M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". Part 3. Pontius Pilate: Foundling and Son of the Astrologer
The apocryphal plot of the Passion of Christ is almost entirely focused on Pontius Pilate - his thoughts, feelings and actions. His life changes after meeting with the wandering philosopher Ha-Notsri, although he did not try to convince him or persuade him to his views on life.
A classic is the book that a certain people or a group of nations for a long time decides to read as if everything on its pages was thought out, inevitably, deeply like the cosmos, and allowed countless interpretations.
Jorge Luis Borges "On the Classics"
The Master and Margarita is a novel in which more is said than said. The whole impression is created precisely through the effect of the atmosphere, full immersion in the times of what is happening, and to a much lesser extent through descriptions of cause-effect relationships or interpretation of events.
In the same way, the image of Yeshua is formed to a greater extent through the unsaid: "It seemed vaguely to the procurator that he did not finish something with the convict, and maybe he did not listen to something …".
The apocryphal plot of the Passion of Christ is almost entirely focused on Pontius Pilate - his thoughts, feelings and actions. His life changes after meeting with the wandering philosopher Ha-Notsri, although he did not try to convince him or persuade him to his views on life.
Simply by his presence, his existence, that sincere simplicity and confidence in his own righteousness, Yeshua turns the whole world of the cruel procurator, because for him "the truth is easy and pleasant to speak."
Pontius Pilate. What is Truth?
Pilate's life is filled with hatred: he hates his job (“do not be offended, centurion, my position, I repeat, is even worse”), hates Yershalaim (“there is no more hopeless place on earth. I am not talking about nature! I am sick every time, how do I have to come here”), but the main thing is that he completely lost faith in people and lost all interest in them. The only creature he was attached to was his dog, Banga.
Bulgakov managed to describe Pilate's sound shortages in a very recognizable way: a desire for solitude, aloofness from people, a sense of the meaninglessness of his life, lack of satisfaction, joy, happiness. These states result in him in a disease characteristic of sound specialists - hemicrania - which brings him to the point that he "faintly thinks about death."
In modern language, hemicrania is a migraine, a disease in which half of the head hurts. As then, and today, medicine does not determine a specific cause and cannot offer a guaranteed drug treatment for this disease, which has a distinct psychosomatic nature.
To the question "what is truth?" he gets an unexpected answer that hits the target.
An amazingly accurate understanding of what is happening, the amazing ability of this strange homeless person to feel the state of another person right down to his thoughts, desires and weaknesses, and an unusual philosophical conviction that all people are kind, completely contradicts the procurator's worldview and at the same time attracts his attention, he also wants to listen to Yeshua. still.
All this seems to be challenging, arouses the interest of the procurator and launches the thought process simultaneously with the desire to debate. Pilate receives what he has been deprived of for so long - food for thought and a worthy companion. In an instant, his headache passes, he forgets about the rosy smell that torments him and the scorching sun, in his thoughts an acquittal verdict “the wandering philosopher turned out to be insane” is formed at lightning speed.
The procurator was still thirsty, communication with Yeshua filled with new meanings, ideas, and all the more painful for Pilate is new information in the case of the beggar philosopher. "The law on insult to majesty …" could not be violated without the subsequent death penalty.
"Killed!", Then: "Killed!.."
The procurator's instant insights anticipate the tragic development of events. He understands that execution is inevitable, but he is not ready to sacrifice his career, or even his own life, for the sake of saving the vagabond philosopher.
Painful immortality
It is about this episode of his own cowardice that Pontius Pilate will remember and pay the price for two thousand years. Personal hell organized by oneself is the payback for an act that runs counter to personal ideas about justice and legality.
All his attempts to regain his inner balance: the burial of the executed, the murder of the traitor Judas, the return of the "bloody money" to Kaifa, the help to Matthew Levi - cannot atone for the most terrible, according to Pilate, of human vices …
"Immortality … immortality has come …"
Here it is, reckoning - endless suffering, the inability to die, being in a permanent state of unmet needs of the sound vector. Real torture, which in real life gives rise to thoughts of suicide, which seems to be the only possible way out. This is what real hell is - a complete inability to end your suffering.
"… and immortality for some reason caused unbearable melancholy."
Only with time, realizing what had happened, Pilate realizes that now "he will do anything to save the absolutely innocent, insane dreamer and doctor from execution!" and somewhere even more than life. He gave him MEANING, faith in people and healing from hemicrania.
All power is violence against people
Yeshua Bulgakova is an ordinary person: excitement and fears are inherent in him, he does not work miracles and does not tame the elements, he has only one student and no parents at all, he does not declare his divine origin, but lives a simple life. How he knows how, how he knows, how he considers it right for himself. Yeshua's ordinariness deliberately catches the eye, so that later, later, it turns into an inexplicable force, into an amazing ability to change people's lives irrevocably.
There was no pathos, no sermons, no instructions. There was only truth. The sound ability to include another person - to realize his lack, desires and suffering, as his own, multiplied by the power of natural urethral altruism. This is Yeshua. An extremely rare combination of psychological properties of a person capable of turning the whole world upside down, changing the course of history and opening new ways of human development.
“… All power is violence against people… the time will come when there will be no power of either the Caesars or any other power. A person will move to the kingdom of truth and justice, where no power will be needed at all."
Here it is, a vision of a new, urethral, social formation. The kingdom of truth and justice is the sound idea of building a spiritual society. When the psyche opens, when each understands the other as himself, perceives the desires of the other as his own, he can no longer harm anyone. In such a society, there is no need for laws and cultural restrictions to govern, it naturally lives in terms of justice and mercy, not for itself, but for everyone.
Bulgakov presents to the eyes of the reader the very birth of Christianity - in the souls of Matthew Levi and Pontius Pilate. Their inner changes from touching the spiritual are striking in their depth and seem impossible.
Of course, such a turning point in history could not remain without Woland's personal attention. "The tired procurator dreamed that someone was sitting in an empty chair." Who was it, was it not a foreigner from the Patriarch's Ponds, who would then tell this story?
And is it not for the same reason that Woland ends up in Moscow in the 1930s? Another historic milestone. The time when ideology ousted religion from the everyday life of millions of Russian people.
Foundling and son of the astrologer
For two thousand years, the name of the Roman procurator has been pronounced along with the name of the Son of God in the prayers of Christians around the world.
“… They will remember me - they will immediately remember you! Me - a foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you - the son of the astrologer king and the miller's daughter, the beautiful Pyla.
Yes, do not forget, remember me, the son of the astrologer, - asked Pilate in a dream."
The great procurator considers it an honor to be remembered alongside Yeshua, who does not have such magnificent regalia, but stands head and shoulders above any person in his spiritual development.
And now, after two thousand years, Pontius Pilate has redeemed his guilt and can be released. There, where he was striving so much all this time, to the one with whom he was so keen to talk.
- Free! Free! He's waiting for you!
Their meeting finally took place when the master lets go of the hero of his novel, who has suffered and suffered through suffering.
Christianity has fulfilled its role, humanity has gone this way, and now people need something else. Internal changes of a different kind. Self-knowledge. Spiritual growth that begins with psychological literacy. The path to the Creator. Everyone's personal path.
"There was as much free time as needed, and the thunderstorm will come only in the evening, and cowardice is undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices."
***
Mikhail Afanasyevich is a genius writer who has created a genius work outside of time. Reading the novel through the prism of Yuri Burlan's system-vector psychology reveals new facets in it and provides unique food for the mind, stimulates thinking and gives an incomparable pleasure of discovery.
Read also:
M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". Part 1. Woland: I am a part of that power …
M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". Part 2. Queen Margot: I'm dying for love
