---

How God Can Be Cognized/Previous Lives and Beginning of This One

---

Previous Lives and Beginning of This One

I remember my two previous incarnations.

Of course, I had other incarnations before, but those earlier human incarnations were too “common” and “plain” to mention. However, they prepared me for the next ones.

In the first of these last two incarnations I was a chieftain of an Indian tribe in Cuba. That means that the experience of the previous lives had already supplied me with the necessary amount of personal power for becoming a leader. Such features continued to strengthen during the chieftain’s life. The main feature of a good chief — caring for others — was also growing.

I intentionally emphasize these details now. We are sent to the Earth by our Highest Teacher — the Creator — not just to live, to enjoy, and to suffer. We all get here from the world of non-material living energies in order to develop ourselves.

So, I would like to illustrate, by my own example, how it happens.

The next incarnation (male again) was in Germany at the time of the Reformation. I received a medical education (continuing the line of caring). But when the struggle for liberation from the absolute power of the degraded Catholic Church started — I took up arms and fought as one of the closest associates of Martin Luther.

The next episode was important from the karmic standpoint (i.e. from the point of formation of the following destiny-karma). During defense of an estate I was shooting at attackers. One of them was wounded by me in his leg; another one caught my bullet in his breast. In the next chapters, I will tell about the consequences.

I was killed in one of the next battles.

In this life God gave me a male body again. (It shows that the features which are more favorable to develop in female bodies had been mastered by me before the last three incarnations). The Creator placed me in modern Saint Petersburg — one of the intellectual centers of Russia.

I will now tell about my family. My mother was a doctor (it was necessary for supporting my interest in medicine, in helping people). My father was a typical choleric character, short-tempered with reckless actions at times, a friend of drunkards though he himself was not a drunkard, a son of kulak that was dispossessioned by Bolsheviks. He was eager to strive together with Bolsheviks, but they threw him out as a son of kulak. He managed, however, to participate in the infamous war against Finns and was very proud of it. He was a member of the Communist Party and a “militant atheist”.

Nevertheless, he showed me not only the example of what one should not be. There were some light features in him — namely, love for nature, although it was peculiar.

He accustomed me since childhood to dawns upon a lake in reeds, to water splashes under the boat’s bottom, to dusk with woodcocks and singing of thrushes, to nights at a fire, to snow creaking under skis in winter.

But his love for nature had sadistic elements. All his numerous contacts with nature were aimed at killing: he was a fisherman, a hunter who did not take into account the right of other beings to live — and taught me the same.

So, we both were admiring the beauty of nature and its inhabitants… including the moments when they were suffering and dying maimed by us.

I remember how I was caressing them wishing them pleasure sincerely! But then the eyes of my victim grew dim and I, proud of a “trophy”, put it into the rucksack. Love and cruelty existed together. But it was sadism, the feature of the lowest primitives! How much I suffered later on, experiencing all it anew when I matured and understood it!

Yes, in those years the ability to feel compassion was not present in me — as well as in most people around me.

These are some other memories about my father: when he got weak shortly before his death, demons began to torment him with terrible experiences like nightmares which he perceived as real. I — well acquainted at that time with mystical phenomena — tried to explain it to him. I said: you play now with demons, but turn to God! Look for God! Try!

Then for the first time he was not indignant at my religiosity: he saw that I was right. He even made some efforts… But it was too late. He told me bitterly: “Now it’s too late for me…”

… Years after my father’s death, I was skiing once through the places where we had gone fishing and recalled the beauty of those dawns in a boat, and thanked my father mentally for all of it… And suddenly his voice sounded:

“Do you still remember me, sonny?…”

“Peace to you, dad! Come here again to become better!*”

… I spent all my childhood with my grandmother — a spiteful person who was constantly angry, blaming and hating people around. Her characteristic feature was inner dialogue going with such emotions. She was so much absorbed in it that it often resulted in outbursts of anger when she shouted damnations to the “interlocutor”, especially when she was alone.

Her profession was a schoolteacher…

My grandmother also played a very important role in my life by showing me an example of what I should not be.

These are some of my brightest memories from the school: a schoolmistress beating children with a big ruler till they bled; another schoolmistress explaining during the entire lesson that multiplication by zero gives the number itself and that since this is incomprehensible, one just needs to believe it. So we, taught to believe, believed her.

I also remember one of my coevals: he always voluntarily took the part of a “traitor” in all boyish “military” games. It would be interesting to find out what his past lives were…

… I had the desire to help everyone since early years. Even in games I liked to dig channels between puddles and make streambeds deeper: “to help the water to run”. It seemed so natural to me… And I was stupefied when other children seeing running water were trying to block it with stones, dirt…

After the university and postgraduate study I, being more mature, had a natural desire to help everybody. I always gave with pleasure a lift when driving my car — free of charge — or when seeing someone hauling, loading, unloading — even strangers — it was natural for me to join and to help them.

Owing to this trait, almost everyone respected and liked me. My friends even gave me the nickname Guru — for the mentioned feature, for my beard, and for my wide biological and medical knowledge, which I gladly shared with others.

But at that time I knew nothing about real spirituality yet. I became a true Guru — i.e. a spiritual leader who has cognized God and has the ability of leading people to Him — much later, after decades of years…

… For the first time I showed my “character” and readiness to stand against “totalitarianism” in the fifth grade at school*. I stood up for the right of combing the hair back, not forth as all boys were obliged to do. The head of studies and the director of the school had a “conversation” with me, called my parents to the school… But I — alone, little — won! I was the only one of the schoolboys with hair combed back!

The second conflict happened when I decided to use a fountain-pen instead of a dip pen which requires an inkwell. (At that time fountain-pens were a novelty). And in the end I defended my right not to be like others!

The next child’s feat was in the middle of the ninth grade. At that time a school education that would last for 11 years was introduced instead of the traditional 10 years education. However, at this age and for the first time, one of the features developed in my previous lives began to manifest — the ability to live intensively.

So I moved to an evening school*, which still had the 10^th grade education, and went to work in a medical institute: to wash floors and windows, to give injections to rats, to look after dogs. It was not easy to move from a regular school to an evening school: it was too extraordinary. Besides that, the administration of the school did not want to let a good pupil leave. Yet I won again: my skills of a warrior developed in the previous lives manifested themselves!

I moved to a new school, but the differences in the study programs were significant, and I had to work hard to overcome my “lags” in studying.

In this way God started to train me for intensive intellectual work.

This tendency continued: when applying at the university I had a lack of 0.5 points to be enrolled to the full-time form of studying, but was accepted to the evening (part-time) faculty. Studying at the evening faculty lasted 6 years, unlike 5 years in the full-time faculty. So, in the second year of studying I moved to the full-time faculty. Again there were “lags” in the program that I had to overcome, there was endless overwork, but I achieved victory!

I studied to be a biologist-zoologist-ecologist — this line of development established in me by my father since childhood proved to be very useful later on…

I struggled in the university as well. Once the KGB arranged a provocation for the students by suggesting: let’s speak about the Komsomol*, about its disadvantages, about how we can make it better… They offered “open debates”.

I had a speech and said everything I thought about the Komsomol.

For this speech I was nearly dismissed from the university but the students’ fellowship defended me. So I was just reprimanded for “thoughtless expression”.

But after that case, the KGB opened a file on me…

… I got interested in philosophy since the university’s lectures on Marxism-Leninism: I quickly realized that “something was wrong” there, and after gaining a deeper understanding with the help of many books I became certain that everything was wrong there. Existentialism with its main question of the meaning of life appealed to me.

Yet, I was very far from the religious answer to this question: there were no real religious people around me!

I received a lot of help in understanding the political matters from Gennady Andreevich Shichko — a fervent fighter against any lie, any baseness. He was the first one in our country to argue against Stalin’s policy of “total alcoholization” of the population. He began to organize sobriety clubs, to treat alcoholism.

The Communist Party assailed him: he was blamed for “extremism”, “attempts to undermine the state economy”, and so on. But he withstood!

… One of my distinguishing features developed in the past life in Germany was a striving for utmost scrupulosity. It became my credo — the main principle of life. I was as thorough in this regard as I could be. And I expected the same from others.

Once during a repast on some celebration, a playful opinion poll was arranged: what do you value most in:

a) men;

b) women.

About men, there were such answers as wit, force, etc.

About women, slightly drunk men noted various parts of their bodies.

My reply in both cases was: “Scrupulosity.”

When answers were read aloud, everyone tried to guess who gave the current answer. I was identified without a problem.

But now with shame I see the defects of my “scrupulosity” of those days…

… Scrupulosity can only be a feature of a mature person — a person who has included God in his or her own outlook and has understood the meaning of life. Only such a person can accept scrupulosity as an absolute credo — as a basic principle of life, which must be fulfilled even to the detriment of oneself if necessary. Only such a person may be considered as a pure soul, worthy of approaching God.

In those years, I lived in ethical blindness. I considered my scrupulosity only in regard to people. But what about animals?

How did a worm suffer stuck onto my fish-hook?

Or how did a fish suffer thrown onto the boat’s bottom to die?

Or a bird wounded by my shots?

Yes, most of us live in blind indifference to the sufferings of our victims…

In this way we create pain for ourselves — in a future destiny. And if we do not repent in time, do not reform, then God will give us the same experience of pain to make us understand what it is, and through this understanding He will teach us to be compassionate to the pain of other beings.

It is called the law of karma — the law of cause-and-effect in destiny formation. I will demonstrate it below on my own mistakes and pains…

… After graduating from the university I hardly (because of the KGB’s meddling) entered the post-graduate courses in a medical institute (medicine again!). The subject of my thesis was the influence of various factors on psyche formation.

On the one hand, three years of study were spent in reading a lot of literature on psychology, psychiatry, and physiology and in getting experience of scientific experimentation. On the other hand — again there was overwork on the background of contacts with a scientific supervisor-tyrant. He intentionally humiliated subordinates — to make them “respect” him. One of the female employees committed suicide at that time.

… In those years the Communist Party conducted another anti-Semitic campaign. They launched a cleansing on state enterprises disguising it as “staff reduction”: the number of staff positions were reduced by a directive “from above” and then restored back. The dismissed employees were mainly Jews. After dismissal it was hard for them to find a new job given their fifth point (the fifth field in the standard application form where one has to fill in one’s ethnicity). Moreover, Jews were not allowed to emigrate from the country in those times…

And it was done on the background of hypocritical blaming of fascism, of an unceasing propaganda lying about the “brotherhood of nations in the USSR”.

I experienced their pain as my own.

My Jewish fellow-student — a well-cultured and very intelligent young man — after graduating from the university got an obligatory assignment to the position… of a laboratory assistant in a small town. He had to serve post-graduates who talked in an obscene language and came to work drunk…