Chapter 16. The Stubborn Bull

By now, the reader has probably asked a question: there was a lot of communication, but did it bring results? Did you manage to find new disciples? The answer will be disappointing. Time passed, new correspondents, new acquaintances, sometimes even new friends appeared and disappeared, but no new disciples were found.

Some seriously considered the possibility, but for various reasons did not join us. Perhaps one of the most interesting and revealing was the following case. Among those with whom Hantur communicated was a man who was genuinely interested in the Teaching and tried to understand it thoroughly. In the end he recognised it as true, but he did not dare to become a follower. The reason, strange as it may seem, was that the Teaching completely reject lying, not considering it permissible ever, in any situation. This man said, "You can't live without lying. If I stop lying, I'll lose my job. I won't be able to find another one, because you have to lie everywhere. And I have a family, children. How will I feed them?"

This is a very sad case. To give up the Truth one has sought and finally found because there is no place for an honest man in our society — is it not a tragedy? When Hantur recounted that conversation to me, I was immensely upset. And at the same time, I felt a deep respect for the man. Yes, he's forced to lie. But what he said paradoxically shows that he is honest and even principled. After all, he could have joined the Teaching and continued to lie, arguing that he was not yet ready to give up lying, and the Teaching do not require their followers to become perfect overnight. Or he could continue to lie and hide it. Lying that he doesn't lie. But no. You can see that if he had become a follower, it would have been in earnest, and he would have actually followed the moral code he adopted. And since he found that impossible for himself, he didn't become a hypocrite. I think he was a very good man. Despite the fact that he did not become one of us, he remains a bright memory for me.

As for the impossibility of working without lying, he is almost right here. Indeed, today's life — especially in our post-Soviet space — is organised in such a way that it is difficult to work without lying. And when it comes to work, too. Hantur had to go through this. He changed several places of work simply because he did not fit into the customs with his principled nature. Somewhere he refused to backdate work documentation, somewhere he refused to follow unethical orders from management, etc. Somewhere he left on his own, seeing that he could not work, and somewhere he was offered to leave voluntarily, threatening that otherwise they would find something to fire him for. In one place the bosses even threatened him with physical violence for disobedience. Many years passed before he managed to find a place where it was possible to work honestly, although, again, not without constant tension with the management. So it was possible to find such a job after all. Albeit not without difficulty.

The story of that man and his motivation for refusing to accept the Teaching is not typical. Although there have been other cases in the following years when people were confused by the emphasis of the Teaching on the moral and ethical aspect, but without such specifics. A much more frequent reason for not accepting the Teaching is that it does not allow mixing different spiritual paths, i.e. bringing elements of another teaching into one. And this is in fashion now. Many people do this. I have met enough examples. For instance, a person recognises the divinity of Jesus and the idea of salvation, but at the same time believes in reincarnation, and is also fond of Kabbalah. He does not care that all these things do not fit together in any way, because they are elements of different, contradictory worldviews. He just likes it all. The strangest and most absurd combinations are encountered. People pull something from different doctrines and pile it up in a disorderly heap, proudly calling it their worldview. I call such worldviews patchwork. And I call this phenomenon spiritual fornication — by analogy with the situation when a person, instead of being faithful to one favourite partner, has many promiscuous relationships at once. In the case of spirituality it is not only ugly, but also useless, because the mixing of different contradictory paths does not allow to pass through any of them and makes successful spiritual progress impossible.

That was the phenomenon we encountered at the time. Probably half, if not most, of those with whom we had a chance to communicate turned out to be amateurs of mixing things that do not mix. If such a person started to be interested in the Teaching, he or she immediately lost interest when learnt that it would not work in this way. Or even accused it of depriving a person of freedom. But in fact it does not require more than any clear worldview system, than any serious spiritual path. Just follow what one has accepted. But those who like to serve two gods or, if you will, sit on two — or even more — chairs are not particularly friendly with common sense.

Actually, one could expect something like that, given the way we used to search for people. Probably, these were the people who were attracted to our adverts in the first place. Those who had a specific spiritual path were unlikely to be particularly interested in them. With a few exceptions, like that monk. But we were inexperienced at the time and could not foresee such things. We became acquainted with the phenomenon of spiritual fornication as we went along. But we were able to study it very well.

It cannot be denied, however, that this various intercourse was in any case extremely instructive and enlightening. Even among the spiritual fornicators themselves many interesting types were found. For example, the lady who took offence at not being offered tea. She was one of them, but she was, so to speak, a room type. A housewife, who reads some of the most popular books and used to chat about them in the kitchen while drinking tea.

And there were representatives of another type — active. For example, one man who had been practising different spiritual traditions for a long time, who had visited many places and experienced many things. The crowning achievement of his activity was a trip to either Tibet or Nepal, where he was buried alive for twenty-four hours to experience a deep inner upheaval and spiritual rebirth. When Hantur, who was chatting with him, asked if that experience had affected his life, he hesitantly replied, "I guess so..." This man became interested in the Teaching too. First he communicated with Saveli, then with Hantur. Being the head of one of the major sports organisations, he offered Hantur the position of a consultant on spiritual enlightenment, and even gave him a corresponding document. But it turned out that such a position was hardly possible under the current circumstances. So it didn't work out. The document with the signature, seal and everything that is necessary is kept in our archive.

...I mentioned Tibet, and one incident came to my memory. It was when I was probably still in high school. I was walking with my mum and my cousins, and a disabled guy came up to me. His legs were twisted and he was hobbling with great difficulty. And he was drunk. How he managed not to fall down is a mystery to me. He came over and asked, breathing alcohol in my face, "Do you want to be healthy?" He was slurring his words. Not knowing what to expect from him, I replied neutrally, "Who doesn't?" He spoke eagerly: "Then you should go to Tibet. Go to Tibet! There are such doctors there who put everyone on their feet. And they'll put you back on your feet! Understand? Go to Tibet!" Then he turned round and walked away, swaying and waving his arms desperately. I watched him, feeling nothing but pity. Go to Tibet... He seems to want to help somehow, to give advice, but it is his dream, not advice. But he's drinking himself to death. And there's probably nothing in his own future. Nothing at all, except drinking. It was unspeakably sad.

But back to our correspondents.

As I said, they wrote to us from all kind of places. Even from the monastery. And also from prison. We were surprised to receive such an unusual letter. It was from a man who, as it soon became clear, belonged to the world of organised crime, and who was not the least of them. He was very interested in the Teaching, and it was evident that he was not an ignoramus in such topics. He was well-read, had a lively mind, and had a rather deep understanding of not the simplest questions. All in all, the correspondence turned out to be really interesting. Suddenly, however, it took a turn that we could not have expected.

In one of the letters he began to develop the idea that the Teaching has a great potential, that it could become famous and have many followers. But for that, good advertising and active promotion are needed. There was nothing new for us in such reasoning, because we thought so ourselves. However, he further offered us co-operation. He undertook to provide us with funds to pay for the advertising campaign, and promised to get $150,000 through his connections — as he put it, "for the first time". Other investments would follow. And when the Teaching are sufficiently promoted and start bringing in money, the money will be split 50/50 — half to us and half to the sponsors who will invest in the promotion.

It became clear that he regarded the Teaching as a means of extracting money from people. Actually, many modern teachings are created for this very purpose — simply as a way of enrichment for those who invented them. Accordingly, they are not spiritual, but pseudo-spiritual, — simply fakes, pure fraud. But it is not so with us. One of the principles of the Teaching is that the Truth should be given free of charge. That is why I do not take money from my disciples for training, there are no compulsory monetary or other contributions in the Teaching, followers are not obliged to buy any books, paraphernalia, and so on. What the Teaching is absolutely not is a means of profiting from the followers. And if we had the money offered, or even more, and invested it in advertising the Teaching, it would hardly bring a penny of profit.

Of course, no co-operation with the mysterious sponsors was possible. In fact, they are not so mysterious. Some mafia that would then try to take control of the Teaching. Taking even a step in that direction was out of the question.

The reply he received explained in the most correct form that the Teaching was not a means of making money, politely declined his offer, and said that this was the end of the communication. He wrote — well, no so no, and if we need, we will find you. It looked like a threat. But then we just had to accept the situation as it was.

In the meantime, a happy event had occurred: the dictation from Emere continued. Now I was writing down a long text of several dozen chapters — that very "Eosfor" already mentioned. It turned out that we would have not five texts, but a rather large book.

But even before the "Eosfor" was finished, I resumed my attempts to write something about the Teaching. Several small articles appeared, literally a few pages each. The "Protophema" was written — a little epistle about the appearance of the Teaching, which was the beginning of the "Epistole", the book of epistles.

And then we decided to try to publish a book dedicated to the Teaching. It was to be very small: the first five texts, those few articles, the "Protophema", and a kind of interview where Hantur would ask me questions and I would answer them. This modest collection was called "The Revival of the Teaching of Hermes". The expectation was that although freedom of the press, including book publishing, was already in marked decline, we could still slip through the shuttered gates and publish it.

We started with online adverts. We had no computers or any other means of access to the network. And the Internet as such was an inaccessible dream for us, something almost mythical. But we found a person who had access. We paid him money — the only means of financing then and later for us was my pension — and he periodically placed an advert on the net like "Assistance in publishing a book on hermeticism is required". We hoped in this way to find either a publisher or someone who would lead us to one. It didn't work. Fortunately, there were no high hopes for this method, so we were not particularly disappointed. Although we couldn't have imagined at the time how many more challenges of publishing a book lay ahead of us.

The next step was to establish contacts with Belarusian publishing houses. Hantur took care of it. He collected information about them, then we discussed where it made sense to apply and where not, he made calls and offered the book. Some people would turn it down, some would show interest. Then Hantur travelled to Minsk — almost always publishing houses were located in the capital — to visit all those who were interested in one day. In addition, he found an intermediary who would find a publisher for a percentage of the fee. The intermediary, however, turned out to be worthless, and could not even interest anyone. Hantur, however, intrigued a number of publishers with the book.

Nevertheless, it was not a success either. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the country was already on the offensive against non-Christian literature. And while it was still possible to publish books on "traditional" religions or at least well-known teachings, anything new was automatically classed as so-called "neo-cults" and perceived as dangerous and destructive. Accordingly, the consequences for the publisher could be not the most pleasant. Although some still considered the possibility of co-operation with us. However, there was a second problem. Domestic publishers, dealing with literature of such subjects, had always been modestly funded, and at the time described, most were openly struggling and barely making ends meet. Therefore, some of them simply did not dare to publish our book. They were afraid to take a financial risk. The topic itself, hermeticism, is not very popular. The author's name won't say anything to anyone. Besides, he has no higher education, which is also a disadvantage. Successful realisation of the circulation will be under a big question mark. And if the investment will not pay off, the publishing house may simply not recover from the blow. So in the political sense, you could still take a risk, but financially... Too bad, but no.

At the same time, we were constantly offered to publish the book at the author's expense. Almost any publishing house was ready to act as a printing house. But the author, of course, had no money. Neither did he have any possibilities for the subsequent realisation of the print run, if such realisation was implied.

There was only one publisher who immediately agreed to co-operate. He received the manuscript for familiarisation against a receipt, and came to the conclusion that the book would go well. He began negotiations with Hantur as the author's representative by blackmailing him, saying, "Do you know that since the book is now in my possession, I can publish it without you? And my receipt won't help you. The book will be published under a different title and with a different name on the cover, and you won't even know." Apparently, having decided that he had thus taken the bull by the horns, he immediately put forward a proposal. He would publish the book in a good edition, pay me a decent fee, and even help me avoid taxes. In return, he only wanted me to rewrite the passages that did not conform to his personal views. Among other things, the book was not to claim that the Teaching is true, but to say that all religions and teachings are equally true. In his opinion, no one should claim to be true. I was of a different opinion, believing that every religion and every teaching has the right to consider itself true and as such to offer its worldview to the people, and they will decide for themselves whom to believe. Hantur tried to explain this to him, but was unsuccessful. Then they called each other and discussed it again.

Then the publisher called me directly. He again outlined his tempting offers, repeated his demands and threats, and insisted that I must accept his terms if I wanted to publish at all. The bull, however, proved stubborn. I replied that I was not after royalties. I want to publish the book, of course, but as a statement of my views, not his. What followed was a discussion about the right to freely express one's views. He argued that all teachings have that right equally. I agreed and pointed out that stating one's truth is also part of one's views — not just the TUT, by the way, but virtually all religions and teachings. And one should not deprive them of the right to do so. Otherwise it turns out that my interlocutor contradicts himself: he seems to be in favour of freedom of expression of views, and at the same time he demands not to express views that he himself does not like. Why does he think that he has the right to tell anyone what they can and cannot say? Was that what freedom was in his mind? He got annoyed, angry, persuaded, threatened. I stood my ground. In the course of half an hour's conversation we never came to an agreement. That was the end of our attempts to co-operate.

The two described cases — with the offer of money for the promotion of the Teaching and with the blackmailer-publisher — allowed me to think over the future line of behaviour in similar situations. Two principles clearly emerged. The first is never to chase money. The second — never give in to blackmail. If these principles are not adhered to, the Teaching will not be what it should be. It will be subject to outside influences, will begin to change under their influence, will lose its essence, and will perish very quickly.

Many of those who try to implement something good, some useful project, make a deal with their conscience and take part in impure money affairs, justifying their actions by the fact that money will help a good cause. However, this is a mistake. A good cause that is fuelled in this way soon ceases to be good. It mutates and dies. The same applies to pressure and blackmail. If one succumbs to them, the endeavor mutates into something else and dies. In other words, while a lack of money creates challenges and slows progress, and blackmail ultimately leads to trouble and harm, the pursuit of money and concessions to coercion outright destroy it. They kill it more surely than the problems they aim to avoid, tearing it apart from within. That’s why neither can be allowed.

Hence the line of behaviour. Let the lack of means and external pressure create problems, let them slow down the development and spread of the Teaching — this is a correctable matter. Maybe with difficulty, maybe for a long time, but it is correctable. But deflection in the face of moneylessness and pressure will be irreparable. It will be the same as destroying the Teaching with your own hands. When someone or something dies as a result of actions taken for the sake of survival, it is especially tragic and sad. This cannot be allowed to happen. So we must go forward and not give in. Never give in, — no matter how difficult and problematic it may be. This is the only way to preserve the Teaching and the possibility of its success.

It was then that dilemmas of this kind lost their relevance for me. The choice was always clear in advance, and the willingness to accept any of its consequences was never in doubt. This is what is expressed in the famous formula "Do what you must — come what may". When you do not just read it somewhere, but come to it yourself, derive it from your own experience, then there is no doubt in its fairness.

...That time was very eventful. Something was happening all the time, literally every day brought something important or simply interesting. Crumbs of valuable experience rained down on us. We learnt to communicate with other people on spiritual and related topics. I learnt to present the Teaching fluently but succinctly, found a number of necessary formulations, worked out answers to frequently asked questions, etc. Of course, this was still a low level of professing the Teaching, but it was as different from what had taken place a couple of years earlier as a steam engine from a cart.

And another piece of experience, the importance of which cannot be overestimated, was gained when we discovered that there was a community of Hermeticists in Minsk.

In one of the newspapers we came across their advert, and we were surprised. Firstly, that they existed in our country at all, and secondly, that they announced themselves. Of course, it was impossible not to respond. At the same time, there were no definite expectations. Who knows how they will react... Most likely negative. Because the news I had to tell them was not quite unambiguous.

I have already said that the Teaching have been transmitted to people before, but in a closed, esoteric form. The last revelation took place several thousand years ago. The name of that prophet has not been preserved. In course of time he began to be identified with the source of the revelation, from whom he thus borrowed the name, and in the tradition entered as Hermes Trismegistus. In the centuries since then the knowledge has been almost completely lost; and what has survived has been very badly distorted, almost beyond recognition. The Hermeticism known to us is only an inarticulate, many times distorted echo of the real teaching of Trismegistus. The texts included in the so-called "Hermetic Corpus" have little in common with it. It cannot be denied that Hermeticism has had a great influence on the development of philosophical and mystical thought, and that its importance is great. Only it is no longer that teaching, but something quite different.

That is why our book was to be called "The Revival of Hermes' Teaching". It meant that the same teaching of Hermes as the God of Wisdom and Hermes Trismegistus as his prophet is revived, returns to people in the authentic form, freed from distortions, later overlays, over-interpretations and erroneous interpretations. Is this good news? Absolutely. For hermeticists it's just so great. However, only in theory. Having thoroughly familiarised by that time with the history of the question, I already understood that in fact such news will hardly please them. I will explain why a bit below.

So, I wrote to the advert. Said I'd be happy to chat about hermeticism and had something to say about it. They responded. A correspondence ensued. As I understood it, it was a group of young people of both sexes, enthusiastic about hermeticism and organised a kind of thematic club. When I told about the revelation, there was an immediate sense of tension in the communication. This did not discourage me, as I understood how dubious my statements looked. One might have expected them to immediately interrupt the correspondence. I hoped, however, that they would want to familiarise themselves with the Teaching, even if only to criticise it. After all, it is necessary to evaluate what is offered in order to come to a conclusion whether it is rubbish or not. Contrary to expectations, they did not deny the possibility of revelation. But they did not show any desire to find out what the revelation was about. Instead, they offered to verify the source. They sent a dozen questions from the literature on Hermeticism and offered to ask them to Emere-Hermes. If he answers correctly, then it's the real Hermes. If not, then it's someone pretending to be him.

That's where I really got discouraged. I didn't expect such a ridiculous turn of events. After being surprised and gathering my thoughts, I wrote a letter, where, choosing my words carefully, with all possible tact, I drew their attention to two circumstances. The first was that the answers to their questions were contained in the available literature. That is, you don't have to be Hermes to answer correctly. For example, any of them, or I, or many others, could have done it. The second is that revelation restores the original teaching of Hermes. That is, it does not repeat exactly what can be found in hermetic literature. If it turned out to be simply a repetition of the same thing, there would be no point in revelation. The information is different — that is the point of what is going on. This applies to the proposed questions as well. For the reasons stated above, this test cannot help determine the validity of the revelation. Wouldn't it be better to read the revelation itself in order to come to a conclusion as to whether it deserves attention?

They then cancelled the correspondence without explaining their decision or even saying goodbye. In the end, I was left with a sense of nonsense. If I were them, I would either immediately refused to communicate, not being ready to allow the very fact of revelation, or I would have requested and studied the material to evaluate it. But to initiate an inspection that, in principle, cannot prove anything, and then simply go silent... That's nonsense.

Nevertheless, the described case confirmed what I had already guessed and what I had seen confirmed in the future. Namely, that if someone is not interested in revival of the true teaching of Hermes, it is first of all Hermeticists.

Does that sound strange? Perhaps. But there is nothing strange here. The matter is that Hermeticism, as we know it today, is a system as amorphous, not concrete, dark and incomprehensible as possible. It is, in fact, not even a worldview proper, not a system describing a certain vision of reality, but simply a collection of heterogeneous, often contradictory sources and their interpretations. Which is literally a gold mine for those who call themselves hermeticists. Since it is unclear what the hermetic texts are about, they can be interpreted as you wish. One can develop their own hermetic teachings based on them. And nobody can refute it. It's just opinion against opinion, that's all. Many people have made names for themselves on this. Some have made good money. Some have made a lot of ego.

For such, the revival of Hermes in its true form is bad news. In fact, a catastrophe. Because if it will be possible to say "This is how it really is", it will destroy all that they have built themselves, will cross out the possibility of any speculation, it will close the sources of authority and income. There will be no material left from which to mould whatever they want. And this is what they need the least. They will not be able to forbid the Teaching to declare itself, so they can only deny it.

It seems that among hermeticists there should be found those who really want to know what the ancient Trismegistus taught. But we have not met such people yet. Although, it is necessary to admit, they didn't really look for it. For all subsequent years there were made a couple of attempts to communicate with hermeticists, — and they were equally unsuccessful. Realising that there was little point in working in this direction, we did not concentrate on it.

Again, this situation looks strange. Just for the majority of those who, in a good way, should be pleased or at least interested in the appearance of the Teaching, it turns out to be undesirable. What can be said here?.. Here we see one more example of the winding paths that life sometimes takes. And for the Teaching specifically, if not a primary problem, then at least a lack of opportunity to receive important support.