Orthodox Stage
So, two of us left. We worked in a medical institute. All spare time we dedicated to healing: went to people in various corners of the city who called us for help. We did not ask money from the patients, but if they made a meal for us, we did not refuse. At the same time we tried to talk with the ill about ethical reasons for their troubles.
Most of our patients recovered. Some of them were grateful, regarding the recovery as a miracle, as a manifestation of other reality through us. Often they began to seek the truth, which was forbidden in our country at that time.
But there was other reaction. For example, we ask at the next day after the seance:
“Has it helped you?”
“Ah, don’t make me a fool! It ended by itself!”
… At that time we managed to read the New Testament for the first time. To the modern Russians it may seem strange. But at those years even a simple act of giving or selling religious literature was regarded as “ideological sabotage from the West”. It was famous KGB that fought against this kind of “saboteurs”, such as spreaders of religious literature, healers, parapsychologists etc. We had to carry our healing activity in secret from the authorities.
But the New Testament changed our lives.
… People regard this book very differently: everyone sees in it that layer of information, which he is able to encompass.
For us the sermons of Jesus meant a description of the Path to God-the-Father.
But many people, who also call themselves Christians, get convinced by ignorant preachers that, for example, “our God” is Jesus Christ and that Jews, Muslims and other nations have “other Gods”.
And that Jews are damned forever, for they crucified OUR God (despite that Jesus too was a Jew, lived among Jews, and preached also to Jews).
And that Muslims are “damned infidels” and “pagans” (though it is Islam that is a continuer of clear monotheistic line of religious outlook established by the Jewish prophets and confirmed by Jesus Christ).
… So we became Christians and thus it was necessary to receive baptism.
Within our field of view there was only Orthodox church. But it was a problem to receive baptism in it in those years. The fact is that KGB required clergymen to register obligatory all people receiving baptism. These lists were studied in KGB and many baptized people suffered persecution: one could be fired due to “staff reduction”, students could be expelled from the university etc. And I had the position of senior researcher, which I valued at that time.
After many unsuccessful efforts, we managed to find a priest who consented to baptize us illegally, without registration.
In this way the Orthodox temple became our “second home”. In it we mastered mental quietness, felt sacred energy flows emanated from some icons.
With its help we accustomed ourselves to be watchful about our deeds, words, and thoughts — to feel responsibility for own mistakes in front of God.
There we mastered repentance.
And, the most important — in response to our sincere aspiration for God, He allowed us to experience fully the power of Holy Communion, when then body is filled from within with the subtlest joy of the Touch happened. Frequent, even every day communions had a special effect.
… We got aquatinted with other seekers and formed a group of associates who were united by aspiration to cognition of God and eagerness to transform oneself according to His Will.
He became for us the Essence of the world, the Ultimate Goal, the Supreme Teacher. Now we asked Him for advice and received from Him guidelines and instructions.
For example, He told through Galina Vaver or through me:
“Learn to love Me as I love you, as I love everyone. Having mastered this, you will become one with Me.
“Be perfect as God is perfect. This thought must not leave you — not for a single minute.
“Joy should take residence in your soul. And nothing should ever darken this joy. Let the light of this joy stream from your eyes — the light of joy of the soul.
“Dare not frown! This is an insistent instruction to you, almost an order!
“Practice the meditation: ‘God and everything existing are one’. This will help you perceive God’s grace in all earthly manifestations: from a speck of dust to cosmic sensations, solar eclipses, and pure thoughts that visit you.
“It is most essential for each one of you to understand that God is present everywhere and in everything, in you — He takes care, guards, perfects, loves.
“I want you to think of Me constantly — with love, joy, and light in the soul. I will help you each minute to experience Me in everything. I will direct your eyes and show Myself in all manifestations of the existence. Love is also Me: love of parents, relatives, beloved men and women. You should experience this, rather than just understand. I am your love to all.
“You should not be absorbed in fuss. You should always concentrate, think, and see My manifestations in everything. It is not an ordinary work — to search for Me in the every day’s fuss. But as a consequence, you will learn to see the non-accidentalness of fussy things and find regularity in obvious nonsense. I will teach you this later.
“Now try to keep a close look at everything you have been detached from before: atheists, profligates, drunkards, or just good fellows. All they are people. All this is Me. All this is not accidental. You have to understand every one, feel his connection with your destiny, with Me in your destiny, and accept his presence in your life as Me Who teaches you.
“I am asking you: try to keep this in mind. Try to keep this in mind, I ask you. Do not turn away from seemingly meaningless people. Love them, love people, and remember about Me.
“I love you all, grant My Light and My presence to all. Learn to let this light through yourselves and carry it to people. Rejoice, love, radiate the Light! This is the primary thing you should do now.
“Learn to explain to people their predestination, so that they feel their destiny in your words.
“Do you remember what you had been before you came to Me? Learn to feel another person through this, as if it is you who is sitting in this ruined, contaminated physical body and seeking the way out of the dead end.
“Relax at your meetings. Physical strain, intense emotions, or obsessive thoughts should be excluded. It is the state of peace alone that makes it possible to open up to each other. The state of relaxation is the state of openness and calm kindness towards other people.
“Always live in an emotionally light and positive state. Never allow yourselves any negative emotions, fear, and impatience. No excuses are accepted. Create a favorable energy field for others. Think not of yourselves, but of others. Avoid any preoccupation with your own problems. Learn these rules by heart.
“Never allow any controversies or discords among you. Eliminate any mutually repulsive moments completely. Do your best to promote mutual attraction. At every word or action think about whether it may harm anyone around or arouse negative emotional reaction in another person.
“Think about the contribution to My work that you can make: each one must feel the degree of their involvement.
“If you want to be perfect — be perfect: act like God, think like God, love like God.
“Learn to love God the way He loves you. Ask — and you will be given. Ask — and I will teach you this.
“Your passionate and loving yearning for Me must be unceasing. Remember Me every second, try to observe Me and love Me. Let it be constant, no matter what you are doing. Your hands may be busy with doing anything, but your head must be thinking of Me and your heart must be brimming with love to Me.
“You have to learn to love Me. When you feel that you love Me, you will forget everything that worries, troubles you now. All this will be no more. It will vanish, like darkness vanishes with the first rays of the sun.
“Always be kind-hearted to people near you — kind by heart. Let the meaning of these words penetrate deep inside you.
“I am giving you the prayer-meditation:
‘Lord! Unite our hearts in You!
‘Radiate us with Your light, permeating the darkness of our passions!
‘May all-consuming love expand
‘And fill our souls with Your exultation!
‘Oh, spread and grow in us, the seed of Lord!
‘Filling our hearts with the light of wisdom and knowledge!
‘May we always aspire towards You!
‘Amen.’
“Here is the subject for you to reflect upon. There exist three approaches:
“1. Self-perfection depends only on God.
“2. Only on personal efforts.
“3. On joint efforts.
“Hence the existence of different Schools.
“You have to find your place in the Evolution on the Earth and in the Evolution of the universe.”
Our activity was watched by KGB officers. Their patience snapped, when I spotted bioenergetical darkening in the neck of an employee in our institute and told her that I see she is sick with angina. She — a physician — was amazed with this miracle and told about it to her friends. The husband of one of these friends was a KGB officer. As a result, I was immediately fired due to “staff reduction”. Though, according to the law, they could not do it: I was the leader of the local trade-union cell and recently registered several rationalization proposals. But I decided not to oppose, for it could make the situation even worse.
The director — a wise scientist and able physician — notified me in advance: shaken my hand and apologized that he could not help.
Some time later he too run into trouble. His daughter died and a burial service was arranged in church. It was denounced to KGB; he was fired and died of infarction.
… After my dismissal I felt that there was God’s Will behind it: He made good for me by setting KGB against me. I accepted this event more calmly than other people, though I did not know what to expect next.
My father worried most of all. He was exasperated at my composure. He shouted at me:
“Why do you keep silence? You were… fired!!!”
He expected violent reactions from me. But I was already a Christian and mystic…
Soon my father died…
When death came to him for the first time, he got a pain in the heart and called me. I came and saw by clairvoyance a black energetical entity like a swaddled baby; it touched the father’s heart. I managed to move it away and asked God to give the father easy painless death. The answer was:
“Your prayer is accepted.”
He died several days later of a stroke, when I was not at home. He fell to the floor, said calmly:
“Don’t worry, I will stand up now.”
And left the body.
… After dismissal with remark in the file “creation of a religious sect”, for a long time I could not find a job. The way to official science was closed for me.
With some troubles I got a position of a laboratory assistant in botanical gardens. My job was to water the plants, to sweep the walks. I dined under a banana tree, swam in a pool with lotuses. The body worked and the mind was free for contemplation about God and the Path to Him. This is why God led me out of the institute!
I spent spare time in libraries. Now I read not medical works but spiritual literature. The strongest impression I gained from Philokalia [38], Bhagavad Gita, Tao-te Ching [28], and books of G.I.Gurdjieff’s School.
Being adherents of the Orthodoxy, we strictly observed all its fasts. Of course we understood that the fast is intended and has to be observed not as a simple limitation of nourishment but first of all as spiritual efforts of higher than usual level.
And the Lent I want to describe was especially ascetic for me.
At that time I had to dig frozen soil with a crowbar and pry it with a spade. God nevertheless advised me more and more limitations of the nourishment: I ate once per 2-3 days and it was mainly uncooked grass from a market.
I did it not in dejection and not for personal achievements, but in Commemoration of Jesus suffered for us.
At the end of the Lent, in Easter, we gathered in my home. Before the festal repast we said the prayer cited above — and suddenly felt the presence of Jesus in the room.
He thanked us for the fast and, addressing me, said that I have to create a spiritual School and that all its students have to give up drinking any kind of alcohol. Then He said:
“Now, eat!”
And left us overfilled with joy of so close contact with Him.
… I fulfilled these commandments of Him. I warned all people, who followed me and used the methods of the School, about inadmissibility of drinking any kind of alcohol. But some of them decided to try: can something wrong really happen because of a glass of wine drunk in New Year? … And they got to hospital with symptoms of strange sickness alike to an acute infectious disease.
… In some time KGB informed the direction of the botanic gardens that they employed “notorious sectarian”. Soon all the staff came to know about it. People started to come to look at the “notorious sectarian” as coming to excursion. I understood that it is time to quit and retired.
I got the job of stoker in countryside. For the first time I had my own cell — a small room in the boiler-house. I tended the furnace, read books, chopped firewood… — beatitude!
… But once I got a pain in a leg’s joint. The pain was so severe that I had to lie in bed.
“Lord, why?”
“You have to repent!”
I analyzed again everything of the deeds in this life that I could recall. But the pain relief did not come.
“Lord! What is the matter?”
“You have not repented the sins of your past life.”
I attuned to analysis of the past incarnation and He showed me what I have described in the beginning of the book.
Then He revealed to me the “prospects”. According to the law of karma I was to get in this life the following: for shot to the leg — that pain, which I had already, and for shot to the chest — a cut wound in my chest from hooligans in the place where I worked.
I thanked the Lord and the leg recovered very quickly.
Every one may think now what he would do having received such information…
I used not to give up at difficulties. And I wanted to get rid quickly of all burden of the past, which prevented me to go further, to God.
I put on poor garments, which I did not pity to be cut and stained with blood, put a pouch with mumijo — to heal oneself with it in hospital — and went to seek these hooligans.
I approached one group of alcoholics — no, they do not attack me, to other group — again not, to the third, to the fourth — not and not.
“Lord, what is the matter?!”
“It’s all right, relax. You have found the correct decision, and I score up your mental engagement as realization of your karma. You are free from those vices. Go to your boiler-room.
… That boiler-room belonged to a dorm of a musical college. The student of the college came to me, asked various questions. I answered many of them from the religious standpoint. The direction got to knew about this and it caused dismay.
At that time a pipe broke. I was dismissed due to “premature end of the heating season”. Then the tube was replaced and a new stoker was employed…
Thus God changed educational situations and enriched me with experience of communication with many different people.
Soon after that I and Galina Vaver worked in forestry with alcoholics. Then — worked as pickers of medicinal herbs in a drugstore, then — in nursery school.
… The esoteric work in our group at that time was concentrated on searching for methods for chakra development. We continued to heal the sick. During seances demons were driven out of the sick. They can be seen by clairvoyance as dark moving energies. The healed people felt the moment of the demon exiting for example thus: “It was like a balloon burst — and I felt easier.”
God told us:
“Come to stay in the world of beauty! Let your life be filled with light and music of Nature, Harmony, Sun, and Love! I need you to advance into the subtle, higher state. Only after that will your further progress be possible.
“To ensure the mutual understanding in the group, the language common to all is necessary. You should learn this language. This is the language of love, of emotional love.
“Let the principle of non-interference guide you in your relations with other people who have some mystic experience. Only observing this principle will you be able to help such people. You should not “edify” anyone or “make anyone open his eyes” now, you should just love them, forgiving them everything, without focusing attention on anything, and then help as much as possible.
“This is the general principle of work that must be strictly complied with in absolutely all cases. Then any disharmony will be eliminated.
“So, the first is anahata. Give it the maximum attention. This is what you should master first of all and in full measure and practice as well. Watch the people with whom you fail to contact adequately: it is through relations with them that you will get the best opportunity for developing anahata.
“Energy depletion during the healing process expands and strengthens your energy capacities, which allows channeling increasingly more intense energy streams through them. But it is not this that I want from you now. Use your powers to transform energy vibrations qualitatively. Power is not needed here, what is required is another quality of the work.
“Working in the conditions I am talking about, you will not exhaust your energy and will supply others with more subtle vibrations, that is with “food” of a better quality. This kind of help is of higher qualification.
“The work with energy also calls for tenderness, ability to let only subtle vibrations pass, deterring everything that is gross. This is the real art.
“Everyone should have a clear idea of what he is composed of, “dismantle” oneself into separate parts and mechanisms so that to “assemble” them later into the whole one and use this “machine” of the organism in line with his purposes.
“The system of chakras itself must be well-arranged too. Then the work will proceed as if on the keyboard, automatically.
“You know that each person has a system of chakras. These all are the links of one chain constituting one large energetic system. Each chakra has the miraculous capability to ensure penetrating into other planes of the world.
“With the help of chakras one can shift from one dimension into another and then come back.”
We started to visit Orthodox monasteries, lived and worked in them. This provided many valuable observations.
For example, drunkenness in the male monasteries, squabbles and scandals in female monasteries. The nuns themselves told, “At ours it’s the same as in the world. It’s the only common prayer that unites us.”
One of the male monasteries was headed by a monk-vicar who got the nickname “Fierce”… When he was in bad mood, he could easily strike with his staff a granny standing on his way… Together with his assistant he beat malcontent monks in the cells.
In the same monastery the rites of “exorcism” were performed. They were attempts to drive out demons with the help of special magical incantations-damnations. The ill people squeal, bark, croak, get seized with convulsions; the temple gets filled with obscene words.
These torments of the ills are of no help. Even if a demon goes out from the ill inside the temple, he enters when the ill again outdoors. On the other hand, the rites of exorcism results in developing in the congregation such qualities as hatred and mystical fear. People are taught to fear and hate demons as well as other people suspecting them to be warlocks who set demons.
But it is the energy of the emotions of hatred and fear that is consonant to demons and is a pleasant food for them.
Demons enter the human bodies of the Will of God — and exit of His Will. They exit when the person withstood this trial by giving up hatred, fear, egoism and started to make efforts on growing love in oneself.
Such Orthodox centers performing the rites of exorcism gather hundreds and thousands of people — victims of the religious ignorance.
… We started to visit the temples of other religious confessions: a synagogue, a mosque, a Roman-Catholic church, prayer houses of Baptists, Pentecostalists, Lutherans, Adventists.
Once we were visiting on Easter the evangelical Christians — Baptists. I passed to the presbyter a short letter: “Congratulations to brothers and sisters of your church from Orthodox Christians!” It was read aloud to all assembled people. It caused in them a lot of amazement and joy: before they received from Orthodoxs nothing but hatred.
A direct observation of that which takes place in the non-material world in Protestant churches during the consecration of bread and wine is the same as that which happens in Orthodox churches during the consecration of Presanctified Gifts. Thus the statement of the Orthodoxs that Protestants allegedly “lost the Sacraments” is baseless: God gives His Love to all.
At that I saw no other religious community with so intense sectarian intolerance to all nonconformists as in the Russian Orthodoxy.
For example, how they teach the prospective priests to pronounce the word Buddha? With accent on the last letter to make it sound contemptuously.
And this church damned all Jews! Later the damnation was removed. But the nazi attitude to the nation, which gave birth to Jesus Christ, was not removed.
Jesus taught: Do not condemn! Do not hate! Instead — forgive, bless, love! Yet the Russian Orthodoxs only hate and condemn — nations, religions, concrete people. What is it — Christianity? Or the contrary?
Though there are many good Orthodoxs seeking the Truth. Many people receive the first religious experience in it as we did. Then they go further.
I conversed with many priests of the Orthodox church. I saw among them spiritually advanced people as well as plain ones, who probably received the rank of spiritual parson by “assignment” from KGB…
From some point I decided for myself: I am a Christian but not Orthodox. I am Christ’s!
I keep a good memory of the Orthodox church and am grateful to it for my apprenticeship in it and vast life experience — positive and negative that I gained through it.
* * *
In the Pskov-Pechorsky male monastery in the Pskov region a monk Savva lived. I had an occasion to meet him. He had the ability to know everything about people coming to him. One did not need to ask him questions aloud: he knew them already. And began to answer immediately.
… Once two woman came to him from Gatchina — a suburb of Saint Petersburg. They met him in a corridor. He greeted them and asked:
“Where did you come from?”
“From Petersburg”.
“Really? I thought you are from Gatchina. Well, then sometime I err…”
When he had left the body, he took the chance to make one more miracle: while the body was kept in a chapel for three days, in a well nearby the water disappeared. After the body had been moved away, the water appeared back…
Another monk from this monastery who became famous at these years was Ioann Krestyankin. Formerly he was married, had children, received the education of physician, served as an army doctor during the World War II. But he had lost his family and after the war he took the vows and became a monk.
He did not perform the miracles described above. His miracle was of other kind: it was an intense field of blissful love of large spiritual heart present around his body. One could recognize his approaching at the distance of tens of meters even before having seen him with eyes.
… Of course existence of such people in the monastery served as a justification of the verity of the Russian Orthodox church. At the years when in our country there were two opposing forces: the Communist Party and the Orthodoxy, — at those years the support of the Russian Orthodoxy’s authority was very appropriate. It is for the sake of this that God created the situation of incarnation of these people in USSR and settling them in this monastery.
But the main question is: was it the Orthodoxy that had made them so advanced? If “yes”, then why there are so few such people in it: only… two or perhaps slightly more?
The point is that they came to these earthly lives being already highly advanced spiritually souls. And they advanced before, in other bodies — where there were favorable conditions for this.
I knew Ioann Krestyankin very well, visited him in the monastery. Years later he came as a pure consciousness to visit me. And always repeated to me the same advice in different ways:
“Beware! There are so many enemies around you! Save yourself: only then will you serve the worthy people! Beware! Enemies are around you!…
* * *
Once a drunken person stopped me in a park, held me, and unbosomed himself: “I hate Eltsin, I hate young women, I hate doctors, I hate them all! My daughter bore a son and baptized him!!!
I answered:
“Think about yourself: hatred is the worst vice! Do you know where you will go after death? Aren’t you afraid of hell?”
“Are you a believer?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me… I don’t understand it: who was Jesus — Russian or Jew?”
“Jew.”
“No, then I can’t accept it…”
* * *
Once God told me that He will not give information through me to the members of the group. I told about this to them. They reacted in the way unexpected by me — hatred against me because I allegedly “disorganized the group”. Though all they could hear God themselves.
I saw that many people are ready to love only while you do pleasant things for them. Once you stop doing it — they begin to hate you. This is just “reflexes” according to I.P.Pavlov? Nothing more?
I had to part with them.
Again we left two with Galina Vaver.
