The Church has always considered cremation to be a blasphemous and god-loathing affair. But the Bolsheviks, who came to power in 1917, reasoned differently. They began to actively promote this “ideologically correct” method of burial, in their opinion, equalizing everyone after death. In 1920, a competition was announced in Russia for the project of the first crematorium, held under the slogan "Crematorium - Department of Atheism". Who is right - the church or the atheists, showed a unique experiment of St. Petersburg scientists.
Fiery funeral
In Europe, the custom of burning the dead appeared among the Etruscans, and then it was adopted by the Greeks and Romans. With the advent of Christianity, cremation was banned. But over time, a problem arose - a lack of places in cemeteries. We had to bury the deceased in common graves, which were not buried for several days until they were filled. Naturally, this caused the spread of various diseases. Then, in the 16th century, funeral pyres were organized in Europe, but they did not solve the problem. Several centuries passed until, in 1874, a German engineer Siemens invented a regenerative oven, in which cremation took place in a stream of hot air. Two years later, a crematorium similar to the modern ones, of which there are now about 14,000 in the world, began to operate in Milan.
The first crematorium in Russia was opened in 1920, and it was located in the building of baths on Vasilievsky Island in Petrograd. I must say, it did not work for long, a little over a year, and then it was closed "for lack of firewood." But in a little over a year, 379 bodies were cremated there. In 1927, in Moscow, in the Donskoy Monastery, in the Church of Seraphim of Sarov, the same “chair of atheism” was launched. By the way, the Soviet government ordered the furnaces for this crematorium from a German company, which then supplied them to Auschwitz and other death camps.
Later crematoria appeared throughout the country, and “fire burials” became commonplace.
Strange experiment
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In 1996, a program was broadcast on St. Petersburg television that did not leave indifferent everyone who could see it (it was broadcast during working hours, there were no repetitions). Scientists from St. Petersburg at one of the research institutes conducted a unique experiment in the crematorium and filmed it. Several sensors of an electroencephalograph, a device for studying the bioelectrical activity of the brain, were attached to the head of the deceased, lying in a coffin, prepared for shipment to the oven. In a living person, an encephalogram can be used to determine the functional state of the brain and its various diseases. It is clear that in this case the device remained at rest, since the subject died four days ago. The coffin with the body was placed on a special escalator belt, which was supposed to send it to the cremation oven. And the escalator started moving. The pen of the instrument still did not move.
As the coffin approached the stove, the pen trembled, "came to life" and began to barely noticeably draw broken curves on the tape of the device. Then these curves turned into high teeth. The horror was that this man's brain was already dead. It turns out that in the face of danger, he began to function again! After deciphering the readings of the device, it became clear that the signal given by the brain of the deceased was identical to the signal from the brain of a very frightened person. The deceased did not want cremation, he was afraid, no matter how strange and ridiculous it may sound.
Naturally, everyone would like to hear the comments of the participants in the experiment on this phenomenon, but, despite the promises to provide them in the next program, there was no continuation. Someone, apparently, was beneficial to close this topic.
And if there are no official comments, assumptions arise. Here is one of them. After death, the integrity of the organism is violated, but the cells continue to live their lives for some time until they exhaust the reserve - by analogy with the lost limbs or organ transplantation. And, like any living organism, cells react to danger. It was this burst of the remaining energy, like a cry for danger, that the device recorded.
Outlines above the crematorium chimney
Doctor of the St. Petersburg hospital named after Mechnikov Nikolai S, told a completely incredible story. On the one hand, what he saw defies any explanation and looks like fiction or hallucination, on the other hand, the doctor is still, most likely, a man of material views. Nikolai insisted that his story was true.
On that February evening, he was returning home from his daily shift. It was already dark outside at that time. Seeing his bus at the bus stop, which was also empty, the man hurried to get on it. And there he dozed off in the warmth. The conductor woke him up at the final stop. It turned out that in the dark and out of fatigue, Nikolai got on the wrong bus. The terminus of this bus was opposite the crematorium.
While he was waiting for the return flight, he smelled some unpleasant smell. The pipes of the crematorium were smoking, which meant that corpses were being burned there. Everyone knows a certain cynicism of doctors, and Nikolai was no exception. Having nothing to do, he began to count how many dead people would be burned until the bus arrived. And finally, a portion of smoke appeared from the chimney. Imagine the doctor's surprise when a human silhouette began to be seen through the soot. Having missed his bus, Nikolai decided to wait for the next cremation. And again I saw the outlines of a human figure. Then suddenly the smoke began to go without interruption, and our doctor counted six silhouettes. Suddenly, in front of his eyes, a dark clot formed next to the chimney of the crematorium, which Nikolai took for smoke. But this clot began to absorb the smoky silhouettes.
Even the doctor who had seen a lot in his life felt uneasy. He would have kept silent about this story, but hoped that maybe someone else had seen a similar one.
From the point of view of esotericists (by the way, many scientists also admit this), each organism has an energy shell, in other words, an astral or mental body. This body attracts microscopic constituents of smoke to itself, thus forming a visible silhouette. Not very convincing, but without fish …
Don't rush to burn
Let us recall Russian folk tales, in which the villains (Koshchei the Immortal, the Nightingale the Robber) were not only killed, but also burned, and the ashes were scattered in the wind. They did this to completely erase their tracks from the face of the earth. That is, with the help of fire, they got rid of negative energy. If so, then cremation is a guaranteed road to heaven. But where is the guarantee that together with negative energy that useful that has been accumulated over a lifetime will not perish in the fire?
This is what Buddhism preaches. In the East, the dead were always burned, so that during reincarnation the soul of a person was pure, like a white sheet, devoid of everything accumulated in a past life.
But Orthodoxy thinks differently. Man is created from the same matter as the earth. Therefore, after death, he must return his physical shell to her, not only preserving the energy given to him from birth, but also multiplying the information acquired throughout his life. In addition, slowing down this process (embalming) or speeding it up (cremation) is considered a sin that falls on the relatives or those who did it.
All this, of course, is not only controversial, but also lacks evidence. Therefore, everyone decides for himself what to do.
How it goes
Modern crematoria do not run on wood, but on gas, electricity or liquid fuel. The oven temperature reaches over 1000 degrees Celsius. And the process lasts from one and a half to two hours, depending on the type of fuel. When using gas, the body of the deceased does not turn to ash, but disintegrates into fragments. According to the instructions, the ashes must be homogeneous, therefore, at first, an employee of the crematorium uses an electric magnet to extract all metal foreign objects from the ashes: dentures, metal pins and braces left after surgery, jewelry, metal parts of coffins. Then, either with the help of a cremulator (special mill), or manually, or in a centrifuge, the bone remains are crushed and sifted into an urn for ashes. By the way, it is completely impossible that the relatives of the deceased will be given someone else's ashes. Before being sent to the oven, the coffin is sealed and a number plate is attached to it. At the end of the cremation, the tablet is removed from the ashes. In addition, only one coffin is placed in the oven. An interesting fact is that the oven is switched on with a specific key with a special code known only to the responsible employee.
Secrets and riddles, №7 - March 21, 2016
Galina Belysheva