Burnt child dreads the fire. Six months of work in " Soviet village“were held in a normal, working environment. I could not complain, they treated me kindly, attentively, listened to advice, as the oldest in age and newspaper experience. People from the city party committee often visited the editorial office on various issues related to newspaper work. Usually they went to the last room, which served as Kelberg's office. What they talked about behind the closed door, I, of course, did not know, and was not interested in. Perhaps I was mistaken, but sometimes it seemed to me that some comrades, passing by my table, were heading towards editor, look sideways at me, as if surprised by my presence in the editorial office of a communist newspaper. Everyone was well aware that before the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia, I collaborated for a long time in the bourgeois press. And yet this circumstance did not particularly bother me. work, to the responsibilities entrusted to me, I think I was able to prove my loyalty and correct behavior under the Soviet system. I was worried and very seriously about something else. The surrounding nervousness in connection with the incessant arrests was inflated to the extreme. Conversations about arrests took place more than once in the editorial office. I listened more and was silent. Names were called, all kinds of judgments were expressed, assumptions were made as to why the person was isolated, and each time there were “justifications for the reasons” why he was arrested. It was jarring to listen to undeserved accusations against many Russian public cultural figures who, they say, carried out anti-Soviet propaganda, were supposedly in the service of some foreign intelligence services, were allegedly worst enemies Soviet Union. I was outraged by the ease with which “evidence” was presented. Such and such a person fled from Sov twenty years ago. Russia to bourgeois Estonia. Or: “after all, in civil war fought in the ranks of the white army"... light hand the prosecutors forgot that revolutionary events The years 17-18 have long since sunk into eternity and it is not for us to judge the circumstances under which people are in a whirlwind revolutionary years they fought first among the Reds, sometimes among the Whites, lost their families, their homes, brother went against brother with arms in their hands, son against father, did not know where to go to find peace... And how they later ardently repented, having fled from their homeland, and when they wanted to return, Return trip turned out to be closed. History has long ago delivered its fair verdict. On this occasion, I remembered the words of Igor Severyanin: Today they are “white”, and tomorrow they are “red”, They are colorless in essence... The following accusations were also heard against the arrested Russians: “He was a member of the Russian National Union!”... “He was a teacher of the emigrant gymnasium!”... “During the elections to the Estonian State Assembly, he ran on the list of the Russian Peasant Party,” etc. Now all this sounds like an anachronism, a wild, meaningless accusation against those Russians who, living under a bourgeois system in a foreign state, did everything possible to preserve their nationality. Being in the ranks of members of the National Union, they could unite in an organized manner, defend their interests, legally present demands to the government to satisfy cultural needs, and elect their Russian representatives to parliament. If we did not have Russian organizations, we would not be able to carry out cultural and educational work, take care of improving the financial situation among the rural poor of the Russian outskirts of the Narovye, Prichudye and Pechersk regions. Only our organization contributed to holding “Days of Russian Culture” in the dark corners of the Russian village. Under other circumstances, we would not have been able to hold two grandiose Russian singing festivals in Narva and Pechory, a Russian exhibition in Tallinn, etc. Supreme Court The USSR once and for all put an end to the lawlessness that had lasted for many years, recognizing the majority of the people I spoke about above as completely innocent, many of whom were posthumously rehabilitated. The visit to the NKVD department did not go unnoticed for me. I lost normal sleep, became excessively irritable, and cautiously peered into the faces of the uniformed security officers, suspecting each of them was my pursuer. I won’t hide the fact that I was overcome by the fear of being arrested. Nerves were tense to the extreme. I usually woke up around two in the morning and could not fall back asleep. A rustling sound somewhere at night, a noise on the street, a dog barking, aroused alertness and keen attention. Just in case, under the bed there was a small suitcase containing a change of linen, shoes, jumper, gloves, socks, and toiletries. Time is the best healer of mental ailments. A month passed, no one bothered me, no one called me anywhere, I gradually began to come to my senses, my sleep and appetite improved. The described incident occurred in early March. Around three o'clock in the morning the bell rang. Neither my wife nor I heard it, we were sleeping so soundly. The bell rang a second time, longer and sharper. In the silence of the night, the muffled noise of a car engine could be heard. We woke up at the same time. I turned on the light. They called again. - To us! - I said in a strong whisper and quickly threw a robe on myself, - don’t get up, I told my wife, I’ll figure out what’s going on myself. I had no doubt that they had come for me to arrest me. Going out into the hallway, just in case, he asked: “Who’s there?.. What do you need?..” “Open up, police!” Behind me stood my wife, trembling with nervous fever. In vain I persuaded her to return to the apartment and turned on the electric light. Three people entered the steps of the hallway threshold: a policeman in uniform and two in civilian clothes. - Is this the apartment of former constable Raudsepp? - the policeman asked politely. My wife and I looked at each other. So not for us. We were wrong by one house. Married to my high school classmate Zhenya Yakobson, Raudsepp lived next door in her parents’ house. Several times the policeman apologized for the disturbance he had caused and even out of place began to say in a joking tone: “You’re sleeping soundly, you won’t wake up with a gun!” We called several times, we thought that you had left for Germany... That same night, on our Rechnaya Street, my high school classmate who lived next door, who had served in the police in recent years, Sasha Kazane, an amazingly calm, balanced person, whom everyone talks about, was taken away. I could say that he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He enjoyed universal respect, was gentle and polite in his manner, and tried to help everyone with advice and deeds. Night visit again excited the nerves, brought out peace of mind, suggested sad thoughts. On the way to the editorial office, I met a resident of the village, Prince of the Village, Grigory Orlov, who had arrived from the Nara region, with whom he always stayed when he arrived in the village. He confidentially reported who was arrested in the Narovye region. In Skoryatin - pharmacist A Nuut, in the Upper village of the former elders of the Syrenetsk volost E. Solovyov and I. Kyasperov (the former was at one time a deputy of the Russian faction of the State Assembly), in the Knyaz village teacher F. Bezzaborkin, in Syrents the secretary of the Union of Educational Societies A. Tomasova, in Zagrivye - commonly. Figures A. Room and G. Silin, in Kondushi - I. Ivanov, in Kukin Bereg - A. Makarov and many others..

The “package” can come in any form.

(Wisdom of the Ancients)

Meeting with the Teacher is the greatest happiness and, one might say, the culminating moment in a person’s life. Of course, if you realize in time what exactly happened. And not only because a meeting with the Teacher is, as a rule, unexpected, but also because the Teacher can appear, to put it mildly, in a very unexpected form.

Here's a fairly recent example. Fresh in the sense that the participants in the situation are still alive today.

The father is sitting with his friends, very spiritual people, and discussing something. A five-year-old son bursts into the room and declares: “What are you talking about here? You need to meditate!”

The first person to understand what happened was the father. When his son was six years old, his father asked him to be his student. A few years later, the older brother did the same.

Father, by the way, is far from a “jacket” - the Teacher of Teachers. This is one of the few cases of spontaneous enlightenment.

In his memoirs of his meetings with Ramana Maharishi, Ram Dass* wrote very interestingly about how all this happened to him.

Ram Dass, being a doctor of psychology, went to India with some friend - a fan of Maharishi. We rented a Cadillac and set off in it. We've arrived. Maharishi comes out to them and asks: “Do you have LSD?” Ram Dass: “Yes,” and gives a crazy dose of the drug, from which you can immediately go crazy.

Maharishi took it, took the entire dose and, covering himself with a blanket, giggled. Ram Dass began to suffer from remorse - he poisoned the old man. As soon as he thought this, the Maharishi’s head pokes out from under the blanket, and he says: “Not a bad thing. Can temporarily replace God.” And then: “Give me your Cadillac.” Ram Dass began to explain that the Cadillac was rented, but the Maharishi did not let up: “How much do you earn a year? How much does a Cadillac cost? Ah... You feel sorry..."

This is how their first meeting took place.

Another episode: Ram Dass and a group of friends went to some Indian shrine and in the evening they returned back to Delhi. And then one of my friends suggests we go to some other place for a while. Ram Dass refuses, but after a few minutes he realizes that this is wrong, and they stop by this place. Maharishi comes out to meet them and asks: “Why did you stay 15 minutes? We’ve already got everything ready.” And he leads them to the table, set for the number of people present. In addition, the same number of sleeping places were prepared. And Ram Dass then thought: “Who made the decision? Who canceled it?

Everyone fell asleep, but Ram Dass could not sleep, he thought about his mother’s illness and with these thoughts he went out into the courtyard, where he met with Maharishi. Maharishi immediately names the mother’s illness in Latin and says: “Don’t worry, she will recover.” Then only Ram Dass realized that he was standing with the REAL, and became a student.

When one of my friends went to see Sai Baba (for which, by the way, he had to sell his apartment), he brought back videotapes on which Sai Baba was filmed at work. When I saw this, I shuddered. I have delusions of grandeur, or what?! I watch how Sai Baba walks among people, collects notes, materializes something, and I myself think: “Lord! Why did you reward him with such a terrible job?” After all, it is clear that when he finishes his work, he goes to his students with great relief.

A friend said this: “He materialized this for this, this for that, and slapped me in the face.” And I say: “You are on behalf of tradition! He appreciated you! That’s why I didn’t give you all sorts of toys. He really did something to you, especially since he allowed you into an internal conversation twice. Twice! What are you doing?! Do you really need him to materialize something and give you something?” By the way, Sai Baba materialized a ring to someone from the group of people with whom my friend was. He was happy.

I saw a film that was imported from America a long time ago. There Sai Baba is very young, curly-haired, singing mantras. There is a crowd of people around – about eight thousand. Women on one side, men on the other, with a passage in the middle. Behind Sai Baba are his portraits and a bowl. He chants mantras, people chant along with him. Amazing! Then he goes into ecstasy, and ashes begin to fall from his hands, and then from all his portraits. These ashes were also brought along with the film. I tried it. It looks like it was freshly made, but it was already a year old.

Another interesting story about Sai Baba was told by a friend of mine named Sidorov.

He was in India, and the Roerichs invited him, which in itself was a great honor. Svyatoslav Nikolaevich Roerich told the following story. Devika, Roerich's wife, once had an earache, and it could not be cured. Naturally, they turned not to anyone, but directly to Sai Baba. He said that if the disease was not karmic, then he would cure it, and indeed he cured it. In gratitude, Svyatoslav Nikolaevich and Devika invited him to their house. And in India, the very invitation to the Roerichs’ house is considered a great honor. Sai Baba came to visit them, they talked, then Devika said: “I heard that your order of fakirs has a shrine, some kind of extraordinary diamond... Is this true?”

Sai Baba confirms this and materializes the diamond. The Roerichs examine the diamond, amazed by its extraordinary size and purity. After completing the inspection, Sai Baba dematerializes this diamond.

Sai Baba immediately responded to the Roerichs’ offer to drink coffee and materialized their favorite type of coffee. We drank coffee. “What next, what next?” - the excited Sidorov asks Svyatoslav Nikolaevich, whose jaw has already dropped by this point in the story. “And then... We didn’t communicate anymore,” Roerich answers. “We weren’t interested in that.” From the point of view of the Roerichs, Sai Baba is simply the head of the order of fakirs, no more and no less. And from the point of view of Sai Baba himself, he visited the house where the Mahatma lived! From the point of view of Sidorov or you and me: “Wow! Materializes – dematerializes!” And for the Roerichs: “Just think! That’s why he is the head of the order of fakirs.”

By the way, they say that Sai Baba has already accurately predicted the time and place of his next incarnation five times and even indicated in which family. The interval between incarnations, as far as I remember, did not exceed five years.

It is said that when Sai Baba was in Europe, during one of the public speaking Some spectator came up with a trick. He suggested that Sai Baba materialize a watch from a certain Swiss company, which he knew for sure was very expensive, in abundance in the world, and every moment of sale of such a watch is recorded: where, who bought it, when, etc. Sai Baba agreed, wrote down the number of the watch and materialized it. The cunning spectator conducted an investigation and found out that 5 minutes before he gave this task to Sai Baba, 20-30 kilometers from the performance site, some Indian bought this watch.

Such a fakir, or rather a senior fakir!

In my practice, I also had meetings with teachers of a different kind. They considered themselves spiritual teachers of all humanity, at a minimum.

I cannot forget how we were invited to participate in a seminar held by a group of American-Canadian Christian missionaries. They, as it turned out, came to teach us Christianity - however, in a very socially adapted, shortened version: four rules and eight commandments.

Imagine, a man comes out - the director of the Canadian Association of Industrialists, the head of a huge corporation, and says that since childhood, you see, he dreamed more than anything else of becoming rich. And he became one. But at the same time he discovered that the children had grown up without him, that his wife was, in general, a stranger... Then he was “starstruck” and he became a believer. By their standards, of course: four rules and eight commandments. He entered into his childish essence and let us teach! In addition, they decided to conduct separate seminars: for men and women. And my companion Olga and I, after working on the play “Yurodia,” prayers, vibrations...

Here's what Olga said: imagine, women gathered, mostly Russians, Ukrainians and, of course, Americans, one of whom was the presenter of this seminar. Topic: “Apocalypse and something else.” At the end, everyone was given the opportunity to speak. Olga’s turn came, and she began to present all her experiences and experiences, and then she noticed that, although the translator was still translating automatically, the American women’s eyes were glazed and it was quite obvious that they were simply not able to understand what she was telling them. Everything is simple for them: four rules and eight commandments. Do this, don’t do this. And that's it!!! What are the areas here? What fools? And they came to “spiritualize” us!

One more example.

American participants in the Kyiv seminar of psychotherapists admitted that they had come to save us from lack of spirituality. True, we must give them credit, they were smart guys. On the second day they were already studying with us. Terribly surprised, they asked: “Igor! Why are you telling us the technique? We are Americans, we steal everything and we will steal this technique of yours too!” I tell them: “Please, for your health, steal! I’ll tell you about five or six more techniques, and then I’ll come up with new ones.” They were terribly surprised that I knew sixteen to eighteen different teaching methods. In America, after all, if you have mastered one technique, then you’re already a great guy, but if you’ve mastered two, you’re a rich guy! They can work using one technique, initially mastered, for the rest of their lives. I tried to explain to them that in the Soviet Union, of course, there was a lot of bad things, but the information was free. All you had to do was get to the place where this information was available, and... learn as much as you wanted. We were young then and wandered around the country in search of where to learn something. All the money was spent on this.

And they came to teach us spirituality!

All the Americans present at the seminar knew one technique, and one of them mastered two. This means that I earned money from the first technique I mastered and allowed myself to master the second one.

My God! On the second day, they were already stealing from us with all their might, and we were giving it back to them. Slavic broad soul! We don't feel sorry! Let's party for everything!!!

Good guys, good. I liked that they arrived, well, just like... like clay, and then they became Clay with capital letters. And we were interested, because this was the first direct contact with foreigners, without GB, that is, GB, of course, was, but it was hidden, and scientific GB was present. And by the way, there are very smart guys there, in various information institutes, etc. They are also hungry and not obsessed with dogma. Free information was also collected throughout the country.

As for me, I think that I was very lucky with my teacher. My first teacher was Arkady Borisovich Rovner. I am sincerely grateful to him, because what he passed on to me has turned into a spiritual tradition - the School. I think he himself wonders how this happened. I think that in this aspect the School passed on its knowledge through A. Rovner, that is, my “School” teacher came through him. This is probably why Arkady always declares that he has nothing to do with the School. Only this: my teacher - and that’s all.

We argued with him about this more than once - both in private and in front of witnesses.

He has first-class training. I always enjoy watching him work. Outwardly, he has a noble appearance, the most intelligent, gentle person, a kind of American professor through and through. But whoever comes close to him, whether in a school situation or in a “teacher-student” relationship, I think, will be able to see his true face - the face of Gurdjieff’s “monster”. And how he plays on personal “buttons”!

I'm glad he's back and taking part in school life. It is a great pleasure to have such a partner in a real Sufi stretch: leader-counter-leader. A. Rovner turned out to be very helpful. He does very timely and correct work, behind which a wise thought is discerned. Somewhere he says that his goal is to destroy what I have created; somewhere – what to save; somewhere – what “Arthur” is for those who graduated from their “School”.

“Arthur,” if you don’t know, is a spiritual community that includes Rovner. Kind of knights Round table! And that's great! He offers what many want to relieve tension - he offers Magic world and a magical path. Read the collection of his conversations, “Merry Crazy People.” What is the essence of the program? In climbing to heights. And this is not a lie. This is such a magical version of the Path offered by A. Rovner. And thanks to him for that!

There is such chewing gum. It's called kindness.

(M. Kimbatbaev)

My Master was and remains Mirzabai Kimbatbaev, a Sufi, a great Master and a wonderful person.

I am often asked how I got to study with Mirzabai. Quite simple. I learned about him from the guys who had already visited him, and through one of them I gave Mirzabai a gift. When he returned, he brought me a skullcap from Mirzabai. Then I sent Mirzabai a staff made of juniper, and he responded to me with a robe as an invitation to come. That's where it all started.

Mirzabai simply amazed me. Within five minutes after meeting, he sees the person, well, right through. Like a virtuoso pianist, he walks through the keys - and there you go: in eight to ten minutes he is ready to give the person the desired projection. And how does he manage to do so?! And all this in such a stupid way, speaking Russian poorly! Masterly! But ask him how he does it, he won’t explain. Fantastic!

When I came to see him, I realized only six to eight hours later that I had long been caught up in the projection of an ideal father. When I was a child, I had problems with my father, and here, please, is the ideal dad – “tutti-muti.” But as soon as he felt that I understood this, he immediately removed the “daddy” projection. And, by the way, he can speak Russian very well. He once quoted one of Lenin’s letters to Plekhanov in purely Russian.

Did Mirzabai even read it? full meeting Lenin’s works, or several volumes, I can’t say for sure: there are many legends about this. But he quoted it in front of me. And it was in the evening. However, the next morning only two people remembered this.

Or this kind of romantic incident.

Evening. Starry sky. And the sky there is really beautiful, the stars are huge. Having looked at them, I said: “An abyss has opened, it’s full of stars; The stars have no number, the bottom of the abyss.” And then the voice of Mirzabai was heard, who said in Russian, completely without an accent: “Yes, Igor, your teacher is Lomonosov, and mine is Ulugbek.” Although he can hardly explain it. Mirzabai has many skills that he cannot explain. After all, he studied in an ancient, very strict tradition. He has acquired knowledge, acquired skills, but cannot explain or rationalize them, or this is not allowed by tradition...

The same is true, by the way, in our tradition. Our guys can do a lot, they do it, but they can’t explain it. Especially those who studied directly with me. You look: they are doing a lot, they are doing it right. And ask them how they do it, they won’t answer. Now, looking at all this, one could say: why spend your life training completely different people in large quantities? But I have clearly defined this issue for myself and am a supporter of bringing “knowledge to the masses.” When I see what a person can be like as a result of being born from society, that is, what he is essentially, I want to somehow help this process. And the question always arises: “How to do this? How to initiate in a person this desire to find himself, to be born from society?” This is always difficult, because society is very comfortable, even if, it seems, life has not gone well, it is still comfortable in society and it is extremely difficult to emerge from it.

For an uninitiated person from the outside, Mirzabai is just a dense little man from the outback of Karakalpakstan. And he’s also holding a mask—they call it a “divan.” The everyday meaning of the word “divan” is a fool. Linguists explained to me that true meaning This word is different: it can be translated as “question man,” that is, a person about whom nothing can be said with certainty. Mirzabai, by the way, has an excellent command of the techniques practical psychology. And only those who understood that in his tricks Mirzabai was showing them, not himself, began to learn from him. They were just starting to learn. And those who did not understand this left.

A person is used to thinking about himself that he is like this, but in reality he is like this, and another, and a third, etc. This is what Mirzabai shows, and this needs to be understood, this needs to be overcome. You missed it and that’s it, you can move on. And those who didn’t slip through must be taught. A practical psychologist should help him: build the right motivation, in particular, to indicate where to go, to help take the first steps... But he still cannot learn anything serious, because he cannot give up the picture of himself.

But this picture is usually false. And therefore what the master shows is unpleasant. “Am I really like that?!” Yes, I'm not like that at all! Yes, it’s not me who gets drunk, it’s me who “gets over it.” And I don’t have diarrhea at all – it’s me “cleansing myself.” But all four of your personal buttons are being activated (these are psychological buttons: sex, buzz, power, money), so that you understand that this is you. That you love to get drunk until you vomit, that you love to get drunk to your heart's content, that you love and cherish your pride, plus reinforcements you really love and are ready to give a lot for them. And you no longer remember where you came, why you came... And that’s it!!!

But this is only until you realize that they are showing you. As soon as I realized that it’s your four buttons that are pressing, the performance is over: Mirzabai (and I know only one of the living masters of this kind) immediately removes all the projections, and real help begins. Because the person is already ready for this, he has woken up, he has caught all four of his buttons. It is important. Otherwise, a person will talk for a long time about morality, about spirituality, about cosmic teachers - and all this is a bluff, while his buttons are pressed, and he does not notice it.

I seemed to be prepared, but no matter how I arrive, Mirzabai will first check all the buttons. All of them, one by one. He will start, for example: “Igor! How's your pussy?" You answer him: “On vacation.” But he doesn’t calm down - he can offer girls, or even himself. He sees that he didn’t get caught on this button, he presses something else - a thrill, for example. And it starts pouring. And not necessarily terrible local vodka, but some wonderful collectible cognac. And toasts begin, table stories, the cup goes around... If you don’t get caught, he will gather guests and let’s praise you. Try not to get caught when everyone just shakes their heads: “Oh, oh, what a man! Oh, oh, how Mirzabai appreciates him!”

Again he didn’t get caught - so he will ask you to give him all the money, down to the last penny. "Why do you need money? - speaks. “I’ll give it to you on the way back.” It seems that I gave everything to him, and he: “You have 30 kopecks in your pocket.” And you say that’s it!”

And if you have passed all the tests, then only the training continues.

He also has a favorite action: as soon as you arrive and he opens the door for you, he asks: “Who are you?” And artistically, with genuine surprise, as if he was seeing you for the first time. I simply answered him: “I am Igor!” No difficulties, because he will pick up the game and confuse your head so much that you won’t even remember who you are.

These are the techniques in this tradition: seemingly simple, but very tough. The first test is to seduce a person. Press all the buttons - and let him sleep, if he is not ready to wake up: let him eat, drink. He makes love, talks about spirituality, if he came and even brought money. Absolutely amazing places in Central Asia is a kind of ecological niche for different spiritual traditions. Moreover, everyone seems to know about their existence: there is a “feast”, there is a “divana”, there are dervishes...

Interesting stories can be seen there. For example, an old man in a skullcap and a robe is walking, and a group of European boys (who have already accepted Islam and live there) follows him, because this old man is their teacher.

The last time we went to Mirzabai together with Arkady. We all sit at the table. Mirzabai felt emotional that it had finally happened - his mother’s ashes were brought to his native land... And then Arkady utters a sacramental phrase: “I wish I could write a book about Mirzabai, but there is not enough factual material...” Five to eight minutes pass, and Mirzabai begins to talk in great detail about my studies during the first three years, what this study actually looked like. I’m sitting there, my jaw dropped. Then, when he finished, I told everyone: “Guys! This is necessary! Mirzabai said this!” They all: “What, what?” Nobody heard anything. And Mirzabai talks like this: he will tell something, insert something. So, everyone heard the inserts, but no one heard the story itself. Such detailed story I have never heard from him in all the years of our communication.

After some time, Mirzabay, right there at the table, explained the principles of dervish life. Moreover, “from” and “to”. And so he looked at Arkady... Like, guy, it seems you wanted practical material, and that “...Plato’s cave, Plato’s cave”... The fact is that Arkady and Dr. Tolik (a well-known surgeon in Tashkent) were always talking about Plato’s cave. They clearly enjoyed it, praising each other, two intelligent people, truly intelligent. And I kept egging them on: “You climbed into Plato’s cave, you don’t see anything.”

And then Mirzabay, in pure Russian, says: “Once a student of Plato...”

Everyone was so excited: he always speaks Russian with an accent, always bad - as if bad, because he gives birth to such pearls from this “as if bad” - you’re amazed. For example, it is known that any excitement is, as it were, jealousy (not of me, not about me), and Mirzabai gave birth to such a gem - “don’t be jealous.” Or again: “Chewing gum. It's called kindness." And this man doesn’t know Russian well! And here’s another: “The question asks, the voice listens.”

So, in pure Russian we heard the following parable. Once a student of Plato declared that he had surpassed his aged teacher. Plato was informed about this, and he proposed to arrange a competition with the student. The student agreed. Then Plato said: “Let each of us prepare poison. And everyone will use any antidote. Whoever stays alive is right, and since I am really old, I will be the first to drink the poison prepared by my student.”

A student of Plato prepared the poison for a whole week; prepared - and in the square, in front of witnesses, as expected, Plato thanks the student, drinks the cup of poison and leaves. A bath with milk was prepared in advance, into which Plato immediately immersed himself. Girls are dancing around him, music is playing. The people listen to how Plato dies, and there seems to be a party going on. Meanwhile, Plato sat in a bath of milk, the milk took all the poison out of him, and the next day he, safe and sound, appeared before the astonished crowd. The student is shocked.

“Now it’s my turn,” says Plato. “But I’m really not as young as you, and it will take me forty days to make the poison.” For these forty days, Plato hires a man and instructs him to bang a hammer on a bucket at night (bale-tap, tut-tap), while he himself has fun: music, girls. The student is told that Plato knocks at night and makes poison. And so for forty days. Mirzabai wonderfully said: “On the fortieth day Plato pours “pure mineral water“(emphasized “mineral”), brings it to the student, the student drinks and dies.”

We had a wonderful trip to Mirzabai and, of course, communicated with him, but to begin to hear him, it takes time and practice. Most people only hear “fill-ins” at first.

I remember when I, as a sixteen-year-old boy, came to the plant, to the machine shop, I could not understand what they wanted from me when they said: “Tram, tararam, tararam, pam, pam, file there...” I: “What?” - “Oh, you, there...”, etc. A little time passed, and I already heard simply: “Give me a file.”

That is, I have experience in this - catching words out of swear words.

So it turns out that everyone is sitting at the table, a person talks openly, but no one hears him. Moreover, on our last visit, Mirzabai talked about everything in great detail.

Here, for example, is such an episode. Mirzabai's master, Yollu, always carried a large bag with him, where completely unexpected things could be found. One day they got on the bus, but there was no money. At the stop, the driver was about to drink tea, and Yollu took a whole kilogram of sugar out of his bag and gave it to the driver. Mirzabay then could not understand why they had to give away all the sugar, but then they rode this bus for free all the time.

They said that some family came to Mirzabai with a child. They were lucky - they met Yollu. He pretended to be completely crazy and gave the child an electric light bulb from his bag that had not burned out. Parents were perplexed for a long time what this meant.

Someone told me that Yollu once staged such a provocation. He made sure that everyone saw how he went to a restaurant and staged a revelry there with the money that compassionate fellow villagers gave him. A real revelry, with dancers. According to their Eastern concepts, just an orgy. After this incident, a group of indignant believers waited for him at the exit of the restaurant. They beat him (so hard as to kill him), then they threw him into an irrigation ditch and left. In the morning these same people come to the market... Yollu dances.

When the GB officers arrived at Mirzabai’s place, they tied us all up, searched us, then let us out one by one, then, of course, took us for interrogation. So, when I was released into the street, one policeman from the cordon asked me for a cigarette and asked: “Why are you going to this Mirzabai? I’ll tell you, Pir lives on our neighboring collective farm, and I myself give him ten dollars every month. How not to give? What if something happens?!”

I remember that I wrote a wonderful explanatory note after the interrogation: “I, such and such, go to Mirzabai because I am interested in the problems of resonance between objective and subjective reality. The knowledge that Mirzabay imparts helps me solve these problems.”

There were good times - scary and romantic. And now you come to Tashkent, you see: Mirzabai lives among them, they don’t really need to take care of him - we hand over the money, we bought an apartment. Educate yourself! No! They are afraid - that's all. Only Doctor Tolik has some purely human contact with Mirzabai. Tolik respects him, because as a surgeon he has seen a lot in his life. Tolik is amazed that a man who has served twelve years has so much good spirits and vitality. Tolik understood something, but the rest simply thought: “He’s working with us!” Thank you! Let’s go listen to some obscene language.” Complete insanity. And they just talk to Mirzabai like he’s a complete idiot. You know, a kind of wild man ended up in the city, everything needs to be explained to him.

Although I told them how I was with Mirzabai at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Then one of those trying to be a student, you see, arranged a test. He threw it somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow on purpose, he simply threw it, he kept doubting: “A master is not a master.” Mirzabay, being in Moscow for the first time, calmly got to where he lived, without any problems. That's just funny. You can't be a little pregnant. You can’t believe a little - either believe it or don’t believe it. I love this man. I saw Mirzabai in different situations, but he was always himself. Always. At the market, at the cemetery, at the Institute of Oriental Studies, in Star City. He was always himself. God bless us all!

One day Mirzabai decided to try prostitutes. "Temptation big city" In the East everything is different, not like here. People living in the provinces are mostly zoophiles, because there are no prostitutes there, dancers (like geishas) are very expensive, and to get married you need a bride price. Therefore, they are often satisfied with goats. And then, therefore, Mirzabai decided to try the “forbidden fruit.” I caught some guy at the bus stop and told him: “I want girls!” He brought him two professionals. They visited him for a week, then demanded money for the work. He told them: “There is no money.” They: “Give me the carpet.” He: “Take it!” I paid – and that’s it! I'm done with this entertainment. He can't get attached to anything. He even smokes different cigarettes every day. This is one of the dervish principles - you can’t get attached to anything. Can you imagine what it would mean if a homeless person became attached to Remy Martin, but no longer reacted to simple moonshine!

When we organized the reburial of Mirzabai’s mother’s ashes, two years had passed since his release from prison, but this was the first time he had returned to his native place after a long break. One might say, he was already buried there. And then he appears. We dressed him up - a Cardin suit, a Cardin coat, a fur hat. According to local standards - deputy minister, no lower. He brings his mother’s ashes from Lithuania itself. And in those parts the monthly salary of a collective farmer is a sack of flour. Mirzabai takes money out of his bag. The whole village greeted him. There was a wake. One of his cousins he said that he knew nothing about Mirzabai’s arrival, but suddenly felt that he had to go (he lives in another city), and arrived on that very day.

In the morning we went to the cemetery. Only men bury. Everything was already ready there - they are not graves, but they are building such a house. They did such an important thing. The house where we stayed was located opposite the half-abandoned house of Mirzabai. I looked and thought: how small this yard is, but once it seemed that it was huge, that other houses were barely visible. It seemed like the whole world was there. We all walked around this village with one boy and admired: “Shambhala! Everything is set up! Fenugreek!" And indeed, it seems that nothing happens by chance. Fenugreek! Everything is set up!

I saw things there that cannot be explained by reason. I think these things happen everywhere, but it's just a question of where you see them and where you don't. There they were visible thanks to the presence of Mirzabai. And without him, of course, I would not have seen it. Shambhala, in a word.

And so the villagers sit and understand that everything that Mirzabai said twelve or thirteen years ago is true, and they laughed at him. You look at people and see: the whole village has brains on the other side. Class! Just great! It was very joyful to watch how these people’s brains fell into place. It seemed that it was not he who came and it was not he who served twelve years.

And how he came back! He has a three-room apartment in Tashkent, he brought his mother’s ashes, he pays for everything. Great!

I remember that once more than two hundred people came to Mirzabai, but only eleven actually studied, and this is how we found out about it. One day Mirzabai takes out towels and gives them to the woman to wash. She washed and hung exactly eleven towels to dry. And then we found out what he said, pointing to these towels: “So many people are studying, and the rest are just driving around.”

I remember how one of my friends, who also studied with Mirzabai, sent a telegram with the following content: “Comrade tourists! Don’t trample the source!” One day a group of such exalted comrades came to Mirzabai to meet him New Year. And she ended up in a prison cell with him. In Biruni, everyone treated Mirzabai well, and so did the police: he helped many, cured someone. When this group arrived, he told the police: “The loafers have arrived. Let's put the camera down. And me too". We celebrated the New Year in a prison cell. They wanted to meet with Mirzabai - they met with Mirzabai, but in prison. After all, the police really locked them up and left to celebrate the New Year.

Mirzabai, of course, loves people mercilessly, mercilessly. I have never seen this kind of love anywhere and ever. Everyone. Such “eagles” came - I don’t know how much strength you need to have! And the form is funny - a fool, village man. True, we accidentally found out that he graduated from school with a gold medal.

At the Sultan Baba mazar, where Mirzabai worked as a master for a long time, entire performances around this were staged, as we later realized, by Mirzabai’s students. For example, we were sitting in this cemetery one day, a man ran up and said to us: “Oh, Mirzabai! I am his school friend. He studied poorly at school, he was a complete fool, but now - wow! Big man!

And another time another man runs up: “Ah-ah! What a smart girl Mirzabai! I am his school friend. He was always an excellent student!”

Once, when we were alone and Mirzabai allowed us to resonate with him (usually he did not allow this), I saw how a team of his students worked. Mirzabai's students who worked there. So one of them, naked to the waist, ran around the cemetery with a hatchet and shouted: “Don’t forget God!” Another collected all the garbage and scraps and took them somewhere on a cart.

Mazar Sultan Baba was Mirzabai's place of work. He hitched a ride there almost every day.

This mazar is an amazing place. During the cotton harvest, the police set up cordons to prevent people from leaving the fields or going to the cemetery. All the same, they broke through. Interesting life goes on there: in one place a sheep is slaughtered and given to the mullah; in another - pilaf is boiled; in the third - shurpa. A strange, in our opinion, party. But the fact is that for Muslims the mazar plays a completely different role than for Christians - a cemetery. The burial itself takes place differently: a clay house is built, the deceased is placed there and walled up. Over time, all this is destroyed and turns to dust.

And this Sultan Baba cemetery is a holy place, Zoroastrians were also buried there.

There are two, two and a half meters of human ashes. There is the tomb of the famous Muslim saint Sultan Baba. Mirzabai took us to the tomb of Sultan Baba. There the baraka (spiritual power of the teachings) of the saint is truly felt.

There is an amazing spring in this cemetery - a hole with a diameter of about eight meters, where fish live: several large ones at the bottom, a layer above - smaller fish, even higher - very small ones, and in the very top layer - even small fish. And you can’t eat this fish. She's poisonous. We were told that some geologists did not believe this, caught several fish at night, fried them and ate them. Everyone died. A small stream flows out of the hole, but the fish doesn’t come out anywhere. The big ones eat the medium ones, the medium ones eat the small ones, etc.

I was convinced from my own experience how much the Sultan Baba mazar means to local residents.

I'd like to check out. August 31. No tickets. I'm waiting for the cash register to open. We talked to some guy. I told him that I came to visit Sultan Baba... The ticket office opened, I went up to the cashier and began to persuade her, pretending to be dying. Then I sat down on the bench so that she could see me, and, fortunately, I kept my attention divided. And out of the corner of my eye I notice that same guy coming out from behind the cash register and signaling for me to come over. Once. That is, if I notice, then I will notice, and if I don’t, it’s my misfortune. I noticed. I'm approaching. He introduces me to the woman, calling her his aunt, and says that when he told her about me, she decided to give me a plane ticket for tomorrow.

They put me in a gas car. We're going to the hotel. She sells me a ticket at a normal price.

I don’t know how it is now, but then there were still these social inheritances, niches for dervishes (I also saw female dervishes), for pirs (a pir is the leader of a Sufi community of the classical type) ... The entire population knows that there are pirs, there are dervishes , there are sofas...

In Central Asia, traditional culture, despite Soviet power, was preserved. On the outside world there was, as it were, a network of spiritual community.

Even a bazaar is also a space structured in a certain way. There is a man sitting at the entrance, another at the exit, and some kind of witch is sitting in the center. You walk through the bazaar and you already know everything, and everyone knows about you.

Once I was flying on a plane next to a very intelligent man from Nukus. We started talking. I shared my impressions of Sultan Baba. And suddenly he says to me: “There is such a person there - Mirzabai. He has the barracks of the Prophet Mohammed.”

Mirzabay, of course, consciously made contact with us, because he has an inner conviction that the old traditions are closing and that his function is to somehow transfer this Knowledge to the West (figuratively speaking).

Mirzabay came to Lithuania with his mother. She lived and died in Lithuania, caring for Lithuanian children on the farm of the children who sheltered her. She did not know either Russian or Lithuanian, but the children absolutely understood her.

After the reburial, they restored the grave - as if she was lying there, they bring flowers there, their grown-up children come there, that is, they left a place where they remember her.

When Mirzabai was arrested, no one needed the old woman. In Vilnius, no one could find a home for her either, but these guys just took her to the village - and that’s all!

Now Mirzabai is sixty-eight years old. On my last visit, he talked a lot and in detail about his Path. He had never done this before. Moreover, he told it absolutely openly, in front of everyone, because he knew for sure that the majority would not hear anything and would not ask, that this information would be squeezed out of consciousness. This is how human psychological defense mechanisms work. That’s why Mirzabay says: “Never a minus, always a plus.” That's the whole theory of causal-positive thinking.

I remember our visit to the local healer. We had dinner, ate pilaf and washed it down with vodka. When there was only the bottom left in the bowl, I took the bowl and ate it all myself. Mirzabai calmly says: “Igor is greedy. Badly". After dinner, everyone went to bed, and then I realized that I had no time for sleep - I urgently needed to run to the wooden house in the garden. I barely made it - a fountain was pouring out of me...

And so on all night! I was completely exhausted, I lost consciousness several times. Okay, I thought of starting the mantra. "I'm here because I don't know." It was already dawn when I realized that the illness was receding, and vodka poured out of me. And only the mantra sounds... It was such a cleansing - so much flew out of me that I probably hadn’t eaten in a month. I’m not even saying that somewhere in me there was a reservoir of vodka, as it turned out! And at dawn, the witch doctor’s son came out of the house and handed me a clean white shirt - this, according to local customs, means initiation into a disciple. Mirzabai was delighted, quickly took off my shirt, put it on himself and let’s show off: “Oh, what a beautiful shirt! Oh, how she suits me!”

Such a master lives in Tashkent, a real Sufi master.

A swamp of spiritual delights lies at the gates of heaven.

(P. Florensky)

For those who don’t know, I’m ready to tell you: I am an “Honored Rabbit of the Soviet Union.” There was a period in my life when I was forced to participate in various experiments conducted under the guise of a research institute.

Oh, what they did to me and others! They were shocked and measured with instruments. Experimented...

Around 1984, there was a team - to disperse all the groups: yogis, karate - everyone. Moreover, if the person did not break, they resorted to meanness: they planted drugs and weapons. Loud trials of the so-called bourgeois “pseudo-leaders” began. And when the clouds had already thickened around me so much that they wouldn’t hire me anywhere, even in private security, one friend from St. Petersburg, a doctor, gave me a phone number and advised me, if things got really tough, to call and say that I would like to take participation in experiments. “They won’t help you in any way, but they won’t put you in jail, because you will seem to be in their system.”

Everything is at your own expense. You go to some city at your own expense, eat at your own expense, etc. These experiments and achievements have nothing to do with spirituality. This applies to various siddhis ( higher abilities), various toys. And I am very pleased that the situation has turned out this way. There I realized that various things about which one hears “aahs” and “oohs” have in fact been known for a long time, and have been experimentally applied in practice for a long time. And you can’t drive away the “bullshit” there!

For example, you need to solve the following problem, which seems simple in appearance: to remove the galvanic skin response to an electric shock (galvanic skin response (GSR) - bioelectrical activity recorded on the surface of the skin). Only! But this is a deep reflexive, automatic reaction of the body.

The situation looks like this: here you are, here are various sensors mounted on you, here in front of you is the oscilloscope screen, and you are watching everything that is happening. Before the experiment begins, you are also pumped up in a certain way. For example: “Oh, Igor Nikolaevich! My device is broken - it only gives the maximum current. How are you? Will you participate or refuse?” They pump it up, that is. “Well,” I say, “let’s, God bless him, I’ll participate, what’s the difference?!” Then, of course, comes the maximum electric shock for this device. And you need to remove the galvanic skin reaction (an instinctive reaction of the body, expressed in a change electrical conductivity skin).

It must be said that few people succeeded in this. I succeeded - I can brag. True, this is not bragging - this is a fact. The conductivity of the skin usually changes dramatically. And I managed to stop her.

Then something more complex begins, when it is necessary to remove the galvanic skin reaction not to an electric shock, but to the threat of such a shock. When you hear: “Attention! Now I’m turning it on...” – but no impact follows. The body, of course, turns on: after all, the experience already exists. Here, I’ll tell you straight, out of our group at that time, I was the only one who succeeded.

There were other experiments. So, they tested my method on me: they studied how certain conditions affect a person, what changes.

Besides me, there were other “rabbits”, of course. One of my friends, for example, liked to have fun with indicators characterizing the activity of his body: pulse rate, pressure, temperature, etc. So he is hung with various sensors, and he begins to tell what his pulse is now, what his pressure is and how they will change now. He, in principle, could change them arbitrarily. These are like this interesting tricks. Although these are very real things.

A psychic is not a superman, but a subhuman, something between an animal and a human. For in order to arouse extrasensory abilities in oneself, one must first of all arouse the animal nature in oneself. And then everything works out easily.

There were a lot of different experiments, and a lot of people were involved in it. And the more I did this, the more sober I became, the more deeply I understood the words of Pavel Florensky about “spiritual charm” (“Iconostasis”), the more I became convinced that all this tinsel had nothing to do with spirituality and therefore there was no need to deal with it on purpose.

This work gave me a lot of acquaintances, communication, and observations. I remember they brought one grandmother from the village. When she met, she held out her hand and introduced herself: “Marya Ivanovna, electrosex.” The fact is that she was not able to learn the word “psychic”. So she became an “electrosex”, although, of course, she was a traditional healer, experienced, skillful.

That’s how we were then heroes of the “scientific front”. This continued for me until 1988. I must say that these programs still exist, they work, moreover, according to my information, they are headed by almost the same people. I know one for sure. By the way, he was a very decent person - the only one who cared about feeding us and creating humane living conditions... He is a technician by education, twice a doctor of science.

But, I repeat again, all this work convinced me that siddhi and spirituality are two different things. Siddhis, all sorts of skills - this is in best case scenario psychotechnics. Compared with psychological problems life is just “mura”, children's toys.

By the way, the military departments, as they began in the 30s, are still very interested in psychology to this day. I personally met with one specialist in the field of military psychology.

An interesting person, and his story is remarkable in its own way. He was sent as a military adviser to India to assist in the reorganization of troops. He arrived at the place - everything seemed to be as usual: barracks, parade ground, etc. He was told how the Indian division was organized, and, in particular, they said that it included a platoon of fakirs. My friend, of course, was surprised and, laughing internally, asked to be introduced to them. They took him to the parade ground podium, and placed a platoon of fakirs so that they could not hear his voice. Our officer was asked to mentally give the command to the platoon: “Attention! Left! Right! All around! - etc. He began to give mental commands, expecting ridicule. Imagine his surprise when the platoon completed them all flawlessly. This, you know, is no laughing matter! Something “clicked” inside him, and he became seriously interested in this phenomenon. Then the Indians took him to some place of power, where a certain transformation happened to him. As a result, he became a specialist in training “super special forces”.

Of course, my friend repeatedly and in detail reported to his immediate superiors about all his research, and when he returned, they first showed him how similar work was carried out in our country. Just imagine: a darkened corridor of a command post, an officer has cartridges with rubber bullets in the clip of his pistol. A soldier runs towards him, the officer shoots (a friend of mine shot 99 out of 100 with a pistol) and cannot hit. And so on several times. Each time the soldier reaches him unharmed and cheerfully reports: “Comrade Major, you are killed.” Can you imagine?! And in India there are fakirs, you see! Yes, we’ve all been fakirs for a long time now! These are the results of special, including psychological, preparation.

There was an illustrative case with the son of another friend of mine. The guy just returned from serving in this kind of special unit, where they train, code, etc. Seems like an ordinary guy?! Looks like it's been decoded?!

He once went to a restaurant with his girlfriend, and eight people approached him - a conflict was forced on him. A fight broke out. At first he controlled himself, but when one of the hooligans hit him with an iron rod, something triggered in the guy. Eyewitnesses said that, while standing, he did a backflip jump, jumping onto the roof telephone booth, after which, no longer able to control himself, he literally scattered these eight: he killed five, severely maimed three. And, it must be said, he was completely acquitted, that is, he was not to blame at all, it was just that a certain code signal worked in him, which turned on the corresponding one built into him during military service program.

Such a code is embedded very deeply into the subconscious. The Japanese say that the code is "under the fifth layer." Encoded man walking on a mission with only one goal in mind. They can catch him, start torturing him or inject him with psychotropic drugs, and he will seem to “split.” Prick more - it will “split” even more! It's just bullshit. “Bullshit” inserted into him by the psychologist who sent him on this task. He will remember himself completely only when he returns from the assignment to the same psychologist, who will remove the previously set code.

When you encounter such phenomena, you immediately realize that all our experiences, our life, our suffering - all this is so superficial!!!

On the other hand, I kept thinking about how to protect a person from such influences, such as the coding described above, etc. And ultimately I came to the conclusion that the spiritual path is precisely the path to freedom. First of all, this is freedom from any We. And since a person is freed from We, it makes no sense to encode him.

Hegel has a wonderful expression: “Appearance is objective.” This terribly outraged V.I. Lenin when he was taking notes, which he called “Philosophical Notebooks.” However, being a practical politician, he used this postulate quite often, and very successfully. But the trouble is that he himself betrayed his teacher and raised a whole cohort of people, one might say, created a tradition within which it was customary to betray their teachers. The direct transmission of the spiritual power of the teaching is a chain of gratitude, and when it breaks, the spiritual death of the teaching occurs.

A kind of turtles that betrayed their shell! But a person who betrays his teacher betrays himself. The tradition founded by Lenin was very tenacious: Stalin betrayed Lenin, Khrushchev betrayed Stalin, Brezhnev betrayed Khrushchev, etc. They betrayed each other faster and faster, until the totalitarian society collapsed. But in a democratic state there can be no traditions. There is a kind of “fluttering” until two main parties are formed and several small ones around for the surroundings. And the political games begin. Moreover, countries with bureaucratic democracies turn out to be more stable politically.

After all, what is “demos”? This is the people. That is, democracy is the power of the people. It is understood that at the top of power is the best part of the people - the so-called spiritual aristocracy. But this is precisely a delusion: power is built into society, and an aristocrat of the spirit is an asocial person, free from society by definition. In general, power and spirituality are incompatible things: to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

There are, of course, a kind of tradition that was originally aimed at politics. A kind of aristocratic mafia. With its own structure, hierarchy, etc. In particular, one of the ideological leaders of the Russian Decembrists was also a Freemason. Of course, he was not in Russia during the uprising, and he did not return back. The tsarist gendarmes were very qualified people, but they were unable to fish him out from abroad.

According to Idris Shah, Freemasons have their roots in Sufism, but in my opinion this is not entirely true, although some Sufis participated in the Freemason movement. And, please note, the Freemasons, who relied to a certain extent on the products of the spiritual tradition, turned out to be tenacious only as a supra- or interstate organization. An attempt to isolate oneself within one state invariably led to degeneration. Ultimately, they came to the interpretation that there is only one true world state - this is the state of the Freemasons.

As for Sufism, it was Idris Shah who first introduced such an expanded interpretation of Sufism as a tradition of all traditions. Everything for him stems from Sufism.

Of course, there have been similar attempts before. At one time, for example, all traditions were reduced to Hermes Trismegistus. This natural desire humanity - find a single source spiritual development, which seems to be intuitively felt.

Interestingly, modern genetic research and generational counting show the possibility that all of humanity descended from at most two couples. Maximum! Thus, Adam and Eve, whatever you call them, really existed. It is interesting, however, that for some reason this fact was quickly supplanted by society. Maybe a couple of publications appeared on this topic, and... that’s it. It would seem like such a discovery!!! But no! Nobody banned this information, but for society it seems to not exist.

Speaking about spiritual traditions, spiritual knowledge, you can apply the following definition: “The truth is one, but it is imposed on many.” And in this aspect it becomes completely clear that knowledge on earth exists only in the form of people. In this sense, man is made of people. And in order to find himself as a person, he must be born, born, born... He must be born three times from two wombs: biological and social. Then only he will find himself as a Man! Este Homo! This is the Man!

On the path of self-knowledge, a person is extremely hampered by crude logic. To know reality, it is necessary to say mathematical language, learn to think with fuzzy sets (when the movement of thought is carried out not from one object to another, but from a certain set of objects taken simultaneously to another such set. There is an opportunity to learn how to do with these sets, without parsing them into separate structures, all familiar logical operations, using the principle of stereovisualization in internal space). From a substantive point of view, this is what we mean by the concept of “volume”. Linear logic tends to limit one thing from another and ultimately reduces everything to a point. You need to remember this and restructure your thinking.

Therefore, work to achieve the integrity of the space of consciousness is very useful. It is necessary to work with such volumes as “fuzzy sets”. Without mastering this way of thinking - in fuzzy sets - a person will become a formalist, whether he wants it or not. This is a very subtle thing that is difficult to learn, and even more difficult to teach. But it is possible.

You need to understand that when in various ways thinking - linear, circular, systemic, etc. – there is a space between accuracy and depth, and this is the space of reality. Science is flawed because it sacrifices depth for accuracy, and art is flawed because it sacrifices accuracy for depth. The real content is between them, on the border. And only when a person learns to operate with vaguely delimited volumes, fuzzy sets, only then will the path of sensing what is happening in reality open to him. The whole parable is not to fall in one direction or the other - to maintain balance. This is called the “middle way”.

The actual thing is to live without death, and not to live immortally.

(I. Kalinauskas)

Once a Soviet plane was landed in Japan. The Japanese specially built an airfield exactly like ours - the same call signs and so on. But a fighter is guided only by instruments, the windows are just that... for sensations. The master and wingman were landing. But by some miracle the presenter managed to react, something flashed from the wrong side, and still did not sit down. And the slave sat down.

Here's a bright and real example life in different streams of time: one has time to react to the situation, because for him time is stretched out, and the other does not have time, because for him it is only an imperceptible moment.

There were cases when people, sitting in a chair, caught fire and burned. This is a poltergeist, subtle entities. There was such a phenomenal case when a woman burned, but her clothes remained intact. But it was the other way around: clothes burned, but people didn’t even get burns. He explains similar and other phenomena in his book “ Physical entity time" Alfred Beach, putting forward the following hypothesis: "Time depends not only on gravity and speed, but also on internal energy."

Beach distinguishes the intensity of temporal processes in different local systems. He writes: “The characteristics of the system’s own time are influenced by the internal energy processes of the object.” Therefore in a certain state For one person, a day is an endless length, but for another it is a moment that flies by and is not noticed. Thus, by mastering the energy of his body as a local system, a person can learn to manage his own, as they say, subjective time. Isn't this the main key to longevity?!

Beach cites a remarkable case. In Belarus, fifteen to twenty years ago, during training flights, a fighter plane disappeared from radar screens. Gone as if it never happened. They suspected an accident and searched, but found nothing. And exactly 24 hours later the plane reappeared on the radar screens, as if nothing had happened, requested landing and landed safely. When they began to tell the pilot that he had been away for a whole day, he was indignant - there was no point in pranking me! The pilot said that he didn’t notice anything special: well, he flew into a cloud, well, the instruments fluttered around for a while... and then he landed.

Explaining this incident, Beach hypothesized that the pilot did not encounter an ordinary cloud, but some specific formation, which is called the “native of the Universe.” In such formations the speed of time is much higher. Therefore, a day passed on the ground, and for the pilot, subjectively, twenty to thirty seconds, no more.

There was also an officially recorded case when a platoon of soldiers, in front of thirty witnesses, entered a cloud and disappeared. One cruise ship disappeared and appeared in the same place only a year later. The crew and passengers survived. Before disappearing, the ship sent out an SOS signal. And exactly a year later they canceled it: they say, everything is in order, the storm has subsided, everyone is alive, the ship is in good order.

There was such a case in Solovki. Locals they warned the visitor not to go to a certain forest. He did not heed the persuasion, went... and left there only a month later, although he himself was sure that only a few hours had passed.

I remember when Boris Tiraspolsky (poet, writer, translator, now a Sufi sheikh) and I were interested in various studies, he told me: “Igor! Our task is to learn how to manage time. It's possible! I was later convinced many times that Boris was absolutely right. This technology can be mastered consciously, but, as the examples listed above show, it can also happen spontaneously.

Remember, I told you how Sai Baba materialized an expensive watch at the request of a viewer? Beach also explains this by different rates of time. This is also confirmed by the experiment with Juna, when she read the note fifteen minutes before it was written. The effects of levitation are explained in the same way. I remember coming to Sergei Grazhdankin (quite a famous person in a spiritual get-together), I tell him: “I experienced that people can fly!”, and he answers me: “That’s just a by-product.” Then he stopped drinking tea for a minute, a blue space opened up in front of me, in which I clearly saw flying people. Then the space seemed to close. But Sergei is still sitting, drinking tea and eating crackers.

However, I would like to warn you: when I suggest going into outer space in a physical body, I do not mean levitation or anything like that. You must first recognize yourself as a physical body. After all a common person does not realize - he does not have such reflection - that he is (among other things) a physical body.

Characteristics of this physical body may change, which is confirmed by Beach’s hypotheses. Moreover, I became interested in him precisely because in his book one can find a description of facts that I discovered empirically.

By practicing psychoenergetics, a person changes not only psychologically and biologically, but also as a physical body. Accordingly, its relationship with environment at the level of physics. But the fact of the matter is that a person, as a rule, is not aware of himself as a physical body. And this needs to be done - to realize that I am a physical body in the Universe, the same as a chair, table, stone, etc. A physical body with certain characteristics.

By the way, greatest success in the study of various psychophysical phenomena it was precisely scientists who a priori considered man as a physical body, and therefore, initially studied him by physical methods. Only this made it possible to construct, for example, a device showing the human aura. Indeed, a person’s aura is demonstrated in real time on the monitor screen in color.

But when you manage to realize yourself as a physical body, then you can go into outer space. Not literally, of course, to “throw” yourself into space, but to experience being yourself as a physical body in space. This is very different from realizing oneself as “a bug on a cockroach called Earth.”

Be afraid of your desires, for they will come true.

(Wisdom of the Ancients)

Lately I have been thinking more and more often about motivation: how, from what place should a person want a second and third birth? After all, human life actually gives much more possibilities, how average person able to implement. I would really like you to have enough motivation to survive the second, and then the third birth until the moment when a monument is erected for you in the cemetery. But the choice is yours!

From time to time, my colleagues start an argument with me: “What right do you have to confuse people and distort their destiny? What right do you have to take on such responsibility? They don’t know what they’re doing!!!” etc.

I always answer this the same way:

- firstly, this right is given to me by the person himself by his appeal;

– secondly, I never propose to do something that a person does not have.

Of course, in any case, a person has one life and he has the right to build it the way he wants. At the same time, I have always said and continue to say that life in society is quite comfortable, and to a certain extent, the so-called spiritual life is no better, even poorer in some ways. Chances of succeeding in social life and the chances of succeeding on the Path do not always coincide. Everyone makes their own choice.

I met a guy who was dying due to congenital heart disease, but did not want to have an artificial valve implanted in his heart. I convinced him that there was nothing terrible about it: yes, there would be an artificial valve, but life would be prolonged. "No! – the guy answered me. “I will either live like a normal person or die like a normal person.” It was his choice, the choice of a courageous man who, while serving in the army in peacetime, was awarded a military order. He chose death. But death is that side of existence that is usually repressed by consciousness, as if ignored.

The rigidity of the choice is what distinguishes the Path from the Shelter. I deliberately separated two concepts in the book - “refuge” and “path”, so that there was extreme clarity. It does not happen that a person, having set out on the Path, easily passes it, picking flowers and berries. On any path there are stages associated with the utmost tension of spiritual and physical strength, and there must be enough of them.

There is no need to try to create your own lightweight version of the Path. It happened before. But, I warn you, all attempts to create a lightweight, accelerated version of achieving enlightenment end in the creation of a sect. Everyone’s path, of course, is individual, but the main stages are still the same. And to make it more fun, I would like to remember the Sufi parable about Jesus.

One day Issa-ibn-Mariam is walking and sees a group worried people. He asks them: “What are you so concerned about?” They answer him: “You see, we have learned that there is hell, and now we are thinking about how to avoid it.”

Issa ibn Mariam goes further. Sees the group cheerful people who drink, eat, dance, sing and have fun. He asks them: “What is the reason for the fun?” They answer: “You see, we have learned what the truth is, and now neither heaven nor hell is important to us.”

The problem of choice is not so simple. After all, when making a choice, a person must be sure that this is his own choice, not imposed on him by another “I’m like us” - friends, family, society, etc. So I encourage you to become free, to be free from your conditioning various kinds We (from conditioning, not from We). Only then do they truly open up own desires and aspirations. Only then, in the process of choice, does it become possible to separate what is important for oneself from what is secondary.

Anyone who has read Lobsang Rampa’s book “The Third Eye” remembers the suffering he had to go through when he went to a monastery at the age of seven - physical pain, insults... But he endured, because more than anything else he was afraid of being expelled from the monastery and not to comprehend what he considered the main thing for himself.

This only happens when a person has a real motive, in accordance with which he makes his choice.

In terms of spirituality, by the way, the right choice The well-developed social programs help a lot. Because if a person is lucky and has worked out all his social programs, then he has a chance. If not, then all sorts of tears, dreams, hysterics begin... And even worse - a kind of “stopper”, a short circuit, may occur. That is, a person has reached a certain stage, and then that’s it, there is no further movement. This is scary!

For example, a guy studied with us alone. Summer seminar is coming up. And then he is suddenly offered a job, which he dreamed of for three years after graduating from the Institute of Culture. He walked, asked, sought, and then waved his hand. And here you go! The guy came running to me and asked: “What should I do?” I tell him: “What are you asking about? You seem to be an adult! The elementary problem of choice stands before you: either this way or the other way!” That's it!

Reality jokes and helps: as long as the person moves! But if you decide not to move, then reality preserves you, “canned food” – it is “canned food”. Then reality is not interesting to you.

Here's another case. Studied with us in Daugavpils in theater studio two guys from Leningrad. One of them, disappointed, decided to quit his studies and return back to his home factory. Returned. One day he is walking through the factory yard and meets an acquaintance. He asks him: “Where have you been? You were on vacation, or what?!” But a lot of time has passed - a year. This guy took a week off at his own expense and came to us in Daugavpils to tell us! It’s amazing: training at the studio theater, and our nightly vigils with interesting people, and novels, and roles... but at his factory everything is still the same. Nobody even noticed anything. Then he understood the meaning of the phrase that people sleep. He left after all. But thank you for coming and sharing.

Thus, the man had a chance to change his life, but he did not use it. And some people have no chance at all!

The most important thing is to knock out the common idea that, “everything is given to everyone, everyone will be saved, everyone has an immortal soul,” etc. For a person to wake up! For a person to shout: “Guard! Fire!" And this is very difficult!

If you provide help to another (when he asks, of course), then the main thing is to properly motivate the person. He has motivation - he will do it, he will advance. If there is no motivation, then there is no progress. The fact is that each person, in accordance with his biography, of course, has an extremely narrow set of motives. And it is very difficult for him to motivate another, since he also has a narrow, but his own set of motives. Everyone seems to have the desire, but real motivation is lacking. And it is very difficult to offer your motive to another person. He has his own set of motives revealed to him. And it may seem that this is what he should want, but in fact he this question not interested at all. This is an extremely important link in the work of practical psychologists: to offer a person a motive that is realistic for him. And then the energy of frustration, which neuroticized him, will become the energy of movement towards the goal. A person, as a rule, understands that the energy that frustrates him can be used, but he does not know what he needs to want for this. And the person becomes neurotic and begins to think that he is unlucky, that life has not worked out for him, not realizing that in order to realize energy, another motivation is needed. Then what frustrated a person will turn into a huge force that will carry him in the right direction.

Is not new problem. Don't think that it was invented modern psychologists, – it has existed from time immemorial and they have been doing it for a long time. Zen Buddhists, Sufis and Hasidim understood these problems best. It’s interesting that they all seem to be schismatics: Zen Buddhists broke away from Buddhists; Sufis are dissenters in Islam; Hasidim are schismatics in Judaism. But they were all practical psychologists who worked with people, in contrast to the ministers of basic religions, who dealt mainly with rites and rituals, but not with people directly.

Hasidim still exist today, but they are not the same Hasidim. They also slipped into rituals. There are no tzadiks! Tzaddik are masters, teachers. During their lifetime they were always persecuted so as not to undermine the foundations of the rigid cult system. The same is with the Sufis - they were often persecuted by Muslims; Buddhists didn't like Zen Buddhists very much either. In Christianity, the church for a long time did not accept holy fools. But, on the other hand, what can you expect from a church that has long ago sold itself to the state?! But the schismatics I listed were practical psychologists. Therefore, many legends and parables have been preserved about their activities. They helped people, people remembered them.