Vaklush Tolev (Vaklush Tolev Zapryanov, Bulgarian: Ваклуш Толев Запрянов), also known as Vaklush, The Teacher of Wisdom, was a theologian by education, a public figure, a university lecturer, and an author of a multitude of works of religious, philosophical, cultural and historical nature.Vaklush Tolev has traveled his Way of Wisdom, ‘Novinar Yug’ (newspaper), 30 November 2013.
Some of his work includes ‘The History and Theory of Religions’ (in three volumes), ‘The Spiritual Gifts of Bulgaria’ (in two volumes), ‘The Seven Rays of the Evolution’, ‘Uncovenanted Testament’, to name but a few, as wells as of the magazine, ‘Nur’, composed entirely of his original materials.CONDEMNED TO LIFE: essay for documentary film with biographical introduction ".
On his path as an enlightener and spiritual teacher, Vaklush Tolev formed his original views and his interpretation of history, social ideas, and analyses into a whole teaching of personal, social, and universal nature, which he called The Way of Wisdom – an expression of the Spiritual Wave of Wisdom already at work within the life of humanity. Inspired by Vaklush Tolev's ideas, an association, ‘The Way of Wisdom Society’, was established. The society works to achieve the unfolding of the spiritual potential of the Bulgarian nation as well as the guiding principles in the spiritual and cultural evolution of humanity.‘ ‘‘Defend the Soul!‘’– is Vaklush Tolev’s legacy to humanity’, ‘Prelom’ (newspaper), issue 5/2013, p3
The followers of the Teaching of Wisdom call themselves and others ‘sabozhnitsi’ (that is ‘co-deities’): ‘The co-deity is God, Whom we seek within ourselves, manifested in the face of the other’. This is how the author formulates the kernel of the concept in an aphorism-like thought.
Biography Vaklush Tolev was born on January 7, 1923, which was the Day of the Nativity by the old Julian calendar, in the village of Popovitsa (known as Papazli until 1934),Milchev, Nikolai, Koledarov, Petar, ‘The Dictionary of Settlements and the Names of Settlers in Bulgaria, 1878-1987), Sofia, 1989. in Plovdiv county.
His family was wealthy and well respected: his grandfather, Zapryan, was the mayor of Popovitsa, while his father, Tolyo, was well known for his incredible generosity and nobility. His mother, Vasilka, who was also from an affluent family, was a woman with leadership skills, intuition, and imagination, according to Tolev.Vaklush Tolev, a biographical interview from 25 February 1995.
Etymologically, the name ‘Vaklush’ is said to point to either the word 'Vlach' (Romanian origin ‘vakul’- ‘black, black-eyed, swarthy’) or to be connected to Bacchus – the Latin name of the ancient Greek (or Thracian) god Dionysius, spelled in Greek as Βάκχος (which in turn is read as Vákhos) – and has its root ‘vak, bak’ in Sanskrit, meaning ‘higher spiritual power’.Vaklush Tolev, ‘The Spiritual Gifts of Bulgaria,’ Vol.1, 2010, p.13.
Due to his immense desire to learn, Vaklush began attending school even before reaching the minimum age requirement for elementary school. Initially, he was admitted just as an observer, but later, with the official permission of the Ministry of Education, he was admitted as a fully participating student.
Later on, he would admit that the things he was taught at school were not exactly what he longed for. However, the two things that truly provoked admiration and joy to the point of tears in him were ‘that great mystery of learning that a goddess is born from the head, and not from the womb – the goddess of Wisdom,’ or ‘to read that a created person dared to steal an apple of knowledge before the face of their Creator.’"The Way of Wisdom" documentary, 2004, directed by Nikolay Vasilev, Bulgarian National Television (видео), uploaded in Youtube on 6 January 2014.
Secondary School Years At age 13, Vaklush enrolled in a grammar school in Asenovgrad. While there, he was impressed by the town's legal and court system and frequently went to listen to defense speeches.
At age 14, he took the floor alone at a church festivity and delivered a sermon titled ‘Does God exist?’
Within two or three years he had become president of the school's Christian Philosophical Society, which organized the presentation of papers followed by active discussions and disputes in a ‘consensual form of conflict without hatred’ with representatives of the materialist viewpoint, the Remsists (of the RMC/The Worker's Youth League).
During his secondary school years, he took part in the political life of the younger generation at that time. He subscribed to magazines like ‘Nation, Politics’, ‘Labour and Faith’, and others.
In 1939, he attended a conference to reach an agreement between the different political wings. In the same period, he began to write secret poetry.
One verse written by Vaklush, which has remained from 1945, goes as follows: „By winds it will be buffeted in this life – this way and that – my secret destiny
and stabbed will be by those who bear a knife:
my thoughts, my feelings, and my holy mystery."
Military education In 1942, he relocated from Asenovgrad to Panagiurishte due to a political conflict involving the distribution of leaflets. He graduated from secondary school there, and the following year (1943), he commenced the standard military service of 18 months in the School for Reserve Officers.
Vaklush Tolev sums up military education by saying, ‘It awakes a sense of service beyond one’s own personal world.’ As well as part of a physical and spiritual growing into manhood’, it gives a broadening of one’s horizon and a sense of responsibility.
He was drafted into the Second World War in 1944 as a platoon commander in the 21st regiment, Smolyan, of the 1st Army. He did not bear or use arms. 50 soldiers were entrusted to him, and he returned them all alive – only one was wounded, and that was for looting. (He had taken the boots of a slain German soldier.)
The period of repressions Before the military operations, Vaklush Tolev had been accepted into the legal faculty of the University of Sofia, where he was supposed to begin his studies in the autumn of 1944.
After the events of September 9, 1944, and the change of regime, he was put on trial before the People's Court because of his political views and actions as an officer in the army of the Bulgarian Monarchy. The court pronounced the defendant guilty – ‘An enemy of the people’. The sentence was ‘Death,’ and to serve as an example for others, as was the custom on occasion at the time, the loudspeakers in the courtroom were turned on to boom out the sentence. The young man had the right to some last words, the expectation being that he would be crushed by the sentence pronounced. But from the loudspeakers boomed his answer, that he was going to fight an ideological war against communism until the complete annihilation of this ideology. It was precisely this display of daring that led to his sentence being annulled: they let him live with the idea of breaking him in the prison system. The following period of his life he has defined as ‘Heaven’s caring, by means of social repression,’ because instead of wounding him, these years in prison helped him preserve his selfhood. Apart from that, ‘I was spared from absent-mindedness,’ concluded Vaklush.
He dedicated a large chunk of his prison time to studying for the law exams at Sofia University, but as he was by now a convict, his exclusion from the ranks of universities was not long in coming.
In his years in prison, he also wrote poetry, plays, and philosophical essays, and worked on several languages – English, German, French, Latin, and Old Bulgarian. He devoted three years to the study of Marxism/Leninism in order to extract its essence. He formulated three main pillars of the ideology: godlessness, class struggle, and armed revolution in order to take power. It is precisely these concepts that undermine the moral values provided by religions and ethical teachings, concluded Vaklush.
After the trial, he was sent to the Plovdiv prison, which was almost exclusively filled with political prisoners, mainly from the National Legions movement, as well as some former ministers and journalists – around 500 people in total. The first great act of rebellion that Vaklush carried out was when ideological violence and аbuse were employed so the convicted men would sign an appeal to their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, calling them to go to the urns and vote for the Fatherland Front (a political organization under the wing of the Communist Party).
When they were assembled to sign, he urged everyone who was not in agreement to exit the room, and around 150 left along with him. After about a week, the decree came from the Ministry of Justice for him and 7 others to be transferred to the Pazardzhik penitentiary, where they were isolated in solitary cells for a period. This was a method of terrifying, breaking, and recruiting a person, commented Vaklush Tolev. Then, his oft-repeated thought was born: ‘When you are sufficient unto yourself, no one can vanquish you.’ ‘This means that your spirit must be free,’ he explained. The feeling of fear did not exist for him, and that's why ‘any kind of constraint, even if it be the Great Wall of China, is no obstacle.’
He carried out hunger strikes, fastings, and a day of complete silence every Monday (in Belene and Shumen)... Plovdiv, Pazardzhik, Kardzhali, Shumen, Belene, Varna – he was moved from prison to prison with a file that read ‘Not amenable to political re-education.’ ‘I changed places of worship,’ Vaklush would later say. ‘For me, they were places of worship because their inner prayer was a matter of judgment and not of genuflexion before an altar.’ When he was asked in Varna where he had felt best, he answered: ‘Places where there was a law, that’s where I felt best. Because the law, when applied by you, protects us.’Vaklush Tolev. Biographical interview on 2 August 2000.
Ecclesiastical education After an amnesty was passed for political prisoners, he was released from prison on 15 August 1956, the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, in Varna. Once more, he began work in Plovdiv, moving from place to place as someone inconvenient to the authorities. While still in prison, people had always gathered around him to listen to his analyses and ideas, something that continued after his release as well.
Since he had a conviction, the right to study at any university in the country was denied to him.
Later, with great difficulty, as ‘an enemy of the people,' he graduated in Theology from the Theological Seminary in Sofia, the only autonomous institute of learning at the time. He completed five years' worth of the program in only 18 months.
During his first year, he was already banned from continuing his studies on the orders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, but he was later reinstated after interventions from people at the highest levels of the administration who were inspired by and respected his character. He graduated in 1968 with a speech/sermon, taking its title from the Biblical expression of Pontius Pilate, ‘Ecce Homo’ – ‘Behold the Man.’
Ecclesiastical Work