspaper. For ease of understanding, the main points of the letter, which refute Ustyuzhanina’s story, will be presented in the form of a list:
Popularization of history
After the extraordinary event that happened, Ustyuzhanina truly believed in God. She began to preach and tell her wonderful story to everyone. People liked the story, word spread throughout the cities and villages, and Ustyuzhanina believed in it more and more. She even considered herself a saint - she began selling the water she had previously washed herself with to everyone. Meanwhile, her son, who was small at the time of the “resurrection,” was growing up. He hardly had any other life path options other than professional service to God. His mother died in 1978 from heart disease, and Father Andrei began to promote the story to the masses. He is still promoted to the rank of archpriest in a convent in the city of Alexandrov.
In 1998, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper published Ustyuzhanina’s story exactly as it was told by her. There was not a shadow of doubt in the article that a miracle had happened, and the man who had been lying in the morgue for three days was resurrected.
How should we feel about the Barnaul miracle?
Stories of miracles, whether criticized or not, should not become the basis of our faith. We do not have exact data and evidence about how the operations were carried out, what Klavdia Ustyuzhanina’s diagnosis was.
The story about the posthumous fate of people does not entirely correspond to the teachings of the Church.
Be that as it may, miracles can be a temptation, both for the person himself, a participant in the events, and for witnesses to what is happening. If the Barnaul miracle confuses you, makes you doubt your faith or upsets you, you can discuss this with your spiritual father or priest. Sincere faith does not need additional reinforcement by incredible events.
Miracle or hoax?
Many facts in Claudia Ustyuzhanina’s story still aroused skepticism among doctors and scientists. If some sources indicate that the woman was found already in the morgue, others say that she was unconscious in the hospital ward. The question of “renewal” also remains open; it was claimed that the woman’s already removed pancreas grew back, and her stomach was cleared of tumor products, but no one has convincing evidence to date.
“In February 1964, Klavdiya Ustyuzhanina was admitted to the faculty clinic of the Altai Medical Institute on the basis of the railway hospital, headed by me, for an operation on the referral of oncologists with a diagnosis of transverse colon cancer.” At the clinic, the patient was operated on under endotracheal anesthesia. During induction of anesthesia, cardiac arrest occurred. Resuscitation measures were immediately taken, and quickly, within two minutes, it was possible to restore cardiac activity. During the operation, a large inflammatory conglomerate was discovered emanating from the transverse colon, compressing and complicating its patency. No cancer metastases and 1.5 liters of pus mentioned in the article were found. A fistula is placed on the cecum to drain gases, intestinal contents and create conditions for eliminating the inflammatory process. Thus, cancer was excluded. The picture corresponded to the inflammatory process. The whole operation lasted 25 minutes.”
Barnaul miracle: what happened?
The Barnaul miracle is the name given to the events that happened in 1964 in one of the hospitals in the city of Barnaul with Claudia Nikitichna Ustyuzhanina, after which the woman became a deeply religious person.
The Barnaul miracle is often called “resurrection,” although in medicine there is a different definition for such situations. It all started in 1964, when Claudia Ustyuzhanina, suffering, according to preliminary data, from a tumor of the gastrointestinal tract with metastases, ended up in the hospital. The prognosis was disappointing for the woman; she complained of headaches and abdominal pain. The surgeon who undertook to operate on her to alleviate her condition reported cardiac arrest during the operation. The patient was resuscitated, but remained unconscious for two more days.
When the patient regained consciousness, the doctors and relatives of the women were quite surprised. Claudia Ustyuzhanina said that she saw amazing things.
“I didn’t feel the very process of separating my soul from my body, only suddenly I saw my body from the outside the way we see, for example, some thing: a coat, a table, etc. I see people fussing around my body, trying to bring me back to life.
I hear everything and understand what they are talking about. I feel and worry, but I can’t let them know that I’m here.
Suddenly I found myself in places close and dear to me, where I had ever been offended, where I cried, and in other difficult and memorable places. However, I didn’t see anyone near me, and how long it took for me to be able to visit these places, and how my movement was carried out - all this remained an incomprehensible mystery to me.”
Version of the “miracle” from the words of Ustyuzhanina
A convinced atheist, Klavdiya Ustyuzhanina worked as a seller at the market. In the winter of 1964, she was given a terrible diagnosis - intestinal cancer. Claudia was lucky and ended up with a highly qualified surgeon, Israel Isaevich Neimark. Unfortunately, the situation turned out to be very neglected. The cancer has already given serious metastases throughout the body, including the pancreas. At the time of the intervention, the organ was an ugly piece of degenerated tissue, drowning in pus. The woman died during the operation; there was no doubt about the actual death that occurred. The body was hastily stitched up and moved to the morgue.
Claudia claims that while the operation was going on, she looked at it from the side. She could see all the actions of the surgeon and her body. The body lay in the morgue for three days, and then Claudia returned to it and wanted to get up. The morgue workers saw the terrible attempts of a revived corpse with a hastily sewn up peritoneum to stand up and ran away in horror. The woman was stitched up and moved to intensive care, and then to a regular ward. There she excitedly began to talk about how, while she was dead, she met God and the Virgin Mary with a boy, obviously Jesus. God said that she died at the wrong time and sent her back to her body.
A month later, Ustyuzhanina was again placed on the operating table for a second operation. The operation was also performed by an experienced surgeon Valentina Vasilievna Alyabyeva. Claudia says that the doctor came to her after the operation and cried. She did not find any signs of cancer in Ustyuzhanina’s body, much less metastasis.
Barnaul miracle. Three days later, the corpse got up and walked. Life after death
On February 19, 1964, Claudia Nikitichna Ustyuzhanina died on the operating table of the city hospital in Barnaul, two weeks before her forty-fifth birthday.
The cancerous process that affected the pancreas covered almost the entire stomach and adjacent tissues. There was no chance of salvation; the doctors did everything they could, fighting to the end for Ustyuzhanina’s life. An unsewn corpse - what's the point! - sent to the hospital morgue. On the third day, the relatives of the deceased came there to take the corpse and bury it, but the incredible happened!
The orderlies who came for the corpse of Ustyuzhanina, who lay in a cold morgue, in the Siberian cold, under a light sheet for three days, showed signs of life, trying to sit up! The seasoned orderlies ran away in panic, and then all the doctors came running and Klavdiya Ustyuzhanina was transferred to the ward. The entire staff was shocked by the absolute renewal of the removed(!) pancreas and other diseased tissues - they became clean and healthy, like a newborn baby!
Let us not fall into militant atheism and religious ecstasy, likening ourselves to discrete logic based on “Yes-No” and “there is no third option.” Let’s look carefully at the story of Klavdia Ustyuzhanina, which could take its rightful place in the famous book by Dr. Raymond Moody “Life After” of death".
