Chapter 14. Landscape with Scylla and Charybdis

How to tell people about the Teaching? You have to find people who are interested in it. Where to find them, and how? We had a limited list of options. For example, preaching on the streets — which, of course, was rejected. Or writing and publishing something. But what? We didn't have anything suitable at the time; we just didn't know how to write articles. And where to publish? The screws were being tightened in the country, there was less and less free press, and we had no access to the Internet at that time. We had to look for other ways. Hantur and I talked about it a lot, thought about it, discussed it. And as a result, it was decided to take advantage of the opportunities that newspapers have not yet lost. Namely, to act through adverts. This remained an area little affected by censorship so far.

Composing the messages also proved to be a non-trivial task. After all, you can't say about the Teaching directly, but you have to attract the audience somehow. So we wrote something like "We offer communication to people interested in spiritual theme" or "We offer communication on spiritual topics". Unspecific and as general as possible. We sent it to newspapers with free adverts. The return address was the number of the P.O. Box at the Main Post Office.

It was exciting. After all, this event became, neither more nor less, our first publication.

We assumed that among those who would respond, there might be mostly Orthodox Christians, and we would have to explain that we are not in this area. However, there were practically none of them. But there were plenty of others who wanted to communicate. Very soon, letters began to arrive every day, and even not one at a time. Hantur went to the post office, I kept correspondence. Sometimes it was short: after one or two letters it became clear that there would be no common theme. In other cases, there was active communication. I've never written so much before. Several letters a day, and generally not just one notebook sheet. Sometimes writing took up almost all my time, from waking up to going to bed. In addition, we would also look through the adverts in some Russian newspapers, and if we found something interesting, I would reply. Sometimes we managed to send in an advert of our own. Sometimes correspondence would start. These letters came to my home address.

Since we advertised not only in local city newspapers, but also in national newspapers, people wrote to us from all over the country. If the addressee lived in Homieĺ, and the communication was interesting for both us and him, then I would take his phone number, Hantur would call him, and then meet him somewhere in the city and talk to him. Some people dropped out at that stage. There were some who wanted to keep in touch. If we found the person interesting, I invited him to my house. And the conversations were not necessarily about the Teaching. The spiritual sphere is very broad, and we never missed an opportunity to learn something new, to hear other people's opinions, and at the same time to practise discussions on such topics.

My parents watched as the letters first appeared in large numbers, and then visitors began to arrive. The father was displeased and got drunk and shouted that he would kick them all out, but he did not dare to do so.

Here it is necessary to digress a little and say a few words about the situation in the family at that time. To outline the circumstances and the atmosphere in which our activities began to unfold.

Alcohol continued to be the main problem. I had to fight on two fronts. Sometimes my parents united and started to pressurise me together to stop pursuing my anti-alcohol line. At such times they even threatened to put me in a mental hospital. Especially when it became clear that I had some kind of teaching and that I was trying to engage in spiritual activity, there was a new reason for the threats. My mother had nothing against it, but my father began to blackmail me that he would report a dangerous sect that I had organised. I said, "Report it. But if you can't prove that it is a sect and that it is a danger to society, then I will file a libel suit. And we'll see who will be worse off."

Of course, on my part it was an all-in game. At that time, for our authorities, it was no longer important whether a sect or not, dangerous or not dangerous. The mere fact that some non-Orthodox — and in general, as they say, "unconventional" — spiritual movement had appeared could be enough to get us into very big trouble. Those were the times when everything non-Orthodox was gradually being brought to heel. On the one hand, this was not surprising, since the logic of the development of a dictatorship implies something similar. On the other hand, it was strange and absurd, since it was a reversal of the Soviet period, when the state, to put it mildly, did not pity religion, even traditional religion. Lukashenko declared himself an Orthodox atheist — whatever that means. The point was clearly to rid the official Church of competition from other religions and spiritual movements, and turn it into a fully controlled instrument of dictatorship. This happened a few years later.

In those years my father drank almost uncontrollably. Sometimes he got so drunk that when he got home, he could not take the last few steps to bed, fell and slept on the floor in the hallway. He often didn't manage to sober up before the morning and went to work drunk. On weekends he could go for a bottle at seven o'clock in the morning, get drunk by ten o'clock, get some sleep in the evening and get drunk again. I counted how many days a month he was sober, — it turned out to be 3-5. Because he was often unable to lift me from bed to the wheelchair or put me from the wheelchair to the bed, my mum and Hantur had to do it. My friend and disciple then did for me almost everything that my father should have done. The latter was pleased with this, but at the same time he was angry when he saw that my dependence on him was not absolute. Refusing to help me with anything, he shouted: "Turn to your Andrei!" My father even tried to demand payment for his help — otherwise he wouldn't come to me at all, and let Andrei do everything. In those years I heard nothing from him but insults, which I can't even cite here, and threats, the mildest of which was "I'll throw you out to the entrance, you'll be lying there" He often threatened to beat me up. Saying things like "I wish I had killed you when you were little" was in order. When he moved me from the wheelchair to the bed, he would angrily throw me so that my curved spine crunched. Mum would shout at him, he'd snap at her. He only stopped when she promised him big trouble if he hurt me.

Mum listened to the insults and threats too. He had a mate back then who bragged about how he'd reason with his wife. If she said something against him, he'd hit her once and she'd shut up. Father used to shout at my mum, "You'll get the same! You'll get it in the face!" and he'd run up to her and swing at her. She'd say: "Just try it! If you hit me, I'll grab whatever is at hand — an iron, a hammer, whatever — and smash it over your head." Knowing her character, he never dared to hit her.

At some point, he got a mistress, some older lady from work. Not only were they seen together in the city, but he had the nerve to call her from home, exchanging tenderness and arranging meetings. He did it locked himself in the toilet, but it was still audible. Mum put up with it for a while and then suggested that he either stop fornicating or move in with that woman. He responded by saying he was going to hang himself. She said: "Hang yourself. You know where the rope and soap are. Just one condition: don't do it at home. I'm not gonna look at you in a noose." Eventually, he ended the affair.

Speaking of suicides. They say whoever threatens to kill himself will never do it. Things like this always happen out of the blue. I tend to think there's some truth to that. Earlier I saw a similar situation in another family where the husband, having a quarrel with his wife, also threatened to kill himself. She reacted about the same as my mother, saying, "Go ahead if you want to", and in the end nothing happened. And there was another case of a different kind. One of our relatives from my mother's side served in Afghanistan when he was young, and he could not forget how the commanders sometimes forced them, the soldiers, to kill civilians. He told us that when they entered a village they were ordered to shoot everyone, including women and children, and to throw grenades at the doors of dwellings. These pictures haunted him all the following years, dreaming at night. He began to drink heavily. His children began to despise him, his wife nagged him — why are you such a good-for-nothing beggar, and I want to drive a Mercedes. He told me about it himself. In the end, without saying anything to anyone, he went to the very collective farm garden I mentioned and hanged himself there.

However, back to father. Among other things, he had this obsession that my mother and I wanted to get rid of him and take over the flat. I don't know if it was his own idea or someone else's. When he got drunk, he was scandalised about it too. When he came home from work, instead of saying "Hello", he'd shout: "Bitches, it's not going to be your way!" And on and on — everything in the same vein.

In short, in that decade — roughly from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties — our house turned to hell. Many times I suggested to my mum that she go to the police to call my father to order, because it was unbearable to live like that. But she didn't want to hear about it. How could she report her husband to the police! It didn't make sense to her. This was not the way to solve family issues, it was shameful, and in general — no, no and no! It's out of the question! Especially since no one will testify it as a witness.

Indeed, none of the neighbours and acquaintances witnessed these scandals. Father behaved properly in someone else's presence. And when my mother tried to tell about our problems while sitting on the bench at the entrance, they didn't believe her. They said: "No way! Such a decent man — he says hello and makes jokes, even when he's drunk. He can't behave so ugly."

However, now Grandmother, i.e. his mother, periodically became an eyewitness of his art. Before, she didn't really believe it either, but now she was convinced. When she tried to calm him down, to shame him, he would attack her too. He didn't insult her, but he repeatedly tried to kick her out, saying, "Don't boss me around, get out!" To which she replied: "You don't need me — well, I didn't come to you, but to my grandson and daughter-in-law. I'm not going anywhere."

One day, after watching his antics and fighting with him once again, she told me something I never expected to hear. She said that it was he, my father, who had disabled me and now he had been abusing me all my life. I was dumbfounded. I didn't know what to say, and I didn't even think to ask what had happened. It took me a few days to digest the new information. Then I shared it with my mum. Mum questioned my grandmother face to face, finding out why she said that and what she meant. But she had already cooled down and apparently realised that she had said too much. So she went into complete denial — no, nothing happened, nothing was said, I don't know anything. I didn't ask my father, of course. So this story remained unexplained.

I don't know how my grandmother's confession fits with Emere's words about the severity of the great streams. Maybe she lied, angry and resentful of her son? But it's hard to imagine such a lie. Or did she speak out? Then it turns out that there is a connection between the two versions. In a word, everything is very strange, and I still haven't come to a final opinion about that case, and I don't know what to think about it.

In those years, late 1996 — early 1998, the problem of our family was not only my father's alcoholism, but also his lack of money. He drank a lot, my mother had no job, I received a small pension. But inflation was in full swing, prices were rising. We had to start tightening our belts. One day there came a moment when the usual festive feasts became impossible. After the guests had gathered at our place once again and found the table much more meagre than usual, and on their next visit they saw only the simplest food on it, they cooled down to communicate with us. But that was actually a good thing—because with my parents’ desire to host everyone as graciously as possible and the lack of money for refreshments, such gatherings could lead to nothing good. Which was soon confirmed by bitter experience.

Things were tough. We could not buy clothes and shoes any more; we had to mend and wear out the old ones. We had to forget about meat as such. Only occasionally we took so-called "soup sets", which consisted of almost bare bones. Then we couldn't afford them either. Soups and borscht were now dressed exclusively with vegetable oil. Chicken became a luxury. We ate it only on New Year's Eve. However, the most difficult thing was ahead. We got into debts, which we could not pay off. It all started with borrowing a considerable sum from acquaintances in order to properly host relatives who suddenly came to visit us. This debt made a catastrophic hole in the very meagre family budget. It was unimaginably difficult to mend it at our income at that time. Money was given, then borrowed again — because we had to live on something. In the course of the case, the debt did not decrease, but even increased from month to month. We switched to soups made of only cereals and carrots. At that time we could no longer afford not only meat or any fats, but even simple vermicelli, potatoes and onions. Hunger came close to us.

Not far from our house there is a neighbourhood built up with private houses. Each of them, of course, has a vegetable garden. And in one place there were several beds with potatoes right on the street. My mother and I went there a couple of times with robbery purposes. There was an apple tree in the middle of the beds. Mum would dig up potatoes near it and put them in a bag. When someone passed by, she pretended to pick up the fallen apples. She would show them to me, and I would nod my head — like, it would be fine — and they would also go into the bag. From such expeditions we brought back a few apples and potatoes, and we could eat more or less normally.

We reached the bottom of the financial abyss when for about a week we had to eat only one black bread, dipping it in salted sunflower oil. There was nothing else in the house, not even a crumb. There was no tea, and no sugar. So we drank bread with unsweetened decoction of herbs my mother had gathered.

It was already the very edge — and it is hard to say what could have happened next. But we held on to that edge. Denying ourselves everything, literally starving, we barely managed to pay off our debts, and then things got a bit easier. Later Mum found a job, and the family financial crisis came to an end.

This was the environment in which the first stage of our activity took place. Going out into the already stormy sea, our little ship had to pass between Scylla and Charybdis — problems in the country on the one hand, and problems in my family on the other. And this passage cannot be said to be a fait accompli. We are still there, in a dangerous strait. The problems in the family continue, only now they are different. And things are happening in the country that make those times seem rather prosperous by comparison. But more on all that later.

I will only add that I found money for envelopes for correspondence even in the leanest times. I simply bought them in large quantities from my pension. With my usual frugality, I had bought notebooks even earlier, for all my writing. As for my father, my visitors, with whom I always talked behind closed doors, sometimes heard him shouting drunkenly in the other room. I calmly explained to them that, yes, we have such a problem, but we should not pay attention to it. They shout their own things, we talk about ours.

...Memory has not preserved anything about the person who wrote to us first. So this somewhat historical person, with whom everything began, has faded into oblivion. Like many others, then and later. Perhaps the first one to be mentioned is the one we nicknamed Nosey.

He was a man of seething temperament and ebullient activity, who changed many occupations. In those days he ran his own dating club. He contacted people who advertised for a life partner, recruited a group, then organised a general meeting at his home. This cycle repeated itself over and over again, and he wanted to add some variety. For example, he wanted to add a fresh stream of spiritual dialogue. Having met and talked to Hantur several times, he expressed a desire to talk to me to discuss possible co-operation.

He saw it in some strange ways. He proposed to recruit people into the Teaching through a dating club, advertising it in every possible way. In return he only wanted to become the head of the Teaching. I was puzzled and asked him how he would lead the Teaching, not knowing it at all, and who, in that case, would I be? He answered that his abilities as an administrator, which he possessed to the fullest extent, were sufficient for leadership. And I would become a counsellor to him, and I would just tell him what he doesn't know. He will retain the right to make all decisions as a manager, while I will have an advisory vote. I began to explain that it doesn't work that way. Leadership in a spiritual teaching requires something other than administrative talents, and a prophet and founder of a teaching cannot be a non-decisive counsellor. He sincerely didn't understand what the problem was and proved that his plan was quite effective. I watched and wondered. He seems to be not a fool, but he doesn't see the obvious... Perhaps I should have escorted him out right away. But I was curious how long it would take for him to realise it. And it was just interesting to talk to such a funny character. As a result, our conversation lasted nine hours, and he left, still wondering why I found his proposal unacceptable.

Nosey returned the next day, accompanied by some man. He said that he understood everything, — although it was evident that he understood nothing, — and that here was a friend of his who wanted to talk to us. After that, he left, and the friend sat down and said, "Guys, I don't know what you have here, but I know that this is the Truth."

That's how I got my second disciple. We nicknamed him Saveli among ourselves; I will call him by that name.

Saveli also changed a lot of professions and places of residence. At that time he was homeless and stayed with one friend or another. Very emotional, often unstable, passionate, and a great womaniser, which could be envied by Casanova. A Satanist by conviction, as he identified himself. But when he heard from Nosey about us, he immediately felt the Truth and wanted to say goodbye to his Satanist past. Later he brought his friend, also a Satanist, who gave me LaVey's "Satanic Bible" to read. This guy himself, as it turned out, was not interested in the Teaching, but just wanted to borrow books from me. Which he did, until I reminded him that this was not a public library, and that if he was not interested in the Teaching, then goodbye. That was the end of it.

I had a lot of books back then. We bought fiction all the time — but it was in my parents' room. Then came books on magic and the occult, then on religions, plus historical literature, and on and on. At some point I decided to buy a bookcase to put it all in my room, — fortunately, there was enough space in my room. We found the bookcase through the adverts, and we managed to purchase it for next to nothing. The owners were leaving, hastily selling off their furniture, and they gave it away, as they said, for the price of four chickens. However, the books that continued to be added — finances were still in a state of upheaval at the time — didn't fit into it. So we soon bought a second bookcase, on the same occasion, and even cheaper. This one, for example, contained a book that cost me more than it did. Thus, by the time I was describing, I already had something to read. Then we bought a third bookcase, but a few years later.

The new disciple immediately became a regular at my place. He came every day, sat for long periods of time, ate with me, stayed overnight. Sometimes he washed some of his clothes in our bathtub. My mother was not enthusiastic, but she didn't object, and as much as possible she held my father back from getting angry. We talked a lot about the Teaching. We talked a lot about his personal problems, analysed their causes, looked for ways to improve the situation. This man really was a man of problems. One of the brightest manifestations of his unfavourable inner state was that he could not get along with anyone and anywhere for a long time. He constantly changed his heart attachments, places of work, and spiritual paths. Before Satanism he had been Orthodox, and not only that. I drew conclusions from all this and thought that he would not remain among my disciples for long either. In the meantime, I tried to help him as much as I could. Besides, I gave him a copy of the available texts on the condition that if he changed his mind about being in the Teaching, he would return them. He was very fond of them, reading and rereading them, almost memorising them by heart.

They were carefully transcribed by my mother under my dictation, then we made some photocopies and made ourselves little books with cardboard covers. We had only five texts at that time, and we thought that everything would be limited to them.

Mum, as you can see, was not only aware of what was going on, but also helped a little. At first I didn't expect her involvement, even as modest as rewriting the texts. After all, she considered herself Orthodox, even nominally, she baked cakes and dyed eggs for Easter, she had an icon hanging in her kitchen — and here I am claiming that I am communicating with some foreign god... In theory, she should have denounce it as devilish. But she didn't. I think, in fact, she always remained indifferent to religion, and all the Christian attributes were no more important to her than my formal baptism as a child. It's like everyone around calls themselves Orthodox, — well, she too, like everyone else, as long as it is so accepted. So she was loyal to my activities and never once condemned them. I repeatedly asked her whether she thought I was a madman or a swindler. There were no other options. But she never answered me directly, and only said, "I want you to succeed." Well, that was more than I could have wished for.

My grandmother a few years later was more specific. Having observed something personally, learnt something from my mother, and then looked into our texts, she said to me, "You couldn't have made this up. All this teaching of yours was clearly made up by Andrei, and he is using you as a figurehead." It was somewhat strange to hear such a thing from someone who once thought I was smart enough to learn to be a lawyer. At the same time, it fit within the general attitude towards me that I described earlier. Clearly, I should not have expected those around me to believe in the revelation. But that is not enough. After all, it is not possible for a disabled person who has spent his whole life sitting in four walls, who has not seen or known life, to develop a serious philosophical system. If he came up with something, it would be nothing. This was the attitude that all my relatives showed, more or less frankly, when they learnt what I was doing.

Basically, it is quite understandable. Even for me, what was going on was hard to believe, moreover for them... And how can we not recall the famous saying that there is no prophet in his own land? This fair banality simply begs to be said. It applies to the family in full measure. Indeed, it is not easy to believe that the person you have known all your life, suddenly turns out to be so special. Like a prophet. There are famous examples of that. Especially if he's in a position like mine. How is that even possible?.. Having my previous experience, I did not expect anything different. That is why I did not try to tell my relatives anything, and certainly did not offer them to get acquainted with the Teaching. They learnt something from second or third hands, — and I have already told about the reaction.

Let's consider that this is one more touch to the general outline of the situation. It is an additional and important detail of the Scylla and Charybdis landscape.