Учението на Петър Дънов – опит за създаване на нова българска религиозност
Peter Dunov’s Teaching – an Attempt at Creating a New Bulgarian Religiosity

Summary/Abstract: Peter Dunov was born on 12th July 1864 in the village of Hadarcha, the region of Varna, eastern Bulgaria. Until 1922 he laid the foundations of his philosophical system, the culmination of which was the opening of the school of the White Brotherhood and the construction of the settlement named “Sunrise”. There, for the next 22 years (till his death in 1944), he lived together with most of his followers, to whom he transmitted his ideas. In this way, he created a remarkable spiritual school, and his ideas went far beyond the boundaries of Bulgaria. However, his spiritual-philosophical system is aimed, first and foremost, at transforming the religious culture of the Bulgarian people and creating a new religiousness for the newly formed nation. Following this aim, he managed to introduce something completely new in Bulgarian culture, and turned himself into the personification of a new type spiritual leader, for whom the most important features are good education and knowledge, qualities which he systematically transfers to his followers. His spiritual system is based on the relation between religion and science and their interaction in our investigation of the world, and is very close to the type of new religious movements which appeared in the late 19-th century and which characterize the new religiousness of postmodern people. Master Peter Dunov and his spiritual system raise many questions – the vitality of the doctrine and its social functions, its study as a model of a contemporary occult school and its aim of becoming a new Bulgarian religiousness deserve further investigation.

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