Chapter 13. It is Strange to Be a Prophet
So, the first step on the long jorney ahead was taken. The Teaching had begun its official existence. Even if not de jure, but for such a phenomenon as a spiritual teaching, this is not of primary importance. Registration with the relevant authorities is necessary to regularise its relations with the state. It is not the same as a foundation. It is like with a child: it is born and already lives, regardless of whether the fact of its existence is recorded in a special document or not.
Fortunately, shortly before that I had managed to cope with my problem, to overcome the fear of death that haunted me. At least in that sense it became easier. I could devote more mental energy to what was now my life's work.
But the first step is the first step. It's very important — but what now? What did I have at that point? Quite a lot of new knowledge, one disciple, and... And nothing else. I didn't even have a clear understanding of how to proceed.
At that time, my father's colleague named Gennady sometimes visited me. My father himself was indifferent to my affairs, but he could see from the books that caught his eye that I had new interests. He said something like that at work. As a result, I began to receive the magazines I have already mentioned from one of his colleagues, and the other wanted to communicate with me personally. He was a peculiar person. He had no definite worldview, but he considered himself an expert in the spiritual field, and always spoke on these topics in a smug and mentor-like tone. For this he was disliked and ridiculed in the workshop, — sometimes behind his back and sometimes openly. In my opinion, a very revealing episode was when he took the book "Great Initiates" from my shelf, where the philosophy of famous sages of antiquity, real and legendary, was discussed, and, humming, leafed through it, turning a bunch of pages at a time. Just like my grandmother with the Gospel. It took him five minutes to familiarise himself with the book. When he closed it, he tapped the cover with his finger and said: "Everything that is written here I could put in two sentences."
It was amusing to watch his manner of speaking. A bit haughtily, and at the same time condescending, as if a mature shellback were teaching a green rookie. Well, I could understand it: he was older than my father, and he had been interested in spirituality for decades, whereas I, in fact, had only just begun. At the same time I claimed to have my own teaching. Such a young impudent man should have had his feathers plucked. That's what Gennady did.
In one of the conversations he asked if I was ready to preach my teaching to people on the streets. I answered that I was not ready. From this he concluded that I lacked determination and awareness of the importance of my work. Well, he was probably right about both. I found it difficult to imagine myself, even if I were perfectly healthy, preaching to the people. I had neither the skill, nor the ability to hold myself up in front of a large number of strangers, nor a certain amount of impudence, which is necessary for such an thing. All these deficiencies, however, would not have prevented me if I had that very awareness. It is the way someone rushes to save a drowning man without thinking at the time how well he can swim. The Teaching had come into the world to help it survive — in fact, to save it. I knew it, understood it, and could explain it to others, but all of the above was not enough. I lacked that feeling of running and saving, no matter how people looked at you. So I had not yet realised my task deeply enough. So there was nothing to object to.
Another time he asked me if I was writing any exposition of my teaching. Again I answered in the negative. He blamed me, like, how can you not do something that's absolutely essential. And so our communication continued — mainly his discourses on various spiritual matters, interspersed with attempts, sometimes not unsuccessful, to get me in one way or another.
He had more experience of talking on such subjects than I had, that was true. Sometimes it was not that I had nothing to object to, but that I could not overcome his temperamental, loud-mouthed onslaught. I just listened to the monologues of the assertive guest. However, in time, after several months, I gained experience in communicating with him, became more and more skilled in building a topic and conducting a discussion, and learnt how to knock down the ardour of my interlocutor. In our arguments with him, I was more and more successful in defending my positions. One day I succeeded in arguing with him on several fundamental questions at once and forced him to agree with the viewpoint of the Teaching. Seeing that he was discouraged, I decided to finish him off. Taking the same condescending tone that he usually used to use, I said, "So now you're my disciple." Spreading out his hands, he replied, "It turns out so." That conversation was expectedly the last. He never came again.
This acquaintance was interesting for me as one of my first dialogues in the field of spiritual activity. It served as a training in such communication. And the remark about my unwillingness to preach publicly proved to be quite valuable and, moreover, fitted well into the framework of my reflections at that time about my perception of myself in my new role.
It was difficult to get used to the idea that I was the founder of the Teaching and a prophet. Not a prophet in the religious sense of the word, but still. I accept knowledge from what can be called the ultimate source, which means both great responsibility and great authority. As has already been said, I did not doubt, as I do not doubt now, that the Teaching will one day become the worldview of all mankind. And after all, it should be based on what I will say and do. It is I who will be referred to, it is I who will lay the foundations of a future society organised in accordance with the principles of the Teaching, and so on. Not because I myself am so wonderful, but because the God of Wisdom stands behind me. However, I alone see him — I have indeed not only heard him, but also seen the image — and for all, everything will converge on me as the one who has received the knowledge.
Many will think that I developed the Teaching myself and am passing it off as a product of revelation. That is to say, they will consider me a fraud. Well: this could even be taken as a compliment. To create such a teaching, one must be a person of great talent. I'm hardly that smart. And if we take into account that the supposed developer is an ordinary disabled guy who has never been interested in such questions in his life and has never held a single book on spiritual-philosophical subjects in his hands — you can't get far with a few books on magic — then there was no place for all this to come from. So thanks for the kind word, if anything.
After acquaintance with religious literature, it was very, very strange to realise myself a prophet. Not so long ago I could have expected all sorts of developments in my life, but not like this. Even though nothing had actually been done yet, the responsibility was already weighing heavily on me. Especially since it was still not clear why Emere had chosen me. However it was clear that if I had been given the task, then I could handle it. The God of Wisdom knows better. Better than I could. No matter what I thought of myself, I could do what was necessary. This consideration did not allow me to doubt my abilities or to be confused.
If the Teaching is entrusted to me, then I can do it. It means that my abilities will be enough, my strength will be enough, and the responsibility will not crush me psychologically. I can handle it. I must work. As it works out, it will work out. Over times, I will learn everything I need to learn. That's all.
That's what I've come to every time I've tried to comprehend the situation. You just have to do something, somehow move forward. Yeah, it's weird. Yes, it is hard to believe what is happening. Then how likely is it then that others will believe? So be it. So what are we supposed to do then, just sit around?..
What should I do? At the initial stage, I saw two things to start with. The first was a written exposition of the Teaching, which is really necessary, no matter how it is. Here Gennady made a substantive remark. The second was to figure out how to look for people who might be interested in the Teaching. I won't be able to preach in the streets in any case, but I need to tell someone about it.
Remembering my less than successful attempts at writing books, I didn't overestimate my abilities. Especially since it was a simple fiction, and even that didn't work for me, but here... A completely different genre, if I may say so. How to take it up is not clear at all.
Nevertheless, I started to write a book outlining everything I had learnt by that time. To be more precise, I made an outline of a few pages, trying to see what comes out. I looked at it and realised it was no good. I started to rewrite it, in a slightly different way. And again, I didn't like it myself. I didn't rewrite it a third time. Because I discovered one circumstance that not only complicated the work, but almost nullified it. It turned out that a potential book becomes outdated before I have time to write any significant part of it. The information was adding up fast, and when I reread what I had written, I saw that it didn't cover everything I already knew more. It was a race for revelation, and it was obvious that I was losing it. Of course, this was not a disadvantage, but a huge plus; a reason not for grief, but for joy. I wish I had more "problems" like this. However, writing a book turned out to be unrealistic so far. And I wasn't ready, to be honest. So I postponed it. For the time being. At that time I did not know that the above-mentioned circumstance would not allow me to start working on the book for many more years.
In September of that year, however, an event occurred that put the matter to rest for a long time. One day, Emere told me to write down what he was about to say. Thus came "Evangelon" — the first text of the pandect.
Going a little ahead, I will say that it was not called anything at that time. Neither Emere, nor the other gods who joined in the revelation later, gave names to their texts. There was only one exception: Emere himself gave the name of the text "Eosfor". And since this word turned out to be Ancient Greek, I decided to name all the unnamed texts in the same language. Andrei and I worked on the selection of names together. He had to make an excursion into the Ancient Greek language for this, work with educational materials and dictionaries. Later we used the same principle to name the texts I had written myself, as well as the books themselves and the pandect as a collection of them, and developed terminology for the books and their parts. The texts dictated by people who also became involved in the revelation over time have names given by them.
The first dictation was difficult. It was extremely difficult to receive and write down at the same time, to formalise what I had received in some way, to put it into words. It was literally exhausting. After a few lines on paper I was completely worn out, I was like a squeezed lemon. That's why it took several days to write a small text.
But when it was finished and Andrei and I held these couple of sheets in our hands, we were filled with a feeling of jubilation. We were facing a great event: the Teaching would have their own writings. We are present at their birth. They are not sacred writings — nor need they be. They will be true scriptures — and that is the main thing. We will have a Book with a capital letter. I wanted to shout and sing for joy. I don't even know how to describe those feelings.
Soon two more little dictations from Emere followed. Then two more, from a man named Sher-Ander, who once, in the distant past, had belonged to the Teaching, but was now in the world of energy. Now we had five texts. Writing them was a little easier now, because I was getting used to the process of dictation, and it was not taking so much effort.
We already knew that the Teaching had been transmitted to people before. During the course of human history, which is actually much longer than is generally believed, it has happened 26 times. In the past, there were just as many prophets of the Teaching — of the Teaching itself, not of various religions. It is important not to confuse the two or lump everything together. The present revelation is the 27th and the last. And I am, as it turns out, the last prophet.
The beginning of dictation has brought me to a new level of understanding of what the Teaching is for the world. Because it is one thing to verbalise what you know, and quite another to hold in your hands the texts dictated by the gods and people who in ancient times belonged to the Teaching. It is not just the labour of one person, done here and now. It is the joint labour of many, human and non-human, a labour that binds together spaces, times, worlds and beings doing one great thing. A new scale of what was happening began to unfold before my inner gaze, a scale that transcended the world of men and my century. I had had some theoretical idea of it before; now I saw it, touched it, felt it, realised it. It helped me to see myself in a new light, for the second time.
As it turned out, not for the last time. But it was then, after the foundation of the Teaching and the birth of the pandect, that something happened to me that is difficult to define other than psychological death. I stepped into a new personal reality. The former person seemed to have died, disappeared. He remained in the past. It sounds a bit like death... But it was also a birth. It was not just a change, but a rebirth, without which I could not do what I had to do. In place of the former man, a new one came with a different vision of the world, a different inner fulfillment, a different understanding of his own existence. Even with a different name. In the course of the revelation it was said that I could be called Atarkhat, and Andrei — Hantur. And we accepted these names as our names in the Teaching. Although we still do not know what they could mean. For us they are just our names in the new life — and that is enough.
Around the same time, something else happened. Or vice versa — nothing happened. It depends on how you look at it.
As the reader may have noticed and noted for himself, my story lacks something without which it is difficult to imagine anyone's autobiography. I'm talking about what are called matters of the heart. Youthful infatuations, crushes, suffering about it, and so on. A natural part of any young man's life. Everything happened to me in such a way that I didn't have any crushes. But there was suffering.
I naturally felt an interest in the opposite sex in my school years. But I didn't concentrate on it. Everything went somehow quietly, without any fuss about it. I didn't even fall in love with the girls who came to me. Then came the time of my war of independence and searching for myself, and all my worries were directed toward that. Only closer to the age of twenty I felt the loneliness. I felt that my life was missing something very important, that there was a gaping void in it. I really wanted to love and be loved. I wanted to have a family, children. At the same time I realised that in my position it was hardly possible. And only then I felt all its horror and all its pain. I have already told you that I always treated my disability calmly. Yes, something in life is inaccessible to me. But it senseless to make it a global problem, to tear your hair out. Yes, I depend on others, I don't have the necessary degree of freedom. So I'll fight and win back what I can win back. Yes, I don't know where to apply myself. So I'll look for it. Everything is bearable, everything is surmountable, everything is solvable. But the loneliness turned out to be unsolvable, insurmountable and unbearable. It turned out to be so painful that at times tears were ready to flow.
Then came the heart problems and fear. It distracted me, if I may say so. When you prepare for death every day, you don't worry so much about missing something in your life. The pain didn't disappear, but it was relegated to the background of life. And when the fear was gone, it came back. And now it has become even stronger. Even the Teaching and its worries could not distract me from it. The emptiness in my life had grown to enormous proportions, it was screaming and crying inside me.
What to do? How to create a family? Is this even possible in my situation? How do I find someone I could love? And what are the chances that she would reciprocate? Such questions plagued me constantly. What do I do? One could wait and hope. But is it worth hoping?..
I thought about it a lot. And one day I realised something really scary for me. No, not that there is no hope and I may never find my love. It's just the opposite. The worst thing would be if I found her. And the worst thing would be if it was suddenly mutual. I thought of my mum, who spends her whole life by my side, caring for me like a compulsory carer. Despite all our tensions, she's my mum, I love her, and I'm bitter that it's turned out like this and that she's chained to me. I'm not an idiot and I know what it's costing her. I know how she's suffering. I understand that I almost stole her life, albeit unwittingly. And now I can imagine another woman I love coming along and having the same thing happen to her... She'll lay her life on me, and she'll be miserable. Would I want that? No: that was the last thing I wanted. It would be easier to die than to see a loved one's life ruined.
However, much now depends on me. I couldn't do anything to free Mum — but I can do anything to keep another woman from being chained to me. What should I do now? There is an answer, and it is obvious. Do nothing. Not try to look for. Put those thoughts out of my head. Not to hope. Or rather, to hope — but not that I will meet someone, but that I won't. Because meeting her would be a disaster. Hoping for her is an unacceptable luxury. And if by some miracle it happens, if a woman suddenly appears who wants to tie her fate to me, I will have to refuse. I can't let that happen. Since everything has turned out this way, I should accept loneliness as a given and as the only acceptable option for me.
That's what I've come to. And I even felt a little better. The emptiness remained — like an open wound in my soul, which will never close or stop bleeding. But at least the uncertainty was gone. The questions about whether to search, how to search, whether to wait, whether to hope were removed. All the answers are negative. Now I just have to endure another pain that will always be with me. Well, I'm used to being patient.
To avoid misunderstandings, let me clarify: I do not mean to say that a disabled person has no right to love, that he or she should not link his or her fate with someone else, and so on. There can hardly be solutions that are true and unambiguous for everyone. Everyone decides for themselves how to build their life, what they should strive for, what they can do. I have reasoned only for myself. I do not call anyone to anything in this regard, I do not advise or suggest anyone to follow my example. To each — his own. Whoever can be happy, let them be happy.
Thus a very important and heavy topic was closed for me, and I felt like a person who had just undergone a severe amputation without anaesthesia: everything hurts unbearably and something is lost, but at least now I can breathe and move on.
...Meanwhile, new events were unfolding in the country. Another referendum was announced. It became clear: if it ended the same way as the previous one, it would be, in fact, a coup d'état, a seizure of power by a president who had already had his first repressions. Hantur and I — I'll call him that from now on — came to these conclusions ourselves. And we were convinced by reading the free media, which were not all destroyed at that time, that we were not the only ones who thought so.
What should we do? It is clear that it is necessary to vote against dictatorial initiatives. But that won't change anything, just as it didn't change anything last year. What else can be done? What can specifically do we? Nothing significant. But it was also impossible to do nothing at all.
We attracted another like-minded person to our political micro-circle, a mutual acquaintance called Archimedes. With Hantur's help, I wrote a short letter explaining the dangers of the referendum and urging citizens to vote against the proposed decisions. Archimedes typed this text on a computer. He typed terribly, with many typos, but nothing could be fixed. We made a leaflet consisting of two parts. The first part had our text, and the second part contained material from an opposition newspaper. Archimedes printed it in 100 copies. I kept one copy for the archives, and the rest Hantur and Archimedes scattered them in mailboxes, going to several apartment blocks under the cover of evening.
Of course, our action had no effect on anything. The referendum went the way Lukashenko wanted, and that was the end of our country's freedom. Personally, since then I do not consider the Belarusian authorities legitimate, and I do not participate in any referendums and elections anymore.
And specifically for us the year 1996, rich in important events, ended in such an extreme way. The year when the Teaching was founded, when the pandect was born, when we received new names.
And when we made our first attempts to find people with whom we could talk about the Teaching. But more on that — further on.
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