The Soul After Death

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Father Seraphim was born Eugene Dennis Rose on August 13, 1934, in San Diego, California. His father Frank was of Dutch and French ancestry, while his mother Esther’s family was from Norway. Esther was a Protestant, and Frank, although he had grown up as a Roman Catholic, became a Protestant for the sake of his wife. Frank worked at several occupations, owning a candy store for a while, then working for General Motors, and finally taking a job as a janitor at a sports stadium.

Eugene graduated from San Diego High School in 1952 at the top of his class. He was regarded by his parents, teachers and peers as a young “genius” destined for a brilliant career in science or mathematics. By the time he entered Pomona College in southern California, however, such earthly pursuits seemed to him unimportant beside a new, all-consuming passion: to know, to understand reality in the highest sense. Feeling estranged from the society around him, he rebelled against its superficiality and materialism, and rejected the Protestant religion in which he had been raised. His search for Truth led first through Western philosophy and then through a study of the wisdom of the Orient, for which he learned the Chinese language, both ancient and modern.

Having graduated from Pomona College in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in Oriental Languages, Eugene enrolled in the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, and studied under its Dean, Dr. Alan Watts. At the same Academy, he found a true representative of the Chinese tradition, a philosopher named Gi- ming Shien. Eugene went to various Eastern temples and helped Gi-ming to translate the Tao Teh Ching from the ancient Chinese characters. In 1957 he became a student of the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his master’s degree in Oriental Languages in 1961.

The wisdom of the pre-Christian philosophers, as profound as it was, left Eugene unfulfilled, and he was in despair at not knowing why. From Gi-ming, and also from the writings of the French metaphysician Réné Guénon, he had learned the value of adhering to the traditional, orthodox form of a religion, whatever that religion might be. Unable to find the end of his search in the traditional Eastern religions he had already experienced, he went one day to see the orthodox, Eastern form of the religion he had known as a child — Christianity. Describing this moment many years later, he wrote:

“For years in my studies I was satisfied with being ‘above all traditions’ but somehow faithful to them.... When I visited an Orthodox church, it was only in order to view another ‘tradition’ — knowing that Guénon (or one of his disciples) had described Orthodoxy as being the most authentic of the Christian traditions.

“However, when I entered an Orthodox church for the first time (a Russian church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this was ‘home,’ that all my search was over. I didn’t really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning the language and customs, but still keeping all my basic Guénonian ideas about all the authentic spiritual traditions.

“With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, however, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal — even a Person — sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ.”

Eugene was received into the Orthodox Church on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, February 25, 1962, in the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Russian Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco. On receiving the Holy Mysteries for the first time he felt a heavenly, Divine taste in his mouth which lasted for over a week.

In San Francisco Eugene became a disciple of one of the holiest men of the 20th century, Archbishop John Maximovitch (canonized in 1994 as St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco): a hierarch known the world over as a miracle-worker, clairvoyant elder, ascetic, “fool for Christ,” father of orphans, and deliverer of the oppressed. With this unearthly man as his guide, Eugene entered into what he was later to call the indefinable “savor” or “fragrance” of Orthodoxy. He cut through all the externals to go to the essence and heart of unadulterated, otherworldly Christianity.

Seeing potential greatness in the young Eugene, Archbishop John made special efforts to prepare him for a life of service in the Church. He began a series of theological classes in San Francisco, which Eugene attended diligently. Eugene graduated from this course at the head of his class, even though all the lectures were delivered in Russian and Eugene was the only American Orthodox convert in the class.

Eugene wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to bringing the Truth of Holy Orthodoxy to his contemporaries. Together with a young Russian, Gleb Podmoshensky, he started a missionary Brotherhood dedicated to one of the original Orthodox missionaries who had come from Russia to America: the holy miracle-worker Fr. Herman of Alaska († 1836).

In 1964 the brothers opened an Orthodox bookstore in San Francisco and began to publish a magazine, The Orthodox Word, printing each issue on a simple letterpress. All of these undertakings were begun with the blessing and encouragement of Archbishop John Maximovitch.

After the death of Archbishop John in 1966, Eugene and Gleb began to search for land in the wilderness of northern California, where they could continue to print The Orthodox Word and at the same time enter into the experience of the Orthodox ascetics (“desert-dwellers”) throughout the ages. Archbishop John had blessed this step as well, for not long before his death he had told Eugene that he believed the brothers would establish a missionary monastery in northern California.

In 1969 Eugene and Gleb moved to a secluded mountainside (“Noble Ridge”) near the small town of Platina, California, bringing all their printing equipment with them. A year later, the Brotherhood’s patron, Fr. Herman of Alaska, was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, thus becoming America’s first canonized saint. Eugene and Gleb helped to prepare for the canonization by publishing material on St. Herman’s life and miracles, and by writing and printing the Church service to him.

On October 27, 1970, the brothers were tonsured as monks by Archbishop Anthony Medvedev of Western America and San Francisco († 2000), of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. At their tonsure, Eugene was named after the Russian ascetic St. Seraphim of Sarov, Gleb was given the name of St. Herman of Alaska, and the new monastery was also named after St. Herman. Fr. Seraphim’s “elder from the mantle” at his tonsure was the humble Archimandrite Spyridon Efimov (†1984). Fr. Spyridon had been a disciple of Archbishop John and, like his teacher, had received the gift of clairvoyance from God. In succeeding years, Fr. Spyridon visited the monks whenever he could, giving valuable spiritual counsel and helping to set the new St. Herman of Alaska Monastery on a secure spiritual footing.

Fathers Seraphim and Herman also looked for spiritual guidance from Bishop Nektary Kontzevitch of Seattle († 1983), a disciple of Elder Nektary of Optina Monastery in Russia. Bishop Nektary loved to visit the new monastery in northern California, which reminded him of the forest monasteries in Holy Russia. “In Platina,” he wrote in a letter, “the spirit of Optina dwells.” At the same time he warned Fathers Seraphim and Herman not to fall into pride. “Don’t think that anything you have is by your own efforts or merit,” he told them. “It’s a gift of God!”

In the bosom of God’s nature, Fr. Seraphim’s spirit began to soar. He built for himself a small cabin in the forest, and there immersed himself in prayer and the God-inspired writings of the Holy Fathers. Through gradual inward purification, through ascetic struggle and unseen warfare, he began to acquire the mind and heart, the way of thinking and feeling of these ancient teachers and visionaries. Although he had a deep bond with nature and animals and cherished every day he could stay on Noble Ridge, he felt himself to be only a pilgrim on this earth and was consciously preparing himself for the life beyond. Several miraculous instances were witnessed of how he received guidance and help from the other world, especially from his reposed spiritual father, Archbishop John.

From his mountain refuge, Fr. Seraphim produced a torrent of books and magazines which served to place traditional wisdom in a modern context. He wrote, translated, typeset, printed, and sent them out all over the world, where their full significance would be seen only after his death. Never idle for a moment, he was driven to make the fullness of Truth available to rootless, fragmented modern man — before it was too late. Forseeing apocalyptic times ahead, he would say, “It’s later than you think! Hasten, therefore, to do the work of God.”

Fr. Seraphim was ordained a deacon on January 2, 1977; and he was ordained to the priesthood on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearing Women, April 24, 1977. Both ordinations were performed by the aforementioned Bishop Nektary of Seattle.

In spite of Fr. Seraphim’s love for wilderness solitude and his retiring, philosophical disposition, his last years were spent in ever-increasing pastoral activity. He was deeply loved by his spiritual children for his simple wisdom and his ability to understand human suffering. Some were surprised to find that this man, who was so uncompromising when it came to writing about spiritual deceptions which could lead people astray, was at the same time so compassionate when it came to dealing with the individual, fallen person.

A brief and sudden illness took Fr. Seraphim from this earth on September 2, 1982. He was only forty-eight years old. His last days were filled with intense prayer, as people gathered from far and wide to be at his bedside in the hospital. Unable to speak behind a respirator mask, he looked to heaven and prayed with tears as he prepared his soul for the future life.

In his coffin in the humble monastery church, Fr. Seraphim’s face took on an expression of unearthly tranquility, testifying to the peace he had found with God. He was so radiant — literally golden — that children could hardly be drawn away from his coffin. The mystery of death and the life beyond, which he had pondered for most of his intellectual life, was now mystery to him no more. Miracles began to be recorded of his help from the other world to his spiritual children.

During Fr. Seraphim’s lifetime, his books were known to a relatively small number of people in English-speaking countries. In the two decades following his death, however, his writings have had a worldwide impact. Translated into many languages — Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, French, Latvian, Polish, Italian, and Malayalam (South Indian) — they have changed countless lives with their sobering truth. In Russia during the Communist suppression of spiritual literature, his books Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future and The Soul After Death were secretly distributed in the form of typewritten manuscripts, becoming known to millions. With the cessation of religious persecution, his books and articles have been published in Russia in mass quantities, and have been on sale everywhere — even at book-tables in the Moscow subway. When American Orthodox Christians go to Orthodox churches and monasteries in Russia, the first question they are often asked is, “Did you know Fr. Seraphim Rose?”

Besides the two books just mentioned, Fr. Seraphim’s published works include God’s Revelation to the Human Heart; Heavenly Realm; Genesis, Creation and Early Man; Nihilism; and The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church. All of these books were published by the St. Herman Brotherhood after Fr. Seraphim’s repose, along with his one-thousand-page biography, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works. The Brotherhood is currently preparing for publication other books by Fr. Seraphim, including his collected lectures and his long-awaited Orthodox Survival Course.

Today, Orthodox Christians in Russia and other Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe see this American from southern California, Fr. Seraphim, as pivotal to the restoration of traditional spiritual principles in their ravaged homelands. He is a light of hope in the face of their uncertain future. It is time now for more of his fellow Americans — who face perhaps even greater uncertainty — to hear his message and be awakened to the eternal Truth for which he lived and died.

—Hieromonk Damascene St. Herman of Alaska Monastery Platina, California October, 2003