The cause of death of Natalia Bekhtereva press reports. The mystery of the "immortality" of the human personality and the nature of thought. Vladimir Bekhterev. On Science and Religion

90 years have passed since the birth of Academician Natalya Bekhtereva.

The brave daughter of the "enemy of the people"

Natalya Petrovna was born in Leningrad on July 7, 1924. Her father, an engineer, was arrested and shot as an "enemy of the people." Even then, little Natasha began to show incredible abilities. On the eve of her father's arrest, she had a dream, which she later described in her memoirs: “Dad is standing at the end of the corridor, for some reason very poorly dressed, in something old, summer, as if in canvas shoes. And dad even at home dressed well, although differently than at work. And suddenly the floor begins to rise, exactly from the end where dad stood. Figurines rolled down the floor - dad loved them ... And under the floor - fire, and flames - on the sides of the corridor. It’s hard for dad to stand on his feet, he falls, I wake up screaming ... And the next night I woke up because the light was on in the apartment, some people were walking ... Important janitors stood nearby. The very ones whose children for two weeks showed us the sign of the lattice with their hands - spread fingers of both hands, superimposed on each other in front of the face. They knew."

After the arrest of her husband, her mother ended up in a concentration camp, and therefore, at the age of 13, Natalya and her brother ended up in an orphanage. There, the children of the "enemies of the people" were tortured, they were mocked. “Before every meager meal - but still food that we knew was now smoking on the tables - we stand on a ruler,” she recalled. - We stand until the porridge freezes, listen to the sadistic director’s monologue about how to eat, how to chew food ... He had already had breakfast (dinner, lunch), and he had had a full breakfast: he always demanded that the plate be on top, because it’s business he has such a responsible - to lead all of us.

But the character of little Natasha was already firm then. She did not flinch, even when she found out that her father had been shot. And when, in a history lesson, I heard about Mucius Scaevola, who, in order to prove steadfastness to enemies, put his hand into the fire, put a red-hot nail to his hand.

And then - war, new terrible tests. During the war, Natalya Bekhtereva lived in besieged Leningrad. “They went down to the basement by siren,” she writes. - As the blockade days went on, the basement became more and more difficult - both because there were less and less forces, and because it was necessary to dig out the basements of destroyed houses very close by ... And because it was more terrible to hear the whistle of a falling bomb in the basement: " It’s gone… This time it’s gone.”

She retained amazing details of those tragic days in her memory: “For walking along the Field of Mars during an artillery shelling, I was fined 2 rubles 50 kopecks. I kept a narrow white receipt for a long time as proof of my courage. As she recalls, “until the 1950s, I couldn’t get enough to eat, I was hungry all the time. And so it is with all the blockade runners. ”

Lady Bekhtereva

Nevertheless, after the war, Natalya Petrovna managed to graduate from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute. Academician I.P. Pavlova and enroll in graduate school. She worked at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, then at the Neurosurgical Institute. A.L. Polenov, having gone all the way to the deputy director.

At the age of 35 she became a doctor of sciences, then the scientific director of the Brain Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and since 1992 - the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences. As a scientist, she made many discoveries, received recognition not only in our country, but also abroad.

She was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and a member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, as well as many scientific academies in other countries, became an Honorary Citizen of St. Petersburg. She was even offered the post of Minister of Health of the USSR, but she refused.

At the same time, Natalya Petrovna was not at all a “dry” armchair scientist, but a lively and sociable person. Employees dedicated humorous verses to her:

Well, she really is a queen.
tall, thin, white,
And the mind and all took.

Having become a deputy of the Supreme Council, she helped many. She sang beautifully, she was even invited to the professional stage. Once, during a scientific trip to Germany, the organizers of a scientific congress in Munich threw a party at which the participants were supposed to sing something. The Soviet delegation, which at that time expected provocations, was at a loss. Unexpectedly, Natalya Petrovna came on stage and, going up to the orchestra, sang "Katyusha" in a concert voice. The hall literally roared with delight. I must say that beautiful - inherited from her mother - always elegantly combed, Natalya Petrovna everywhere enjoyed constant success. In England, for example, she was respectfully called only "Lady Bekhterev."

But even after the scientific successes of her life path was by no means strewn with roses. When the USSR collapsed, institutions were without funding, scientists fell into poverty. N. Bekhtereva was brutally persecuted, her beloved student hung out posters: “Medvescu-Bekhterescu is waiting for the fate of Ceausescu!” - alluding to the execution of the Romanian dictator. Medvedev was her husband's surname. Natalya Petrovna was accused of murdering her husband, and her son from her second husband committed suicide. All this did not break the scientist, she stubbornly continued her path in science and successfully led the institute until her last days.

It so happened that I was one of the last people who spoke to her before she died. I called Natalya Petrovna on the phone on the eve of the day when she was sent to the hospital - from where she never left. It was about one seriously ill Greek boy. His parents traveled all over the world to no avail, and their only hope was in Russia, where, as they heard, lives an amazing doctor, a world-famous neurosurgeon who can help - Natalya Bekhtereva.

“Of course, of course,” she readily agreed. - Bring the documents, we'll see what we can do.

We agreed on a meeting and, at the same time - such is our brother, a journalist - I also asked the academician for an interview.

- And on what topic? asked Natalya Petrovna.
“About whether there is life after death,” I explained.
- Well, you don’t make a witch out of me! Natalya Petrovna laughed and immediately agreed. - Okay, come on. I will give you my book: "The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life."

Alas, the next day, when I called her at the apartment, they told me that Natalya Petrovna had just been taken to the hospital ...

Through the Looking Glass

I met the academician in Greece, where she came on a business trip. We walked with her for a long time around Athens, sat in a cafe. We talked about a lot. They remembered, of course, her famous grandfather, the legendary physiologist Vladimir Bekhterev. His mysterious death, work on the study of the psychology of the crowd, possible involvement in secret attempts to create an "ideological weapon" in the USSR.

“Do you think it’s easy to have such an eminent ancestor?” asked Natalya Petrovna. “I didn’t have his portrait in my office for a long time. I did not dare to hang it, I thought it was unworthy. I hung it up only when I was elected to the academy.

By the way, she was sure that her grandfather did not die because, as they said, I.V. Stalin was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but because he discovered: V.I. Lenin died of cerebral syphilis.

The conversation almost immediately turned to Anatoly Kashpirovsky - he was very popular in our country in those years. Natalya Petrovna spoke harshly of him. In her opinion, some kind of “evil fire” burns in him. What he did to the people in the stadiums, she said, was unacceptable. He seems to revel in his power over people, humiliates them, makes them twitch, break their arms, crawl ... Not a doctor can do this, but a sadist.

- Well, and telepathy, probably, is still there? Can you read minds from a distance?

- Many such people came to our institute, we examined them, but nothing was confirmed. However, it is known that mothers sometimes feel at a great distance when something tragic happens to their children. In general, I must say that it is unprofitable for society to read the thoughts of others. If everyone could do this, social life would be impossible.

– Is there life “out there”, beyond the grave? After all, you worked in intensive care for a long time. What did they tell you there?

– Many facts prove that that world exists. Singer Sergei Zakharov, who survived clinical death, for example, later said that at that moment he saw and heard everything, as if from the outside. Everything that the doctors talked about, what happened in the operating room. Since then, I have ceased to be afraid of death. I myself had a period in my life when I talked with my dead husband.

She describes the details in detail in her book in a chapter under the characteristic title "Through the Looking Glass". According to her, after the death of her husband, which shocked her, she was in a special state in which a person “begins to hear, smell, see, feel what was previously closed to him and most often, if you don’t specifically support it, it will close for him later."

But what is so unusual that Academician Bekhtereva began to see, hear and feel? She began to hear the voice of her husband and, which is absolutely incredible, she saw the one who was already lying in the grave! Moreover, what is probably the most important thing, not only she was a witness to this, but also her secretary, whom Bekhtereva calls the initials R.V. First, in the living room, they clearly heard the steps of a walking person, but they did not see anyone. Then both of them began to have a feeling of someone's presence, one of the two who had already gone to another world.

And here is another, quite fantastic episode.

- Behind the curtain on the window overlooking the courtyard-garden, there is a jar of water, - the academician dispassionately leads his story. - I stretch out my hand to her, slightly pushing the curtain, and absent-mindedly look down from my third floor ... Coming down from the curb, right on the melting snow, a strangely dressed man stands and - eye to eye - looks at me. I know him too well, but it just can't be. Never. I go to the kitchen, where R.V. should be right this minute. and, meeting her halfway, I ask you to look out the bedroom window.

“For the first time in my life I saw the face of a living person, really white as a sheet,” she continues. - It was the face of R.V., who was running towards me. "Natalya Petrovna! Yes, this is Ivan Ilyich (the late husband of N. Bekhtereva. - V.M.) is standing there! He walked towards the garage - you know, with this characteristic gait of his ... Don't you recognize him ?! The fact of the matter is that I found out, but in the full sense of the word I did not believe my eyes ... And now, after many years, I cannot say: it did not happen. Was. But what? (…) Does the soul “fly away”? I am a believer and I am convinced that there is a soul. But where is she? Probably all over the body. Nose scientific point It is impossible to prove that “the soul has flown away” from sight.

Natalya Petrovna also described her strange dreams, which she also could not rationally explain in any way. One of them is related to her mother, who was ill and lived elsewhere. Once in a dream, a postman came to her, who brought a telegram: "Your mother has died, come to bury." In a dream, she comes to the village, sees a lot of people, a village cemetery, and for some reason the forgotten word “village council” buzzes in her head. After that, Natalya Petrovna woke up with a severe headache. She began to cry, began to tell her relatives that she urgently needed to go to her mother, she was dying. “You are a scientist, how can you believe in dreams!” they object. She let herself be persuaded and left for the country. Soon I received a telegram. In it - everything is like in a dream! And then the village council was needed to get help. Neighbors in the village answered: “Why do you need it? You can't bring your mother back. Well, if necessary, go to the village council, they will give it there.

It must be admitted that Natalya Petrovna spoke and wrote about all the incredible things that happened to her very carefully. Clearly fearing that his colleagues might ridicule him by accusing him of an "unscientific" approach. She was reluctant to use words like "soul". A afterworld called "Through the Looking Glass".

Brain - the greatest mystery

She was interested in many things. “I thought a lot about how genius can be explained,” she said. – How does creative insight happen, the process of creativity itself. In Steinbeck's story The Pearl, pearl divers say that in order to find large pearls, you need a special state of mind, some kind of insight. But where does it come from? There are two hypotheses regarding this. The first is that at the moment of insight, the brain works as a kind of receiver. In other words, information suddenly comes from outside, from space or from fourth dimension. However, this cannot yet be proven. On the other hand, it can be said that the brain itself creates ideal conditions for creativity, "illuminates".

As a scientist occupied with the problems of the brain, N. Bekhtereva could not help but be interested in the “Vanga phenomenon”, about which in Soviet times talked a lot. Although at first she did not believe in her extraordinary abilities, she thought that she used a whole staff of informers. But when she nevertheless went to Bulgaria and visited the fortune teller herself, she changed her mind. Vanga told her about such details of her life that the meeting literally shocked the academician.

N. Bekhtereva visited her again after the death of her husband, and Vanga told her: “I know, Natasha, that she suffered a lot ... She suffered a lot ... And the pain in her heart and soul has not subsided yet ... Do you want to see your dead husband?”

Natalya Petrovna did not believe then that this was possible. But when I returned back to Leningrad, the incredible, as I have already said, actually happened. For a long time she did not want to make public everything that happened to her, fearing ridicule from her scientific colleagues and accusations of charlatanism. She published her memoirs only shortly before her death.

Natalya Petrovna came to an incredible conclusion for a scientist: the future already exists today, and we can see it. In her opinion, a person comes into contact with a higher mind or with God and receives the necessary information, but this is not given to everyone. Only a few, like her, manage to look into the Looking Glass. At the same time, she was sure that such knowledge could be cruelly paid. In other times, she said, “I would have been burned like a witch… For example, I can answer a person to his thought.

Very rarely. But you still can't do it. And in the Middle Ages, I would definitely have been killed for this!

She passed away in 2008. She devoted her whole life to studying the mysteries of the human brain. And I came to the conclusion that the brain is the greatest mystery of the universe, which hardly anyone will be able to solve. When she was asked the question whether there is still an other world or not, she answered that she did not know, but many facts say that that world exists.

“Our consciousness is arranged in such a way,” she told me, “that everything good remains in memory. That's the only way to survive. Death should not be feared. Jack London has a story where a man was bitten by dogs and bled to death. And dying, he said: "People slandered death." What did he mean? Probably, that dying is easy and not scary at all. Especially if you die with the consciousness of a correctly and worthily lived life...

So did her great grandfather, who developed the theory of the immortality of the human personality. "There is no death, gentlemen!" Academician Vladimir Bekhterev once said.

The great Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva visited the Looking Glass of Science. She looked beyond those limits where it is not given to look at a person. And this is what came out of it...

Academician Russian Academy Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva has been studying the human brain all her life. A simple enumeration of all her titles, degrees, diplomas, government awards and prizes takes up a whole page and is a natural consequence of her genius.

This Bekhtereva created modern science about the human brain, discovered where creative thinking hides, figured out how memory works, found a “error detector” that controls our behavior, was not afraid to confess faith in God and looked into the Looking Glass of Consciousness, where our dreams live and our souls stay forever .

autumn dream

I grew up at home as a child, brought up by Bonne, wore velvet dresses, pigtails with pretzels. The most vivid impression of childhood is that dad sits down at the piano in the evening, and my girlfriend and I waltz to the unforgettable “Autumn Dream” to the point of dizziness. Dad was handsome, talented, sang beautifully, always dressed impeccably, both at work and at home. He loved me very much - just like that, unconditionally. And she guided me through life - my mother.

I remember well how I, still very small, about three years old, went for a walk with her by the hand. I recently learned something new beautiful word“technical school” and I say: “I will grow up and will study at a technical school,” and my mother immediately strictly corrects “Which technical school? You go to college, everything is easy for you. Only in the institute, you will receive a higher education - and you will become a scientist.

I grew up and memorized the story of my great-grandmother, who, due to extreme family poverty, decided to learn only one of three children, Volodya, the most intelligent. Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev came out of it (the famous Russian psychiatrist and neuropathologist who diagnosed Stalin with paranoia and, a few days after that, mysterious circumstances died. - Approx. author). I also had younger brother and sister. And my mother sent only me to science, and in plain text - “you will be a scientist”, and that’s all. So she knew what she was talking about!

My happy serene childhood collapsed overnight. True, before that there was a dream - one of the four prophetic dreams that I saw during my life. I dreamed that dad was standing in the corridor of our apartment, and suddenly the floor under his feet rises, flames burst out from under the floorboards, and he falls into the fire. The next morning he was arrested. Mom was sent in a common car to the camp. Me and my brother Andrey - to the orphanage, because all the relatives turned away from us, as if from the plague.

Kur tu teci, kur tu teci, gailit' mans?

My brother and I were lucky twice - firstly, we stayed in St. Petersburg, but could have ended up somewhere in Ivanovo, and secondly, we ended up in a good orphanage, the backbone of which was made up of children from Latvia and an amazing director from there - Arkady Kelner, together with which in the evenings we learned the song about the cockerel, which remained forever in our memory.

And if my mother imprinted the goal of life in the matrix of my memory - to get an education, then Arkady Isaevich taught me to achieve the goal, raised pride and inspired a feeling dignity- something that, it would seem, will never be instilled in an orphanage. He literally hurt himself into a cake, if only the pupils did not have two identical dresses or coats, miserable things that bear the stamp of poverty.

One day, all our girls were given bright orange dresses to work in the workshops, and the next day we put on bright new clothes for school - we didn’t wear uniforms then. My God, how our beloved director yelled at us for this undemanding, primitive sameness, and especially I got it - the best student of the school dared to set an example for others and dress up in a "shelter" so that everyone would feel sorry for us, it's like the stigma of "orphans" on herself put. I still have an orange color, if it's not orange, I hate it.

I have a very extensive business correspondence. And only four addresses out of several dozen belong to my personal recipients. One of them is Erika Leonidovna Kalnina, a friend from the orphanage. Our beds were side by side, and she tried to teach me how to make my bed neatly. It didn't work out. But how many times she saved me from catching up and being late for breakfast! Now I can not make the bed for at least a week so that my beloved cat basks in it. And Erica's kindness remained with me forever - like a bright ray from those distant days.

Natalia Bekhtereva is an outstanding neurophysiologist, the granddaughter of the legendary scientist Vladimir Bekhterev. Studying the secrets of the brain, in my own life I myself encountered an incredible ...

Many facts prove that that world exists.

She describes the details in detail in her book in a chapter under the characteristic title "Through the Looking Glass". According to her, after the death of her husband, which shocked her, she was in a special state in which a person “begins to hear, smell, see, feel what was previously closed to him and most often, if you don’t specifically support it, it will close for him later."

But what is so unusual that Academician Bekhtereva began to see, hear and feel? She began to hear the voice of her husband and, which is absolutely incredible, she saw the one who was already lying in the grave! Moreover, what is probably the most important thing, not only she was a witness to this, but also her secretary, whom Bekhtereva calls the initials R.V. First, in the living room, they clearly heard the steps of a walking person, but they did not see anyone. Then both of them began to have a feeling of someone's presence, one of the two who had already gone to another world.

And here is another, quite fantastic episode.

Behind the curtain on the window overlooking the courtyard-garden, there is a jar of water, - the academician dispassionately leads his story. - I stretch out my hand to her, slightly pushing the curtain, and absent-mindedly look down from my third floor ... Coming down from the curb, right on the melting snow, a strangely dressed man stands and - eye to eye - looks at me. I know him too well, but it just can't be. Never. I go to the kitchen, where R.V. should be right this minute. and, meeting her halfway, I ask you to look out the bedroom window.

For the first time in my life I saw the face of a living person, really white as a sheet, she continues. - It was the face of R.V., who was running towards me. "Natalya Petrovna! Yes, this is Ivan Ilyich (the late husband of N. Bekhtereva - V.M.) is standing there! He went towards the garage - you know, with this characteristic gait of his ... Didn't you recognize him ?! The fact of the matter is that I found out, but in the full sense of the word I did not believe my eyes ... And now, after many years, I cannot say that this did not happen. Was. But what?

- Does the soul “fly away”? I am a believer and I am convinced that there is a soul. But where is she? Probably all over the body. But from a scientific point of view, it is impossible to prove that the “soul flew off”.

Natalya Petrovna also described her strange dreams, which she also could not rationally explain in any way. One of them is related to her mother, who was ill and lived elsewhere. Once in a dream, a postman came to her, who brought a telegram: "Your mother has died, come to bury." In a dream, she comes to the village, sees a lot of people, a village cemetery, and for some reason the forgotten word “village council” buzzes in her head. After that, Natalya Petrovna woke up with a severe headache. She began to cry, began to tell her relatives that she urgently needed to go to her mother, she was dying. “You are a scientist, how can you believe in dreams!”, they object. She let herself be persuaded and left for the country. Soon I received a telegram. In it - everything is like in a dream! And then the village council was needed to get help.

It must be admitted that Natalya Petrovna spoke and wrote about all the incredible things that happened to her very carefully. Clearly fearing that his colleagues might ridicule him by accusing him of an "unscientific" approach. She was reluctant to use words like "soul". And the afterlife was called "Through the Looking Glass".

She was interested in many things. “I thought a lot about how genius can be explained,” she said. - How does creative insight happen, the process of creativity itself. In Steinbeck's story The Pearl, pearl divers say that in order to find large pearls, you need a special state of mind, some kind of insight. But where does it come from? There are two hypotheses regarding this. The first is that at the moment of insight, the brain works as a kind of receiver. In other words, information suddenly comes from outside, from space or from the fourth dimension. However, this cannot yet be proven. On the other hand, we can say that the brain itself creates ideal conditions for creativity, “illuminates”.

As a scientist occupied with the problems of the brain, N. Bekhtereva could not help but be interested in the “Vanga phenomenon”, which was much talked about in Soviet times. Although at first she did not believe in her extraordinary abilities, she thought that she used a whole staff of informers. But when she nevertheless went to Bulgaria and visited the fortune teller herself, she changed her mind. Vanga told her about such details of her life that the meeting literally shocked the academician.

N. Bekhtereva visited her again after the death of her husband, and Vanga told her: “I know, Natasha, that she suffered a lot ... She suffered a lot ... And the pain in her heart and soul has not subsided yet ... Do you want to see your dead husband?”

Natalya Petrovna did not believe then that this was possible. But when she returned back to Leningrad, the incredible, as described above, actually happened. For a long time she did not want to make public everything that happened to her, fearing ridicule from her scientific colleagues and accusations of charlatanism. She published her memoirs only shortly before her death.

Natalya Petrovna came to an incredible conclusion for a scientist: the future already exists today, and we can see it.

In her opinion, a person comes into contact with a higher mind or with God and receives the necessary information, but this is not given to everyone. Only a few, like her, manage to look into the Looking Glass.

At the same time, she was sure that such knowledge could be cruelly paid. In other times, she said, “I would have been burned like a witch… For example, I can answer a person to his thought. Very rarely. But you still can't do it. And in the Middle Ages, I would definitely have been killed for this!

She passed away in 2008. She devoted her whole life to studying the mysteries of the human brain. And I came to the conclusion that the brain is the greatest mystery of the universe, which hardly anyone will be able to solve. When she was asked the question whether there is still an other world or not, she answered that she did not know, but many facts say that that world exists.

So did her great grandfather. "There is no death, gentlemen!" - Natalia Bekhtereva, - Academician Vladimir Bekhterev once said.

Essence in the cycle of life and death

She believed that the human brain is Living being, located in our body, and knew more about the labyrinths of thought than any other.

This year, the granddaughter of the world-famous physiologist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist Vladimir Bekhterev, a world-famous neurophysiologist, head of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Natalya Bekhtereva would have turned 91 years old. She died on June 25, 2008 in a hospital in Germany at the age of 94.
Reference

N. P. Bekhtereva has been brainstorming for more than half a century. She was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in the field of science. Awarded with the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner of Labor, "For Merit to the Fatherland" III degree, etc. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, honorary member of dozens of international scientific societies, author and co-author of over 370 scientific works. For the first time in the Soviet Union, she applied the method of long-term implantation of electrodes into the human brain.

Here are some of her thoughts:
Illumination - the pearl of the soul

Neurophysiologist Natalya Bekhtereva in the laboratory of the Department of Neurophysiology of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. 1966

I often think of the brain as if it were a separate organism, like a "being within a being." The brain protects itself from a flurry negative emotions didn't capture it entirely. When I realized this, I felt like I had found a pearl.

Is there a soul? If so, then what is it?.. Something that permeates the entire body, which is not hindered by walls, doors, or ceilings. The soul, for lack of better formulations, is also called, for example, what seems to leave the body when a person dies ... Where is the place of the soul - in the brain, in the spinal cord, in the heart, in the stomach? You can say - "in the whole body" or "outside the body, somewhere nearby." I think this substance needs no space. If it is, then in the whole body.
Is there life after death?

I know one thing clinical death- this is not a failure, not a temporary non-existence. The person is alive at this moment. It seems to me that the brain dies not when oxygen does not enter the vessels for six minutes, but at the moment when it finally begins to flow. All the products of a not very perfect metabolism “pile up” on the brain and finish it off ... Why do we sometimes see the surroundings as if from the outside? It is possible that at extreme moments in the brain, not only the usual mechanisms of vision are activated, but also the mechanisms of a holographic nature. For example, during childbirth: according to our research, several percent of women in childbirth also have a state, as if the “soul” comes out. Women giving birth feel out of the body, watching what is happening from the side. And at this time they do not feel pain.

Another secret of the brain is dreams. The biggest mystery to me seems to be the very fact that we sleep. Could the brain arrange itself so as not to sleep? I think yes. For example, dolphins sleep in turns left and right. right hemisphere... How can one explain "dreams with continuation" and similar oddities? Let's say that this is not the first time you have dreamed of some very good, but unfamiliar place - for example, a city. Most likely, the "fabulous cities" of dreams are formed in the brain under the influence of books, movies, and become, as it were, a permanent place of dreams. We are drawn to something not yet experienced, but very good ... Or prophetic dreams- is it getting information from outside, foreseeing the future or random coincidences?.. Two weeks "before the event" I myself saw the death of my mother in a dream with all the details.

Almost all people are afraid of death. They say that the fear of waiting for death is many times worse than death itself. Jack London has a story about a man who wanted to steal a dog sled. The dogs bit him. The man bled to death and died. And before that he said: "People slandered death." It is not death that is terrible, but dying ... I am not afraid.

Natalya Petrovna was a person amazing fate. The granddaughter of the great scientist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev should have had lifelong immunity against any adversity. And Natalya Petrovna got repressed parents, an orphanage and the blockade of Leningrad, a family tragedy, a struggle with fierce criticism. Like a stubborn sprout, she pierced the asphalt into which they wanted to roll her up. She spoke about this in numerous interviews and in her book “The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life”, one of the chapters of which she called Per aspera, which means “through thorns”.

“There is NO DEATH, LORD, IT CAN BE PROVED!”

She was born in the year of Lenin's death. Three years later, her famous grandfather, a psychologist and specialist in several more human disciplines, Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, passed away. According to his son and granddaughter, Vladimir Mikhailovich was killed.

At one time, there was a widespread version that linked the murder of Bekhterev with the name of Stalin. Allegedly, Bekhterev, as a successful student of Charcot himself and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity, was invited to examine Iosif Vissarionovich for dry hand. Leaving the leader, Bekhterev seemed to tell someone that he was sick with paranoia. The academician's days were numbered.

However, Natalya Petrovna at first supported this version, and later rejected it. She explained: grandfather was a prominent scientist and doctor who sacredly honored the laws professional ethics and could not divulge the secret of the patient.

The best idea about Vladimir Bekhterev is given by his portrait by Ilya Repin. A white tunic, almost crackling on a wide chest, a thick spade of a beard, gray-haired, but still powerful hair with a side parting, sharp deep-set eyes, an obvious power of character and destiny.

Igor Guberman, who once lived in the USSR, wrote not only “gariki” on the table, but also published a book about Vladimir Bekhterev, spoke in it about the hero’s father and childhood: “The bailiff Bekhterev died of an evil consumption when younger son Vladimir was only eight years old. He didn't even remember his father. Only this petty village policeman, the king and god in his district, was obviously not quite ordinary. An exiled Pole, a participant in the uprising of the 63rd year, continuously stayed in his house, feeding himself and avoiding longing. It was he who taught literacy and arithmetic to the six-year-old son of his strange guardian and benefactor.

Remarkable strength was required to grow from the sons of a bailiff into academicians. Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev passed away at the age of 70, but even then he was full of energy, did not complain about his health, and shortly before that he married a second marriage to a young woman, at least in relation to the groom. That's when suspicion fell on her.

They met 30-year-old Berta when her husband was being treated by Bekhterev. The patient died, and when Bekhterev was also widowed, he proposed to Bertha. This happened 10 years after they met. Probably, Berta, like many others, was fascinated by the halo of an extraordinary thinker, a pioneer in the most intriguing field of knowledge dealing with the human brain and psyche.

A psychologist, psychiatrist, neuropathologist (this term was invented and introduced into medical use by Bekhterev, there is also a disease named after him, Nikolai Ostrovsky was ill with it, for example), Vladimir Mikhailovich mastered the art of hypnosis. He set up experiments on the transmission of thoughts at a distance together with the animal trainer Durov.

Small digression. Professor Leontovich also took part in the sessions, who then returned from Moscow to his native Kyiv, where he became an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. The views of Bekhterev and Leontovich produced big influence on Bernard Kazinsky, who became the prototype of one of the heroes of the science fiction book by Alexander Belyaev "Lord of the World". Bekhterev's ideas are mentioned twice there. Kazhinsky's work "Biological Radio Communication", dedicated to Leontovich, was published only once in Kiev.

Natalia's grandfather Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev is an outstanding psychiatrist, neuropathologist, physiologist, founder of reflexology and pathopsychological direction in Russia, founder of the St.
Institute (1907)

And Bekhterev in one of his scientific works - "The Secret of Immortality" concluded: thought is material and is a kind of universal energy, therefore, in accordance with the law of conservation of energy, it cannot disappear. It sounded at the height of the First World War, when human life was not worth a pinch of tobacco and people no longer understood why they were dying if everything was decided by a stupid bullet. Bekhterev proclaimed: "There is no death, gentlemen, it can be proved!" He returned faith in the meaningfulness of life and, therefore, responsibility for actions.

It was Bekhterev who introduced the concept of a psychic microbe capable of leading to psychic pandemics. “It is enough for someone to arouse base instincts in the crowd, and the crowd, united due to lofty goals, becomes in the full sense of the beast, the cruelty of which can surpass all probability.”
Western intelligence agencies were very interested in the work and personality of Bekhterev. In Berlin and Paris, the intelligence departments brought registration cards to him. In the USSR, as some researchers believe, they tried to involve Bekhterev in the creation of weapons, which in our time would be called psychotropic. He refused.

On the day of her grandfather's death, little Natasha first encountered strange coincidence. On December 24, 1927, her parents were decorating the Christmas tree. Father put Father Frost and three candles under the branchy branch. Admiring the composition, he said to his wife: "Look how Santa Claus looks like his father." At that moment there was phone call: Vladimir Mikhailovich died suddenly.

The official cause of death was food poisoning. There is a photograph in which the head of Bekhterev lying in a coffin is tied with a white scarf. She hid the consequences of a trepanation of the skull. Shortly before his death, the scientist himself came up with the idea to create a Pantheon of the brain of great people. “And fate decreed with its characteristic irony,” wrote Igor Huberman: the brain of its creator was the first to be in the museum.

Many years later, Natalya Petrovna asked where her grandfather's brain was kept. She was told that they had cut him all over for drugs a long time ago, but they did not find anything special that distinguishes the brain of an outstanding scientist from ordinary people.

“DAD IS DIFFICULT TO STAND ON FEET, HE FALLS - AND I WAKE UP WITH A SCREAM”

In total, Natalya Petrovna had four prophetic dreams in her life. The first - in the 37th, about the father.

Pyotr Vladimirovich Bekhterev, the son of Vladimir Mikhailovich, inherited his father's inquisitive mind, but he chose an engineering profession and was engaged in the development of military equipment. He was often rewarded, and it seemed that an eternal holiday reigned in the house.

Suddenly - a terrible dream: “Dad is standing at the end of the corridor, for some reason very poorly dressed, in something old, summer, as if in canvas shoes. And dad even at home dressed well, although differently than at work. And suddenly the floor begins to rise, exactly from the end where dad stood .... And under the floor - fire, and flames - on the sides of the corridor. It is difficult for dad to stand on his feet, he falls - and I wake up screaming.

The next night, Natasha woke up from the noise: they came for dad. He never returned home. The family was told - 10 years without correspondence. They didn't know what it really meant yet.

Soon they took my mother to the camp. They said for five years, it turned out eight. Much later, Natalya Petrovna was shown a list for arrest, her name was next to her mother's. But she was only 14 years old, and the children's colony was replaced by an orphanage.

Even relatives turned away from Natasha, her brother and sister, the children of “enemies of the people”. Much later, Natalya Petrovna will appreciate their betrayal as a boon. At least she didn't know what it's like to be a homemaker. And the mental anguish from the misfortune that had befallen would be the same in a family of callous people, as in an orphanage, where newly arrived children cried before going to bed, covering themselves with blankets with their heads - it was not allowed to cry out loud. “And every night I fell asleep with the thought that cheerful dad and mom would come tomorrow, take my brother and me home, and everything would be fine again. And my kind, talented and innocent dad has already been shot.”

In the orphanage, two roads opened in front of Natalya. One - after seven years to go to work at a brick factory, there they "corrected the consciousness" of the children of "enemies of the people." The second - by all means to be an excellent student, the best of the best. Natasha did not want to go to the brick factory.

IN orphanage she learned that the war had begun. Its inhabitants were loaded into wagons, but it was not possible to evacuate, Leningrad had already fallen into the iron ring. The train circled and circled around the city, miraculously managing to escape from the bombing, and returned to where it left.

In the orphanage, they somehow fed, so it was better there than in the wild, where hunger and cold mowed down entire families. However, the orphans also suffered. The former, beloved, director went to war and died, and another was put in his place, who turned out to be a sadist. Before each meal, the new director of the orphanage lined up the children on a ruler and demanded that the food be thoroughly chewed until it turned into a frozen lump. Natalya Petrovna admitted that even 10 years after the end of the war she could not eat her fill, she was tormented by phantom hunger.

“BEKHTEREVA WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO SEE THE BRAIN ON THE SCREEN AND WAS AWESOME”

Despite all the horror of the blockade existence, she managed to enter the medical institute. I remembered not so much the frost of that winter as the icy wind. Every time, approaching the bridge, where there was no escape from the wind, I wanted to turn back, get under the covers and never leave the house again. But she reached the middle of the bridge, and there it became all the same - to go forward as much as back, so she went forward.

The end of the war and the flowering of bright hopes for cloudless happiness coincided for Natalya with great love. But the man who inspired this feeling in her, as acquaintances said, still loved the other, who died at the beginning of the war. Natasha began to be burdened by relationships with her beloved. After all, it turned out that he kept her with him as a replacement. She wanted to leave, he didn't let go.

Once in a dream, Natalya went to the house where they grieved for his ex-lover. It turned out that the culprit of grief was sitting at the table as if nothing had happened and drinking tea. “I am happy to turn to her: “Hello, Tatiana (for some reason I call her that), sorry, I don’t know your patronymic.” Answer: Alekseevna. Saying goodbye, does not get up. Again (this is all in a dream) I go to bed. Then (already awake) I wake up, I run to tell the news that Tasya is alive - I don’t doubt it for a minute - and I find Tasya in exactly the same position, in the same white dress, as in a dream. “Hello, Tatyana (why Tatyana again?), - sorry, I don’t know your patronymic.” - Alekseevna. We shake hands. T.A. does not get up. And then I find out that she is nine months pregnant. I run away very happy.” After the foreshadowing of the Pope, it was the second prophetic dream of Natalya Petrovna, one in one realized in reality.

She gnawed the granite of science easily, like nuts, and entered graduate school without much difficulty. Then there was a "thaw". She brought the rehabilitation of mom and dad and the bitter knowledge that all the years she dreamed of meeting him, he, shot shortly after his arrest, lay in the damp earth.
She greedily pounced on the work, progress began in many directions. But the “freezes” brought disappointment and anonymity. The party commission of the regional committee was engaged in it. Natalya Petrovna did not tell about the essence of the accusations - why replicate slander? And then in the regional committee she was indignant, because even Tsar Peter ordered that anonymous letters not be allowed to go through. In response, they promised to turn Bekhterev into camp dust. They knew which string would resonate with particular pain in it. Fortunately, no matter how hard the biased commission tried, they did not find facts confirming the anonymous accusations. Exhausted, Natalya returned to work, the scar in her soul remained for life.

Natalya Petrovna's parents - Zinaida Vasilievna (doctor) and Pyotr Vladimirovich (engineer-inventor) - were repressed: their father was shot, their mother was sent to a camp

At the time of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, scientists were only approaching the secrets of the brain. Previously, it was thought of as a monolith, not amenable to study. Or as about a "divine vessel", encroaching on the study of which is sacrilege. The feat of scientists of the Bekhterev generation was that they removed this taboo.

At the time of Bekhterev's granddaughter, science was equipped with tomographs and other miracle devices - it is clear that this required a different level of knowledge and skills. Natalya Petrovna was one of the first to see the brain on the screen and admired it. “I admit that some younger employees from neurophysiological laboratories and the PET laboratory (positron emission tomography. - Auth.) go to the institute as a regular service ... It's a pity if this is so ... Surprise at the miracle of nature - the human brain , gradually known through all developing technology, and the ideas that illuminate the brain of a scientist are a great, stimulating joy in life.

Once upon a scientific conference Raisa Gorbacheva dropped by. A philosopher by education, she listened with great interest to Bekhtereva's report, then sat down with her in the hall, they talked for a long time, as a result, the Institute of the Brain of the USSR Academy of Sciences appeared in Leningrad with a clinic attached to it, which brought healing to many. Ankylosing spondylitis learned to help people in those cases that were considered hopeless before them, restored memory, the ability to move, speak, read. Natalya Petrovna, who became the director of the institute, will write that what she once dreamed of came true - about the Castle of her Dreams.

She and her staff managed to break through to many secrets. She wrote more than four hundred scientific papers, received recognition from colleagues from around the world, became an order bearer and a member of many foreign academies. At the same time, she was an atypical scientist, and, for example, the hypothesis that the super-complex mechanism of intelligence has an alien origin was closer to her than the accepted statement about its earthly evolution.

"THE TRUTH OF THE BRAIN AND THE LIFE OF SOCIETY, APPEARS TO BE UNITED"

The more Bekhtereva studied the brain, the more confidently she came to the conclusion: “The truth of the brain and the life of society, apparently, is one.” A well-functioning brain is like a well-ordered society. Particularly relevant is her assertion that for a harmonious existence, society and the brain must distribute part of the powers to the periphery according to the principle of optimal decentralization.

Natalya Bekhtereva became very popular during the perestroika years. The daughter of the repressed, who herself almost ended up in the Gulag, she wholeheartedly wanted changes for the better, she knew how to speak convincingly and without regard to critics. When they attacked her: “Do not stick your nose into state affairs,” she answered: “Who knows exactly what and how to do it? At least I have a model - a brain.

Many people remember their own prophetic dreams, which at first they did not attach importance to, and then they were surprised that they came true. But there is a persistent opinion that all this is fiction, superstition. In order not to get hung up on the incomprehensible, the people came up with the excuse "sleep - and dream." The current view of the mystery of dreams is simple: during sleep, the brain continues to process information received during the day. Dot. Many do not dream at all, there are such lucky ones. Academician Bekhtereva had prophetic dreams.

Once it was a dream about mother, whom Natalya Petrovna sent with a reliable escort to Krasnodar region relax, breathe clean air, eat fruit. Letters came from there, from which the daughter learned that her mother's health was satisfactory.

Suddenly, in a dream, the postman brought a telegram: “Your mother is dead. Come to bury." In a dream, the daughter rushed to the funeral, arrived, was surrounded strangers, which for some reason called by name. Everything looked shockingly real. I woke up in tears and told the dream to my husband. He was skeptical: "Do you, a specialist in the field of the brain, believe in dreams?" Anxiety did not let her go, she wanted to run away on a plane, but her acquaintances, whom she told about the dream, persuaded her not to believe. She was ashamed of her "unscientific" nature and did not go.

“Well, after 10 days everything happened exactly as it was in my dream. And down to the smallest detail. For example, I forgot the word “village council” a long time ago, it was simply never needed. In a dream, I was looking for the village council, and in reality I had to look for it - that's the story.

Bekhtereva did not brush aside the opportunity to look into the “mirror”, as she called the strange, unexplained phenomena associated, in her opinion, with the activity of the brain. Having visited Bulgaria with scientific lectures, she wished to meet Vanga. At the Sofia Documentary Film Studio, she was shown a film about the famous soothsayer, so Natalya Petrovna was prepared for the meeting.

The car stopped before reaching the line stretching to Vanga's house. Natalya Petrovna, surrounded by colleagues, walked along the soft dust of a country road. They were neither heard nor seen from the house. We got to the end of the line. A cry came from the house: “I know that you have arrived, Natalya, come to the fence, do not hide behind a man!” Natalya Petrovna was not surprised: Vanga must have been informed of her arrival.

Natalya was the daughter of "enemies of the people", grew up in an orphanage, survived the besieged Leningrad, graduated from the 1st Pavlov Leningrad Medical Institute

The meeting began with embarrassment: Bekhtereva did not bring a piece of sugar with her, which, as Vanga demanded from all visitors, had to be kept with her for a day.
Vanga was unhappy. But either sugar is still not such an obligatory receptacle of information, or the clairvoyant had other ways of unraveling the Russian that was sitting in front of her, but Bekhtereva was forgiven.

She handed Vanga a luxurious Pavlovo Posad shawl in plastic bag, she took it out, stroked it and said disappointedly: “Yes, you didn’t touch him at all ...”. That is, the hope for this source of information was not justified either. Suddenly she said: “Now your mother has come. She is here. Wants to tell you something. And you can ask her.

Natalya Petrovna got ready to hear some reproach. From the film she had seen in Sofia, she knew that the dead usually blame living relatives for something. "No. She is not angry with you, - Vanga said. "It's all a disease," she says, "it's all a disease." And then Natalya Petrovna died. Mom really often uttered this particular phrase: "It's all a disease, it's all a disease." No one could tell this to Vanga, except ... Then Vanga made a gesture with trembling hands, showing what her mother was sick with. Yes, Natalya Petrovna agreed, she suffered from parkinsonism.

Vanga continued: mother asks her daughter to go to Siberia. Natalya was surprised: to Siberia? What is there to do? She has no friends or relatives in Siberia.
It seems that Vanga did not shock Bekhtereva, like many other visitors, with clairvoyance, but she definitely interested her. When Natalya Petrovna returned to Leningrad, an invitation to Siberia was waiting on the table. They asked me to come to the readings dedicated to Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev.

“NATALIA PETROVNA HOPED THIS IS ANOTHER ALIK’S HORROR STORY - HE HAVE TALKED ABOUT SUICIDE BEFORE, BUT EVERYTHING WAS CORRECTED”

And in that meeting, Vanga said to Natalya Petrovna: “Something I see your husband very badly, as if in a fog. Where is he?". - "In Leningrad". - "In Leningrad ... yes ... it's bad, I see him badly." Perhaps it should have been understood as "I see something bad."

The second marriage of Natalya Petrovna with Ivan Ilyich Kashtelyan was not easy. “Being late home is a small tragedy, being late is a disaster. I perceived it as a huge inconvenience, then as oppression, then as a difficulty. high order". She complained that the warmth that she received for the first time in her life did not compensate for the infringement of freedom. It got to the point that she developed hypertension, and along with taking the pills - drowsiness, which increased the feeling of discomfort. She closed herself, spent more time at the desk.

And then there was harassment in the newspapers, a frequent occurrence in the late 80s, when the country was divided by ideological barricades. The most annoying thing is that the authors of many articles were former friends.

The husband insisted that Natalya Petrovna give battle. I had to take on this backbreaking work, which led to mental and moral exhaustion. “Sleep began to literally dump me as soon as I entered the house. And it seemed: a little more - and I would fall asleep and not wake up ... My husband, on the contrary, felt good, kept telling me: "Give up your useless business, and you will rest, you will be like me." This is in the evenings. And in the morning he was again a warm friend - and his support was enough for several hours of work and a very unusual and very offensive defense.

But all these experiences turned out to be a prelude to what happened next. Alik, the son of Ivan Ilyich from his first marriage, “was infinitely beloved and very difficult. Handsome, capable doctor, married, had a son. Drugs..."

That day, he called to say goodbye, saying that he would take potassium cyanide. Father's strength left, Natalya Petrovna went to Alik's apartment, accompanied by her employee Raisa Vasilievna.

Natalya Petrovna hoped that Alik Once again frightening, he had talked about suicide before, but everything worked out. She knocked for a long time, called someone to bring the keys, and later scolded herself: she should have immediately broken the door. Finally, entering the apartment, she found Alik in a noose. Ivan Ilyich called, she, shocked, said it like it was.

When Natalya Petrovna and her friend returned home, seemingly calm Ivan Ilyich brought a sliced ​​watermelon from the kitchen and put it on the table. “It seems to me that he only gradually became aware emotionally of what he already knew. Half an hour or an hour later - it's hard for me to say how much time has passed - the husband almost calmly said that he would go to bed. I lay down - and after four or five hours we urgently called the doctors, but the doctors could not help. Looking back, I understand that I could have saved him only by putting him in intensive care immediately upon arrival from Alik. However, nothing foretold a terrible ending.

She was tormented by the fact that she had not helped either Alik or her husband, who had hoped so much for her. “Right on the melting snow stands a strangely dressed man and - eye to eye - looks at me. I know him too well, but it just can't be. Never".

After the double funeral, things began to happen around her that she herself would never believe in, believing that she had become a victim of mirages of a sick imagination. But there was a witness nearby - Raisa Vasilievna.

Both of them distinctly heard footsteps in the room when no one else was there. Another time, Natalya Petrovna, washing herself in the bathroom, again heard someone coming towards her, got frightened, called Raisa, she did not answer, but the steps began to move away. “When I came out six or eight minutes later, R.V. said to me: “Why did you just go out? Why didn't they answer me?" And she added that she was sitting with her back to the “steps”, and she experienced a strange feeling: it was difficult for her to turn to “me”. She tried to speak to "me", but "I" did not answer. This story made a very strong impression on both of us, the impression of someone's presence.

A large portrait of her husband hung in the bedroom. Natalya Petrovna talked to him for a long time, as if he were alive. Once he and Raisa Vasilievna entered the bedroom and froze: a large tear flowed from Ivan Ilyich's right eye. Not believing themselves, they turned on the light. The tear continued to roll.

Natalya Petrovna tried to critically comprehend what she saw: “I conditionally enter this “strange” phenomenon in the “mirror”. I had a fear of late arrival, although, unfortunately, there was no one to be afraid of. And in this situation, I could take some feature of the portrait for a tear ... Yes, but why did it seem to me that the tear was moving? Because tears usually move? Here - I do not exclude. And why, after all, R. V. also said about tears? Now this is more difficult for a simple explanation. And yet the rule: where you can at least assume a conventional mechanism, not “behind the looking glass”, - accept it. And in this case, it is likely.

I should have calmed down, but I couldn't. Soon, accidentally looking out the window, she saw: “Coming down from the curb, right on the melting snow, stands a strangely dressed man and, eye to eye, looks at me. I know him too well, but it just can't be. Never".

She called Raisa Vasilievna into the room, but did not say why. She suddenly looked out the window: “Yes, this is Ivan Ilyich standing there! .. Didn’t you recognize him ?!” Natalya Petrovna, of course, found out.

With a son from his first marriage. Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich Medvedev -
Director of the Institute of the Human Brain, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

She was never a primitive materialist in the spirit of "Marxist-Leninist teachings." But where she could, she resisted her “through the looking-glass”, attributed visions-hearings to hallucinations against the background of an altered state of consciousness due to the tragedy that had piled on. But how then to be with the same "hallucinations" at Raisa Vasilievna? Natalya Petrovna admitted that her emotional state evoked a similar reaction in her (recall Bekhterev's "mental microbe"). And yet she asserted: “And now, after many years, I can’t say: it didn’t happen. Was".

In the same mournful days, she dreamed that she met her husband under the windows of their house. Nearby on a bench lay a pile of sheets written on a typewriter. We talked for a long time about different things. Then: “I ask: “But how did you come? Are you dead?" - "Yes, he died, it was very necessary - they let him go." - "What about where you are?" - I ask. "Nothing". "But you can't come from nothing." “You'll find out later. You never had time for me, you didn't need me." - "How? I love you so." He: “But I’m not talking about that, I didn’t have time, I managed on my own, I didn’t ask. Now, do you understand everything?”

She woke up in horror and realized that she had missed something most important, that for which he came, for which he was released. The next day, before going to bed, she prayed: “Come and explain.” He came: “An empty three-room apartment. A smiling I.I. walks along it. In his hands he has sheets of typewritten text. He hugs me tenderly: “Well, don’t you understand? You know, the manuscript did not have time to publish, you did not read it, you did not have time for me. Do your best!"

Bekhtereva simply did not know about the existence of this manuscript. Probably pride, which she did not have the strength to calm down, did not allow him to attract the attention of his wife to his great work.

Natalya Petrovna rummaged through Ivan Ilyich's papers and found a pile of typewritten sheets. I gave it to the publisher, they printed it. She was pleased: "The book came out good." The fourth prophetic dream came true.

“I KNOW HOW DANGEROUS TO MOVE INTO THIS “LOOKING LOOK”

"Strange" phenomena further undermined her health. Under the pretext of sleep disorders, she asked for a privileged hospital, she had the right to do so as people's deputy THE USSR. Daily regime, water procedures did her good. “They treated a suffering woman,” she ironically.

But the longing did not let go, and Natalya Petrovna went to church. After a 15-minute conversation with the priest, the depression stopped. And every time she overtook her again, the priest took her off. “Truth is truth, and why should I, who have been looking for (and not always finding) the truth of nature all my life, lie when it comes to myself (and, in general, also nature)? What I write here is unlikely to glorify me, but I would be in conflict with my sense of duty and conscience if I did not tell this truth.

Natalya Petrovna already understood how risky it was to be interested in "through the looking glass". But I decided to meet in the USA with the clairvoyant Andersen. Vladimir Pozner undertook to organize their meeting, who had already interviewed Andersen and learned a lot of things that he had no idea about, but which later found confirmation.

Natalya Petrovna really wanted to find out if this Andersen was a charlatan, and if not, then whether he was somehow connected with the “mirror”. But her confessor advised against it, fearing that after the shocks she had endured, she would not be able to withstand this meeting.

A little over 10 years ago, a new wave of criticism rolled in. The head of the fight against pseudoscience of the Russian Academy of Sciences, physicist Eduard Kruglyakov, called Bekhterev among the authoritative people who do not reject what official science does not approve of. It was said about the Ministry of Defense (works with sorcerers), the Ministry of Emergency Situations and personally Shoigu (uses the services of astrologers), Bekhtereva was accused of interest in the phenomenon of alternative vision.

Natalya Petrovna answered immediately: “The academic physicist considers it possible for himself to criticize a physiological article without appeal. Note: it was published not just anywhere, but in the reviewed respected journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Human Physiology” - an article that went through all the procedures required in such cases ... Several years ago, people who claimed the ability to see blindfolded applied to the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences. .. Of course, the simplest answer would be that we are dealing with high scientific problems and we are not interested in amateurs. However, many years of experience in studying the human brain taught us to respect its capabilities ... We invited the guys and asked them to complete the tasks we developed ... Result: 100 percent correct answers! Thus, we have established that the phenomenon exists, and although much remains unclear, it is interesting to do and it should be investigated.

Academician Bekhtereva understood that, despite the significant successes of her beloved science, it was not possible to offer not only a theory, but even a plausible hypothesis of how the brain works. For example, it has been found that it processes the received information at a gigantic speed, and the existing technique fixes too slow interaction of neurons. So, she thought, the brain had properties that had not yet been discovered.

Summing up her observations of herself, of her dreams and visions, she wrote: “I know how dangerous it is to move into this “mirror”. I know how to calmly remain on the wide road of science, how the “citation index” rises in this case, and how the danger of trouble decreases - in the form of devastating, annihilating criticism ... But it seems to me that everyone on earth, to the best of his ability, should do your duty." And now, when it comes to Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva, you can hear: yes, an outstanding scientist, no doubt, but why did she get carried away into mysticism?

But the thing is, when ordinary people talk about "strange" phenomena and predictions, they can be believed or not believed. More often they are not believed, sometimes they are correct: charlatans love to frolic in the field of the little-known. But Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva's "mirror-like" experience is hard to ignore - her honesty, human and scientific authority are undeniable.

And it has always been so. There was always someone with open eyes, for whom there were no dogmas prescribed once and for all, and who exclaimed: “But it still spins!”. And it turned out that she really spins ...

Academician who devoted her life to studying the human brain dies at the age of 84 [interview]

Change text size: A A

Yesterday, June 22, in the St. George's Hospital in Hamburg, at the age of 83, the famous neurophysiologist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, laureate State Prize USSR , member of many foreign academies Natalya Bekhtereva .

For almost two decades, Natalya Petrovna was the scientific director of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The famous researcher studied how the brain of a healthy and sick person works. Natalia Bekhtereva is the author of about 400 scientific papers, she owns discoveries in the field of mechanisms of thinking, memory, emotions and the organization of the human brain.

So, for example, Bekhtereva discovered that it is the neurons of the subcortical formations of the brain that “understand” speech, that the pathological state of the brain is the main cause of many chronic diseases nervous system. Academician Bekhtereva was one of the first to use the method of long-term implantation of electrodes in the human brain. Under her leadership, the central task of neurosurgery was finally solved - sparing contact with brain structures.

Fate. Natalya Bekhtereva was born in Leningrad on July 7, 1924 in an intelligent family. She was the granddaughter of the great scientist Academician Vladimir Bekhterev (when he died, she was 4 years old). Her childhood was difficult. After her father, an engineer, was shot as an enemy of the people, and her mother was sent to Stalin's camps, the girl ended up in an orphanage. She became seriously interested in medicine during the war, when she was on duty in hospitals in besieged Leningrad, caring for the wounded.

Scientific career. In 1947, Natalya Bekhtereva graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute named after academician Pavlov, in 1950 she completed her postgraduate studies at the Institute of Physiology of the CNS of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. From 1950 to 1990 she worked at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. She headed the Research Institute of Experimental Medicine of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. Then she began to lead the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Natalya Bekhtereva was a laureate of the USSR State Prize, a member of the Austrian and Finnish Academies of Sciences, the American Academy of Medicine and Psychiatry, and an honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.

Area of ​​interest. Natalya Petrovna was a very interesting person, she studied the brains of leaders, met Vanga, and in last years believed in God and became interested in the phenomenon of experience after death. Natalya Bekhtereva wrote a book for the mass reader, where plain language told about the human brain and its mysteries.

FROM INTERVIEWS IN DIFFERENT YEARS

About Faith in God

You are interested in how I came to faith. This moment had nothing to do with either Vanga's personality or his studies in science. It so happened that after a trip to Vanga - it just coincided in time - I experienced a lot. I survived the betrayal of my closest friends, the persecution at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, which I then headed and where I announced my decision to leave for the new Institute of the Brain, and the worst thing was the death of two of my close people: my husband and his son from my first marriage. They died very tragically, almost at the same time: Alik committed suicide, and her husband could not bear his death and died the same night.

That's when I changed a lot. My personal experience went completely beyond the explanation of the world known to me. For example, I could in no way find an explanation for the fact that my husband, after that, appeared to me in a dream, asked for help in publishing the manuscript of his book, which I had not read and which I would not have known without his words. This was not the first such experience in my life (before my father's arrest in 1937, I also had a dream, then reflected in reality), but here for the first time I thought seriously about what was happening. Of course, this new reality was frightening. But then my friend, priest, rector at Tsarskoye Selo Father Gennady helped me a lot ... By the way, he strongly advised me to talk less about this kind of experiences. Then I did not listen to this advice very much and even wrote about what happened in the book - just like I used to write about any other of my observations.

About the Internet

If I were asked what I consider the most important invention of mankind, I would certainly name the Internet. This is the most useful invention. But humanity, as a rule, does not invent the best for itself. building houses and atomic bomb builds to destroy them, fights infections and creates new infections, which then have to be fought again, and so on ... I would like to think that the peak of the Internet frenzy should pass and everything should fall into place. The person will use the Internet as needed. I believe that the possibilities of contact between people that the Internet has provided are fabulous. This is what people dreamed about. The possibilities of the Internet are such that the language does not turn around, to say that using it is harmful or not good. But when there is dependence on it, it is really bad. This dependence, in principle, is even treated in psychiatric institutions. And there is no need to argue whether this dependence of others is better or worse. Any addiction is not very good. The world has now fallen in love with the Internet so much that it is useless to discuss this problem, humanity will still use it.

About the possibilities of the brain

It always surprises me when someone tries to judge how much the human brain is loaded. I have been working with the human brain all my life, and I know all the methods of brain research, but I cannot understand who and how it calculates.

We know that the brain is arranged in such a way that no matter what happens in it, the whole brain is necessarily activated. He loses all the possibilities, and then there is a minimization of the areas of the brain that will be involved. There are no situations when the brain does not lose options. This was once proved by Pavlov. We see this all the time. And this is wonderful, this is the best mechanism for self-preservation of the brain.

About recipes to strengthen memory

In order for the memory to be better, it must be exercised. Just as there are exercises to strengthen the muscles of the arms, legs, and abdominals, there are also exercises to strengthen the memory. They are very simple, public, they can be done in any setting. For example, many people are very fond of acquiring a large number of notebooks, personal weeklies, notebooks. Why not train your memory and try to memorize all the phone numbers of your friends and acquaintances?

After all, it is no coincidence that earlier in schools children were forced to cram a lot of things by heart. Cramming was generally one of the teaching methods. We have always been very critical of it and, in the end, liquidated it. And along with it, a good memory trainer was thrown into the trash. For memory training, it is very useful to study some foreign language, memorize at least five to ten new words every day. Or learning poems by heart - it would seem a completely idle task, but, believe my experience, this is very effective exercise. Many people are fond of solving crossword puzzles - also a good method for developing memory and associative thinking.

Be sure to replenish your vocabulary, read more. And not only newspapers, although the press now we have is quite interesting and diverse, but also science fiction, and lyrics, and special literature - in order to receive as much information as possible. That is, to force your brain to work. In general, the more diverse information a person will try to remember, the better his memory will be. Therefore, do not take long breaks in mental work.

There are other ways to improve memory. For example, natural outdoor recreation. Forest walks are very beneficial, because it is not only a different composition of the air, different smells, but it is also a fundamental change in the environment, which in itself has a positive effect on the mechanism of our memory.

About prophetic dreams

As a rule, dreams are not related to the future, so dream books should not be taken seriously. But in my life there were several dreams that turned out to be prophetic. And one of them was incredibly prophetic, down to the details. It was a dream about my mother's death. Mom was alive and well, resting in the south, shortly before that I received a good letter from her. And in a dream, and I fell asleep during the day, I dreamed that a postman came to me with a telegram saying that my mother had died. I go to the funeral, I meet people there whom I have never seen before, I say hello to them, I call them by their names - it's all in a dream. When I woke up and told my husband about my dream, he said: "Do you, a specialist in the field of the brain, believe in dreams?"

In short, despite the fact that I was firmly convinced that I should fly to my mother, I was talked out of it. In fact, I allowed myself to be dissuaded. Well, ten days later everything happened exactly as it was in my dream. And down to the smallest detail. For example, I forgot the word village council a long time ago, I just never needed it. In a dream, I was looking for the village council, and in reality I had to look for it - that's the story. This happened to me personally, but I'm not the only one. There are many other cases of prophetic dreams and even scientific discoveries in a dream. For example, Mendeleev's discovery periodic system elements.

It cannot be explained. It is better not to be wiser and to say bluntly: since this cannot be explained by any of the modern scientific methods, we will have to assume that the future is given to us in advance, that it already exists. And we can, at least in a dream, get in touch either with a higher Mind, or with God - with Someone who owns knowledge about this future. With more definite formulations, I would like to wait, because the advances in the technological direction of brain science are so great that, perhaps, something else will be discovered that will shed light on this problem as well.

Used interviews from sites,.