Chapter 12. From Revelation to Foundation
By that spring, when the revelation began, another unhappy change had taken place in my life. My friends had all but disappeared from it.
They had grown up, they had new interests, new roads had opened up before them. Gradually, one by one, they disappeared from my horizon. The last one who still appeared from time to time was Natasha. But one day she came for the last time, even though we didn't know it then. Vitalik served in the army that year. When he returned, he visited me only once or twice. Then he came to my mum several times to borrow money. He began to drink, and I occasionally received news that he was seen drunk in the city. Now I don't know anything about him for a long time. Even my cousins Sasha and Dima, who a year ago were looking at books on magic with burning eyes and listening to the little I told them about it, did not appear now.
On the one hand, it was all very sad. On the other hand, in my anguish associated with fear, I did not feel losses as sharply as I probably would have felt under other circumstances. I just felt very bad, and communicating with friends did not make my condition any easier. I understood that I was gradually left alone, but I did not have enough strength to concentrate on it and suffer about it.
At some point, I discovered an astounding thing. Everyone I had treated well was gone, and the only person left was the one I had treated the worst. It was Andrei. True, shortly before that we had managed to find a common language, — but my friend, to put it mildly, was still far from a gift. I think he wasn't too excited about me either. Nevertheless, we kept in touch, even in the worst of times for me.
And when the revelation began, it turned out that I had no one to tell about it but him. Not to my parents. Given the way my relationship with them was going at the time, that would hardly have been a wise move.
In fact, looking back at the situation at the time, I had to admit that it didn't look very encouraging. Father's drinking and scandals. Constant conflicts with my mum in an attempt to keep her from going his way. Relationships with relatives that left a lot to be desired. The departure of friends. Continued search for myself, which led me to the dubious path of fascination with magic. Finally, the constant, exhausting fear that made me say goodbye to life every day. It was as if I found myself in a swamp, where it was gloomy and creepy, where at any moment the mire could grab you by the legs, where you could wander for a long time, but never find a way out on solid ground. And it is against this background that the revelation comes upon me, with its overwhelming tasks and the same overwhelming responsibility.
Someone will ask — why, couldn't you refuse? Basically, yes. But I didn't even have such a thought. Why not? Maybe because you don't refuse such assignments? Such an answer would be a good explanation. However, it's not enough in my case. What else? For me, this was the end of the search for myself. The end is unexpected, but more than successful. I had been looking for something to do for several years, I wanted to be useful, I wanted to apply myself to something, and here it was... Here you go. Here's your work. Capitalised: Work. Apply yourself as much as you want, and even more. The dream has come true, has come true in abundance, and how can you refuse?.. And that's not all. There was a third reason. It was hidden inside me and it was called "destiny". More on that later.
So, the choice of those with whom I could share my new knowledge was small. Just one person. I began to tell him little by little what I had learnt during the last two or three months.
Compared to what I had now, it was a mere crumb. And the presentation itself was... I won't even find the right epithets to describe how inept it was. I, still not completely digesting my shock at what had happened, was telling about what had become a reality for me just the other day. About what I had not yet realised and what had not yet formed a complete picture of the world for me, but was, at best, only its punctuated outlines. In general, the first attempt to find some reference points for myself in this case.
To my surprise, the audience, the only listener, was not embarrassed by such talk, and, most importantly, it was taken seriously enough, without any snide comments or snide remarks. I was not prepared to joke about such topics. Soon I had to explain where I got my information. This, too, was met with understanding and no apparent distrust.
Andrei was fifteen then, his sixteenth birthday was approaching. It was in the summer, and right after his birthday he was to go to the village for a few weeks.
We celebrated the significant day together. Andrei, who was a good cook, made a delicious cake, which he brought to me. One of the secrets of its deliciousness was that he bought a bottle of some alcoholic balsam, generously soaked the crusts in it, and also made a cream based on it. Actually, the cream was the balsam with something added to make it thick. The cake literally floated in a fragrant liquid, like an island washed by the waves of the ocean. When we had each eaten a slice, the crafty pastry chef suggested that I not be shy and give credit to the cream. I realised that the cake was soaked in something alcoholic, but I didn't pay much attention to it. It's a small thing. But what I inexperiencedly underestimated was the danger of the cream. So I took the generous offer and began to eat it, scooping it up with a spoon like soup — there was so much of it. My friend generously gave me more and more, and even poured a few spoonfuls into my mouth. Soon I was drunk, out of habit. When I realised I was drunk, it was too late.
Andrei left, chuckling, treacherously abandoning me to the mercy of fate. I began to think how I could hide my drunken state from my parents. It is terrible to think how I, an active fighter against alcoholism, would explain to my family my own drunkenness... I called my mother and, trying not to slur my tongue, asked her to move me to another room to watch TV. For several hours, until I sobered up, I sat in silence, staring at the screen. Fortunately, nobody noticed anything. Andrei on his return from the village listened to my complaints, and was very pleased with himself.
Although he was not quite the same Andrei who had left. There was a little misunderstanding with big consequences. Before his departure he asked me to recommend some funny books to read on holiday. I recommended Darrell's "The Garden of the Gods". But in library they gave to his mother "Twilight of the Gods", a collection of texts by various philosophers criticising religion. It was surprising that the librarian had been so irresponsible in her work, slipping the wrong book in simply because the titles were similar. However, everything turned out for the better. Having mastered the material that accidentally fell into his hands, Andrei changed. As if he grew up sharply, became more serious, thoughtful, and most importantly — fascinated by the subject of religion and philosophy. It was as if he opened new dimensions in his life. When I saw this rebirth, I was truly happy.
Since that time our communication has also changed. Now he no longer just listened to what I told him with some interest, but absorbed the information enthusiastically. Conversations became more in-depth. Fun did not go away, but it was moved to the background and clearly separated from serious topics. Andrei became interested in religions, sceptically and critically, as curious phenomena of human existence. He realised that the Teaching was something completely different and immersed himself in its study as a spiritual path for himself. Thus I had my first disciple.
At the same time I myself began to study various religions purposefully. Realising that I was to engage in spiritual activities, I recognized the importance of exploring this domain of life in its essence. I had not been interested in it before. But now I had to learn to understand such things. It was extremely important to understand other spiritual paths, albeit fundamentally different from mine. Besides, to understand them meant to understand better the people who followed them. The people among whom I live. To better understand human beings in general.
The importance of religions, their role in the world history and in the life of an individual person is told in school textbooks, even Soviet ones. But all this remains theoretical and is not felt as something alive until it touches you personally. That's exactly what happened to me. It was only after finding the spiritual path that I realised how important it was. Besides, even without any knowledge of religions, I met some separate points here and there, and then I found out that the Teaching speaks about something similar. Reincarnation, for example. I knew about it by hearsay from various sources — from a famous song by Vysotsky to Eastern films. But there it is a religious concept, while in the Teaching it is not. What is the difference? How reincarnation is explained in the Teaching is more or less clear; but how does religion explain it? And a number of similar moments. That's why it was necessary to know different religions in order to compare them. Which, by the way, greatly helps to understand the Teaching itself more deeply.
In general, having just found my own spiritual path, I had to begin to get acquainted with other people's paths. This became, in a certain sense, my professional duty.
I began, as one would expect, with the Bible. Just at that time I got it thanks to an interesting chance.
That summer, an American Adventist preacher came to Homieĺ with a series of lectures on the Bible. The lectures were given, accordingly, in an Adventist house of prayer, which was not very far from us. Having seen the advertisement for the event, my mother and Andrei's mother decided to attend these lectures. They rightly reasoned that as Christians they knew almost nothing about their religion, which was not right. And here is an opportunity to listen to the whole course free of charge, where everything will be told and clearly explained. Of course, it will be told by a non-Orthodox, — well, so what? The Bible is the same for everyone. Guided by these considerations, they honestly listened to the whole course.
I also attended two lectures. I was curious to hear a professional preacher, as well as to see the house of worship. The room was not very large. Two rows of benches with a passage in the middle and a sort of small stage with a pulpit. The decorations were the Tablets of the Covenant on the wall behind the pulpit and pictures of angels with trumpets on the ceiling. On the other walls there were a few simple sconces. That's it. The lecturer speaks, the interpreter translates, the listeners pass notes with questions at the end of the lecture. Everything is modest to the point of asceticism.
After the course was over, those who wished were invited to be baptised and join the Adventist community. Many agreed to do so. Our mothers, of course, refused. But they received Bibles as a gift, which the lecturer distributed so generously that we even got two. My parents put one on their bookshelf, and I put the other one on my bookshelf. My copy is autographed by the preacher. That surprised me, by the way. People often leave gift inscriptions on books; I've done it myself. But it seemed to me that only the author should leave an autograph on a book. In this light, the foreign guest's act looked strange and, I would say, immodest.
Anyway, I got the opportunity to read the Bible, which I did immediately. Besides it, at those same lectures — though maybe not, I can't remember for sure now — a few more books on biblical topics were purchased. Then Andrei and I started to borrow books on various religions from the library — Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, etc. Then I managed to buy the Koran translated by I. Krachkovsky. A Jewish neighbor presented the Torah in translation for olim, with a parallel text in Hebrew. It was interesting to see that this translation and the Christian translation of the Old Testament differ markedly in some places. I got the Book of Mormon through a relative — he had been given it as a gift and gave it to me because he didn't need it. It turned out there was a Jehovah's Witness at my father's work, and he began to give me "Watchtower" and "Awake!" magazines. In a roundabout way, we got hold of the Vissarion Last Testament to read. We bought several volumes of "Agni Yoga". We got "The Rose of the World" by Daniel Andreev. In general, the collection and study of thematic literature was in full swing.
The aforementioned neighbour sometimes treated me with matzah. And once I asked her if she had a textbook of the Jewish language. She had a self-teaching book, and I took it to look at it. But when I started to look into it, I suddenly found something very familiar. Of course! It was the German I had learnt at school. I asked her why she had given me a German textbook when I was interested in the Jewish language. She replied that it was Jewish. Anyway, she never realised I meant Hebrew and I never realised it was Yiddish. The only thing that excuses me is that I didn't know it existed at the time.
Back on topic. At the same time as I began to study religions, another turn occurred in my interests. The focus shifted from biology to history. By that time it became more important for me, as I realised that to understand the modern world, the processes taking place in it and, again, people, it is necessary to know what was in the past, where everything came from, how it was formed. The history of religions grew out of the general history of mankind, as a tree branch comes from the trunk. And then there is the history of culture, art, science, economics, the political history of states, and in general the history of anything. History as such is the history of everything at once. A tree as a set of branches. Studying it, you learn a lot of things in many areas. It is not only useful and necessary, but also fascinating. And besides, I realised that love for history is love for the world and the people it tells about. However, the understanding of this came later.
But at that time I just began to realise what treasures were opening up to me, and I greedily ran my hands into them. Books on history were added to fiction and books about religions and became my constant reading. Of course, there was also scientific and popular science literature on various branches of knowledge, humorous, adventure. And even, now in modest volumes, occult, books on fortune-telling and the like.
I was done with magic, but fortune-telling stayed in my practice longer. Thanks to the knowledge gained from the Teaching, I understood how it works, and I learnt to tell fortunes very well — in a variety of ways, of which there were many. However, I preferred cards. Not Tarot cards, which, in my opinion, had become a prestigious toy for snobs, but ordinary playing cards. And although fortune-telling is the prediction of probabilities, I was able to do it extremely successfully, almost without error. "Almost" — because sometimes there were difficulties with the interpretation of the dropped values. For all the time there was one case when I made a mistake and gave an incorrect prediction.
Once I tell fortunes to some of my relatives, then to another. They liked the result so much that they began to come to me again and again. Then they began to bring their acquaintances with them. At some point, I realised that I was starting to build up a clientele. This presented me with a choice. What do I do? I could keep telling fortunes, start taking some money from customers, and turn it into a business. I was 99% sure of the quality of my work. In addition, I developed a couple of my own methods of fortune-telling, which gave even more accurate results. But... If you seriously engage in fortune-telling, if you turn it into a means of earning money, it will take up a lot of time. And I have to deal with the Teaching, which takes not just a lot of time, but all the time at all.
I had to choose one thing. Of course, I chose the Teaching. The other option could hardly be considered seriously. Moreover, although I really liked fortune-telling as a creative process, but I didn't like it as a kind of "hacking reality" by peeking into the future. It even disgusted me a bit. So I avoided fortune-telling myself.
One day I announced to my visitors that I would stop fortune-telling. The announcement was met with bewilderment. Although the news that fortune-telling was no longer free, I believe, would have caused even more bewilderment and displeasure.
Finishing talking about my reading circle at the time, it's impossible not to also talk about how I started reading poetry.
I have already said that I never had any serious interest in it. Even composing my own humorous poetic trifles no longer attracted me. And then suddenly, already in 1995, real poems began to emerge. They appeared as if on their own. I could feel them begging to come out; all I had to do was write them down. I guess that's what inspiration is, isn't it?
When I started to write poems myself, then I became interested in other people's poems. One day I asked my mum to borrow something from the library for me. She brought out a collection of John Donne. Then Tao Yuan-Ming. That's where my love of poetry began. Now I read it willingly and a lot — European, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and others, Medieval, Ancient, Renaissance, and so on. It was quality, classic literature, not just any kind of literature. I dare to hope that a good start instilled in me a good taste — if not for my own poems, then for other people's. Only the 20th century has almost completely fallen out of my sphere of interest. Somehow my soul does not lie to modern poetry...
Over the next 20 years I wrote 488 poems. And all this time I fought the desire to destroy them. My own poems always seemed to me very mediocre, or even quite bad, not worth publishing or perhaps even reading. Therefore, I periodically wondered — why keep them? Wouldn't it be better let them go to waste? Such impulses visited me often. I discussed them with Andrei, and he always opposed the destruction of poems, considering them good. I was angry and said: "You don't understand poetry. How do you know if they're good or not?" Such arguments usually ended in a compromise along the lines of "Well, it will never be too late to do that", and the topic was temporarily closed.
In 2015, I did a revision of what I had written. Many poems were deleted, leaving the ones that seemed to be better. In the end, 266 of them remained. They formed a collection called "Incombusto", which can be translated from Italian as "unburned", "that which escaped burning". I haven't tried to publish it.
I still write poems, though much less often. And the desire to destroy them all also continues to visit me, albeit less frequently.
They come not from the head, but from the soul, from emotions. That is why among them there are many sad and gloomy, even pessimistic ones. When it is especially hard and painful for me, my feelings sometimes spill out through poetic lines. This circumstance, coupled with the dubious poetic merits of the latter, does not speak in their favour. And some of the darkest examples — they were mostly not included in the final collection — were written in the first couple of years. This coincided with the first years of the Teaching — and not by chance.
The fact is that when the picture of the world according to the Teaching began to form in my head, when I began to understand how things should be, then I began to understand how bad things are today. Before, I had seen the human vices and woes of the world — let it not sound too high-minded — but I did not perceive them too acute. The world and people are what they are — what can you say against it?.. I didn't have a notion of the proper. I did not have a picture of a certain world, even if not ideal, but correct, and even if not ideal, but a correct human. After all, to understand what the world and human should not be does not mean to understand what they should be. And so, such a notion and such ideas appeared to me. The result was that the world began to seem to me a gloomy place of suffering, and people — to put it mildly, extremely unpleasant creatures. It turned into another torment for me. It was as if I had suddenly found myself in a space of darkness and pain, not only my own, but everyone's. And the culprits are the people themselves. Several times I even thought "Maybe there is no need for such a world and such people to exist? Perhaps it would be deserved if everything were to burn down at some point?" Such sentiments were reflected in my poems of that time.
Even now it hurts to remember those feelings. But the Teaching also helped me to cope with them. After all, it is not pessimistic, but optimistic. It shows a picture of reality as it should be, but it does not say that everything is lost and it will not be like that. On the contrary, it says: "Yes, the situation is difficult. People are torturing each other, they are destroying their world, and they have already brought it to the edge of the abyss, brought it to the verge of total destruction. But this is not a verdict. People are actually better than they seem, and they themselves can fix what they themselves have done. They can become more perfect, and they can make their world a better place." Actually, the Teaching came into the world to help people in this. In reality, it is not a statement that everything is bad, but rather a recognition that everything can be better. It is itself a means to change people and the world for the better. It brings not despair, not hopelessness, but hope, faith in man and in the fact that everything will be good in the end. But to achieve this, we must put in the effort.
When I realised this, I was relieved. The panorama of general unsettledness and problems surrounding me did not disappear, but a counterbalance to it appeared: confidence that it is not forever, the feeling of a good future, even if it comes not tomorrow, and the desire to do something for its sake. I have landmarks, goals, an understanding of what it is worth fighting and working for. That's when life began to shine with new colours. It was as if I broke through the viscous, stuffy darkness and got out into the light and fresh air. I saw people differently now.
I saw myself differently now. The knowledge of my goal, the certainty that it was achievable, and the realisation that I could do a lot to achieve it, gave my life meaning. And it gave me strength. I found an inexhaustible source of it in everything around me and in myself. I really became a different person.
By the way, later it turned out that the state of pessimism and darkness that I had experienced was also affecting others. I observed the same thing, only with varying degrees of intensity, in some of my disciples. When they began studying the Teaching and a picture of a proper, better reality gradually unfolded before their mind's eye, their attitude toward people and the world, so flawed, temporarily worsened. But the Teaching teaches not to despise people and the world, but to love them and believe in them. One need only overcome the "dark streak" of perception, the nature of which is emotional, and move on. It's very easy to believe bad things. However, realising that it's not really so, that things are much better and brighter, makes you happier. Happier and stronger — so much so that all adversities combined can no longer break you. And you can fight them and win.
For me, it was a revolution in consciousness. Now I looked at the world, at people, at myself, and at the Teaching with different eyes. Now I lived not in the space of unsettledness, uncertainty, darkness and torment, but in a space of certainty, clarity, confidence, meaningfulness of existence, strength and light. A new life had begun.
At that time I began to try to imagine, at least theoretically, how the further development of the Teaching could go on. The revelation continues, information is coming, it becomes more and more, the Teaching acquires breadth, depth and systematicity. How can events unfold further?
Thanks to my active ongoing exposure to various religions and spiritual teachings, I have already seen several examples of how this can happen. Examples both more optimistic and less so. But on the whole, adjusted for the era and geography, the outlook did not look too bleak. After all, this is Europe at the end of the 20th century, not the Middle Ages or the ancient East. Society is liberal and open to new things, there is freedom of belief and freedom of speech, there are good means of communication, a variety of media, and a lot of other advantages that did not exist in the old days. In the light of all this, even my disability, which deprived me of the ability to move about freely and to be active in spreading the Teaching, did not seem an insurmountable problem. I assumed that I would write something, start publishing, gather disciples around me, and gradually expand my sphere of activity. In time we would build up the structure of the Teaching as an organisation, register it, create a centre in Homieĺ, from where the activity would be directed, our communities would begin to appear in other places, and so on. There will be a lot of work, and such development will take a lot of time, not one year, but the task is really manageable. We will try, we will work hard — first Andrei and I, then others who will join us — and everything will work out. The main thing is diligence and patience. And we don't lack them.
Unfortunately, politics interfered with the course of events as they seemed at the time. It turned out that to live in modern Europe does not mean to be free and to have rich opportunities for fruitful work.
In the summer of 1994, presidential elections were held in Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko won the election. Many people liked him and he won in free voting. He did not seem to me a worthy candidate, and I cast my vote not for him. But the alarming signs, which were already visible then, were not particularly striking. The freshly elected president looked like a bumpkin and twaddle person, and the worst I saw in him was a tendency to malicious demagoguery and showmanship. I looked at him with irony.
However, it soon became clear that he was dangerous for the country. Already in 1995, a referendum favourable for him was held, which resulted in amendments to the Constitution, the return of the former Soviet state symbols, the Russian language was given equal status with the Belarusian language, and a course on integration with Russia was taken. All this looked like a step back to the Soviet past and the beginning of the loss of sovereignty. Yes, there were many in our country who dreamed of returning to the USSR and feeling Moscow's power over them again. However, this meant, in fact, the beginning of the death of a young country born only a few years ago. The quality of the referendum raises questions. But it is clear that the authorities represented by the president, who pursued the goal of strengthening his power, and the most retrograde layers of the Belarusian society — mainly the older generation — found a common language.
I voted against on all points. The results of the referendum became a huge upset for me. I regarded them as a harbinger of great misfortune. And I was not mistaken.
From that moment on, the country began, as they call it, to tighten the screws. Slowly, but quite noticeably. And already in the next year, 1996, the events clearly marked the beginning of the dictatorship. Black clouds hovered over Belarus. It may sound hackneyed, but it is accurate. The feeling was exactly like that. As if the sun began to go out. Civil liberties began to be destroyed, the atmosphere became stuffy, and the horizons of the future became bleak.
For the Teaching, this meant complications in development and activity, loss of opportunities, narrowing of prospects. We have not yet had time to really begin our work, and we have already felt that we were beginning to be bound. If I were inclined to build conspiracy theories of dark forces, I would not fail to emphasise such an amazing coincidence: the revelation begins, the Teaching come into the world — and immediately, literally on the hot tracks, someone comes to power in the country who begins to close the opportunities for its activities. It is as if someone or something does not want the Teaching to become available to the people. Very similar indeed. But it takes more than "very similar" to make such inferences. That is why I refrained from them then, and I refrain from them now.
This dictatorship has put many obstacles in front of us, turning already difficult tasks — is it easy for two inexperienced young people, one disabled and the other a teenager, to start a global endeavour? — into the most difficult of tasks.
Be that as it may, we moved forward. And the first important milestone in our new life was the foundation of the Teaching.
Almost two years have passed since the beginning of the revelation. What I was receiving turned from a collection of fragmentary information into a large-scale picture of the world, sufficiently structured, complete and understandable to be called a formed and really existing teaching, and not just thoughts in someone's head. It was necessary to give it birth as such, as a living system and a community of people. The time had come to do so. Emere suggested a name: The Teaching of the United Temple. May seemed like another reference to religion. However, it is not. The temple is not a place of worship dedicated to supernatural forces, but our world, Nature, the Universe. It is united because we are all particles of the Universe as one whole, we have one reality for all, one Truth for all. The temple — because everything that surrounds us should be treated not as something to be destroyed, conquered, subjugated and exploited, but as something to be loved, cherished and for the benefit of which it is necessary to work. You have to live as if you are in a temple where you will not behave unbridled and hostile, and where you come to join the Truth and become a better person.
It took me a while to get used to the idea of the important step that was to be taken. And on the 1st of March 1996, at eight o'clock in the morning, I declared the Teaching to exist. It happened here, in my room, in the presence of Andrei only, without a solemn speech or celebration.
Epochal events sometimes happen like this, unnoticed by the world. Sounds like an excessive claim, doesn't it? But I have no doubt that the Teaching will one day become the worldview of all mankind. It won't happen soon, and I won't see it. But I know it will. And the path to it began then, on the first day of spring 1996. It's been so long. Almost 30 years ago. I can't even believe it, to be honest.
The first steps of the journey were incredibly difficult. I'll talk about them further on. And here, at this point, for those who do not want to read about such things — about some Teaching and everything related to it — it is time to close the book and put it aside. The rest of you can just turn the page.
Last updated
