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How God Can Be Cognized/Orthodox Church Stage

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Orthodox Church Stage

So, two of us left. We worked in a medical institute. We dedicated all our spare time 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 sick 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 the other reality through us. Often they began to seek the truth, which was forbidden in our country at that time.

But there was another kind of reaction. For example, we asked at the next day after the session:

“Has it helped you?”

“Ah, don’t make a fool of me! 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 in those years even a simple act of giving or selling religious literature was regarded as “ideological sabotage from the West”. It was the 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 or she 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”.

They believe, for example, that Jews are damned forever because 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 the monotheistic line of the religious outlook established by the Jewish prophets and confirmed by Jesus Christ)…

… So we became Christians, and it was necessary to receive baptism.

Within our field of view there was only the Orthodox Church. But it was a problem to receive baptism in it in those years. The KGB required clergymen to obligatory register all people receiving baptism. These lists were studied in the 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 a 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 began to master mental quietness, felt flows of sacred energy emanated from some icons.

With its help we accustomed ourselves to be watchful about our deeds, words, and thoughts — to feel responsibility for our 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 fully experience the power of Holy Communion, when the body is filled from within with the subtlest joy of the happened Touch. Frequent, even every day communions had a special effect.

… We got acquainted with other seekers and formed a group of associates united by the aspiration to cognize God and the eagerness to transform ourselves 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 never leave you — not for a single minute!

“Joy should take residence in you! And nothing should ever darken this joy! Let the light of this joy stream from your eyes — the light of joy of the soul!

“Do not dare to 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, and loves!

“I want you to think of Me constantly — with love, joy, and light in the soul! I will help you every minute to experience Me in everything; I will direct your eyes and show Myself in all manifestations of life! Love is also Me: love of parents, relatives, beloved men and women. You should experience this, rather than just understand! I am your love for 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 result, 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. They all are people! All this is I! All this is not accidental! You have to understand every person, feel his or her connection with your destiny, with Me in your destiny, and accept his or her presence in your life as Me Who teaches you!

“Try to keep this in mind! 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 go through you 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 were before you came to Me? Learn to feel another person through this, as if it is you who is sitting in this ruined, contaminated material 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 be 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 you or arouse a 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 something, but your head must be thinking of Me and your heart must be brimming with love for 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 the heart! Let the meaning of these words penetrate deeply inside you!

“I am giving you the following 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 the 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 a bioenergetical darkening in the neck of an employee in our institute and told her that I saw she was sick with angina. She — a physician — was amazed with this miracle and told her friends about it. 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: shook my hand and apologized that he could not help.

Some time later he, too, ran into trouble. His daughter died and a burial service was arranged in a church. It was reported to the KGB; he was fired and died of infarction.

… After my dismissal I felt that there was God’s Will behind it: He did me good by setting the KGB against me. I accepted this event more calmly than other people would have, 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 out!!!”

He expected violent reactions from me. But I was already a Christian and a 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 my father’s heart. I managed to move it away and asked God to give my father an 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 he stood up… without the body.

* * *

… After the dismissal with a 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 a lot of trouble I got a position as a laboratory assistant in a botanic garden. My job was to water the plants and to sweep the walks. I dined under a banana tree and 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 my spare time in libraries. Now I did not read medical works but spiritual literature. The strongest impression I gained from Philokalia [22,30], the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching [20], and the books of G.I.Gurdjieff’s School [62 and other].

Being adherents of the Orthodoxy, we strictly observed all its fasts. Of course we understood that the fast was intended and had to be observed not as a simple limitation of nourishment but first of all as spiritual efforts of higher than usual level.

And one Lent 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 Who 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 had to create a spiritual School and that all its students would have to give up drinking any kind of alcohol. Then He said:

“Now, you may eat!”

And left us overfilled with joy of such a 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 the 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 the New Year? … And they got to the hospital with symptoms of a strange sickness like an acute infectious disease.

… After some time, the KGB informed the direction of the botanic garden that they had employed “a notorious sectarian”. Soon all the staff came to know about it. People started to come to look at the “notorious sectarian” as coming to an excursion. I understood that it was time to quit and retired.

I got a job as a stoker in the 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 my leg’s joint. The pain was so severe that I had to lie in bed.

“Lord, why?”

“You have to repent!”

I analyzed again all the deeds done 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 an analysis of the past incarnation and He showed me what I 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 the shot to the leg — that pain which I had already, and for the shot to the chest — a cut wound in my chest from hooligans in the village where I worked.

I thanked the Lord, and the leg recovered very quickly.

… Every one of you may think now what he or she would have done after receiving such information…

… I was not used to giving up when difficulties arose and I wanted to quickly get rid of all the burdens of the past that 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 myself in the hospital — and went to seek these hooligans.

I approached one group of alcoholics — no, they did not attack me, went to another group — again they did not attack me, went to the third, to the fourth — nothing again!

“Lord, what is the matter?!”

“It’s all right, relax! You have made the correct decision, and I score up your mental engagement as a 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. Students of the college came to me, asked various questions. I answered many of them from the religious standpoint. The direction got to know about this, and it caused dismay.

At that time a pipe broke. I was dismissed due to the “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, Galina Vaver and I worked in the forestry with alcoholics. Then we worked as pickers of medicinal herbs in a drugstore, then — in a 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 sessions demons were driven out of the sick. They could 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 the 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, — you have to use a language common to all. 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 by observing this principle will you be able to help such people. You should not “edify” anyone now, you should just love them, forgiving them for everything, without focusing attention on anything, and then help as much as possible.

“This is the general principle of work that must be strictly followed in absolutely all cases. Then any disharmony will be eliminated.

“So, first is anahata. Pay maximum attention to it. 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 opportunities for developing anahata.

“Energy depletion during the healing process expands and strengthens your energy capacities, which allows channeling 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 a higher qualification.

“The work with energy also calls for tenderness, the 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 they are composed of and be able to “dismantle” oneself into separate parts and mechanisms — in order to “assemble” them later into one whole and use this “machine” of the organism with one’s own purposes.

“The system of chakras itself must be well-arranged too. Then the work will proceed automatically.

“You know that each person has a system of chakras. The chakras are links of one chain constituting one large energy system. Each chakra has the miraculous ability to ensure penetration into other planes of the universe.

“With the help of the chakras one can shift oneself 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 to us.

For example, in a monastery the rites of “exorcism” were performed. These rites are 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 exits from the ill inside the temple, it enters when the ill appears 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 against you.

But it is the energy of the emotions of hatred and fear that is consonant to demons and is a pleasant food to them…

Demons enter human bodies by the Will of God — and exit by His Will. They exit when the person withstands this trial by giving up hatred, fear, egoism and starts 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.

A direct observation of the phenomenon taking place in the non-material world in Protestant churches during the consecration of bread and wine demonstrated that it is the same as that which happens in Orthodox churches during the consecration of Presanctified Gifts. Thus the statement of the Orthodox that Protestants allegedly “lost the Sacraments” is baseless: God gives His Love to all who aspire to Him!

… From a certain point, I decided for myself: I am a Christian but do not belong to any of the existing Churches. I belong to Christ!

* * *

In the Pskov-Pechorsky male monastery in the Pskov region there lived a monk named Savva. I had an opportunity 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 women came to him from Gatchina — a suburb of Saint Petersburg. They met him in a corridor. He greeted them and asked:

“Where do you come from?”

“From Petersburg”.

“Really? I thought you were from Gatchina. Well, then I, too, err sometimes…”

When he left his 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 again…

… Another monk from this monastery who became famous in these years was Ioann Krestyankin. Formerly he was married, had children, received the education of a physician and served as an army doctor during World War II. But he 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 another kind: it was an intense field of blissful love of the 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 the eyes…

I knew Ioann Krestyankin very well, visited him in the monastery. Years later he came as a pure consciousness to visit me. And always he repeated to me the same advice in different ways:

“Beware! There are so many enemies around you! Save yourself: only then will you serve deserving people!”