ur company reached the glade, this time accurately determining its location..
“Listen, there is nobody here,” Slava said doubtfully. “Maybe this is not the right glade?”
“It’s the right one. I remember it well from the last time,” Andrew nodded affirmatively.
“Of course!” grinned Kostya.
We laughed recalling our last adventures. In about ten minutes, the senior guys started to arrive, joining our good mood.
“Oh, the Teacher is going to come now,” Victor livened up.
“Why do you think so?” I asked looking at the stars.
“Because of Samurai,” the senior sempai replied smiling.
I shifted my gaze to the ground and only then noticed how the cat paced grandly on a lonely fence in the light of a distant lamp, all the time almost falling down and trying to maintain his balance with his claws.
“He always comes to the meditation,” continued the sempai. “He sits calmly aside in full trance, and then without wasting his time with our conversations and impressions, leaves right away.”
“The first time we came, he stayed until the end. Sensei was trying to grab him out of the bushes,” I remarked.
“Well, that was probably a small exception from his rules.”
“Strange how it came out that time,” I thought, “Even the cat took direct part in that.”
The guys joined our conversation.
“Why did Sensei get a black cat?” asked Tatyana.
“He didn’t get him on purpose. When Samurai was still a kitten, the village kids would throw stones at him. So, Sensei picked him up from the street and cured him. Since then, the cat has lived with him and doesn’t leave him.”
“Who tore his ears up so much?” Andrew asked with a smile.
“Ah, he was sparring with dogs.”
“With dogs?”
“Yes. Samurai not only trains spiritually, but also practices martial arts,” said Victor, making everybody look at the cat. “Sensei has been teaching him, one could say, from childhood, the Wing Chun style, which is opposite to the Cat style. So now he picks fights with both cats and dogs.”
“You must be joking?” Andrew was sincerely surprised. “How is it possible to teach a cat Kung-fu? Not every human will understand it, and this is just a stupid animal.”
“It depends how you look at it,” the Teacher interrupted the conversation, coming out from the dark. “Sometimes a stupid animal proves itself to be cleverer than some Homo sapiens.”
“Still, though,” Nikolai Andreevich was interested in the unusual fact, “How did you teach him?”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Sensei simply said as if we were talking about something ordinary. “In the form of game. First I would clench his claws with my fingers and then in the same way would show him how to unclench. That’s how he learned… Now, he not only fights with cats but also picks fights with dogs. You see, he is not interested in mice anymore, they are not the right level. But why did I teach him? Now I have to run around with the mouse traps myself!”
Everyone laughed. I still didn’t understand whether that was a joke or not. If that was a joke, then why was it so serious? And if true, then one really needs to have remarkable talent to teach a cat.
During his story, Sensei was simultaneously shaking everybody’s hand, and when it was Andrew’s turn, he didn’t give his hand, but instead bowed politely.
“What happened?” Sensei was surprised.
“Well, I’m afraid to touch you after the other day’s events,” Andrew replied half-jokingly.
“What do I have to do with that?” said Sensei, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “It’s not me that you should be afraid of but him. He was next to you and not me.”
While Sensei was speaking with the other guys, Andrew pushed Kostya slightly to the side, “So it was through you!”
“What!? I’m smart of course, but not to that extent.”
“I’m serious.”
“And I’m serious.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Andrew waited until Sensei answered another question and asked, “Is it true that you’ve done it through a handshake?”
“Of course. Some day I will tell you about this.”
Then the conversation moved on to our home meditations. At first I wanted to call Sensei off to the side and speak to him alone about my thoughts because I was afraid of the reaction of the senior guys. Who knows, maybe they’d ridicule me with their picky jokes, like my friends. But Sensei patiently examined and explained every situation that happened to the guys. From Yura I heard a similar story, but not exactly so acute. Seeing the serious mood of the others, I finally decided to tell Sensei everything in the presence of everybody. And when another pause appeared in the conversation, I timidly started to share my achievements. Everyone listened calmly and carefully. Then I grew bold and told them about the dodger.
After my story, there reigned a short silence. “That’s it,” I thought, “Now Nikolai Andreevich will diagnose me with schizophrenia. Why did I blab it out in front of everyone?” But, to my surprise, Sensei said the following:
“It’s a good result. To catch a thought of your animal nature is hard and to fight with it, even more so. It is impossible to fight with this category of thought in principle because violence generates violence. And the more you try to kill it, the more intensively it’ll appear in you. The best way to defend against it is to switch to positive thoughts. In other words, the principle of Aikido of smooth withdrawal should be used here.”
“What if they are chasing me the entire day? Can’t I just chop them off with some swear word?” asked Ruslan.
“No matter how you chop them off, negative thoughts will keep appearing according to the law of action/counteraction. That’s why you needn’t fight with them. You should withdraw from them, artificially developing in yourself a positive thought. In other words, concentrate on something good or recall something good. Only in this way of smooth withdrawal will you be able to win over your negative thought.”
“And why can thoughts sometimes be absolutely the opposite of each other? Sometimes I too get confused by my thoughts.”
“Let’s say it this way: in the human body, there is a spiritual nature, or soul, and a material nature, or animal, call it as you wish. The human mind is a battlefield of these two natures. That’s why different thoughts arise in you,” Sensei replied.
“And who am ‘I’, if thoughts are alien?”
“Not alien, but yours. You are the one who’s listening to them, the one who is choosing your nature. If you prefer the material, animal nature, then you’ll be evil and nasty, and if you listen to the advice of your soul, you’ll be a good person, and it will be pleasant for other people to be around you. The choice is always yours, you are either despot or saint.”
“And why did my admiration for taming my anger lead to pride, to the growth of megalomania? Because it seemed like I did a good deed, but the thought got carried away in a different direction?” I asked.
“You turned to the soul, your desire was fulfilled. And when you weakened your control over yourself, you were pulled over by the animal nature by your own favorite egoistic thoughts. You liked that you were complimented from all sides that you were so smart, so judicious, and so forth… There is a permanent war of two natures inside of you. And your future depends on which side you choose.”
I pondered a little and then specified, “In other words this dodger who reminded me about the pain and prevented me from concentrating, who inflated my megalomania…”
“Absolutely correct.”
“But there is an entire pile of these thoughts there!”
“Yes,” confirmed Sensei. “An entire legion. That’s why it’s impossible to fight with them. It’s not Kung-fu, it’s much more serious. It is possible to fight with the one who shows resistance. But fighting with a vacuum is senseless. Against a vacuum of negative thoughts, it is only possible to create the same vacuum of positive thoughts. In other words, I repeat, shift your mind to positive and good thinking. But always stay vigilant, listening what your brain thinks about. Observe yourself. Pay attention to the fact that you don’t do anything but the thoughts in you are constantly swarming. And not one thought. There can be two and three or more at once.”
“It’s like in Christianity, they say, on man’s left shoulder sits the devil, and on the right, an angel. And they are always whispering something,” remarked Volodya.
“Absolutely correct,” confirmed Sensei. “But for some reason, the devil whispers louder, he probably has a rougher voice. What’s called the devil in Christianity is the manifestation of our animal nature.”
“When I discovered this division of thoughts in myself, I thought that maybe I caught schizophrenia, because it also has to do with the splitting of consciousness,” I said more bravely.
Sensei smiled and jokingly answered, “There is no genius without a sign of madness.”
Nikolai Andreevich laughed, “Yes, indeed. I observe something similar in myself as well.”
Stas joined the conversation, reflecting aloud about his experience, “Well, if the mind is a battlefield of two natures, and as far as I understand it, their weapons are thoughts, then how can you distinguish who is who? How do the spiritual and the animal nature manifest in thoughts? In which way?”
“The spiritual nature means thoughts generated by the power of love, in the broad sense of the word. While the animal nature means thoughts about the body, our instincts, our reflexes, megalomania, desires, entirely devoured by material interests, and so forth.”
“Well, then we should live in a cave,” Ruslan expressed his opinion, “So that we have nothing and want nothing.”
“With a head like yours, even a cave won’t help,” Eugene teased him.
“Nobody forbids you to have all of this,” continued Sensei. “If you want, please, follow the modern world, use all the goods of civilization. But to live just for that, to place the accumulation of material goods as the main purpose of your existence on Earth, it’s stupid, it’s unnatural to the spiritual nature. This goal is an indicator of the predominance of the animal nature in people. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that you should live as a bum in a cave. No, I already told you that all these high technologies are given to mankind so that humans could free up more time for their spiritual perfection. But certainly not for a man to collect a pile of these iron things at home and blow up his megalomania because he possesses all that dust.”
After keeping silent for a while, Sensei thoughtfully pronounced, “A human is a complex synthesis of the spiritual and the animal nature. It’s a pity that in your mind more of the animal nature than the one from God predominates. The other day, I decided to give you one ancient practice to help you balance these two natures, so that the animal won’t burden you so much. It has existed just as long as humans have. This spiritual practice is not just for working on yourself, on your thoughts, but what is very important, it is for the awakening of your soul. In relation to life, it can be compared to a dynamic meditation because it is constantly functioning, regardless of where the human is located or what he does. A part of this human should always be in this state, controlling all that happens around or inside.
“This spiritual practice is called a Lotus Flower. It consists of the following. You imagine that you plant the seed of a lotus inside yourself, in the regions of the solar plexus. And this small seed grows due to the power of love generated by your positive thoughts. Thus, controlling the growth of this flower lets you get rid of negative thoughts that constantly turn over in your head.”
“Do we really think about negative things all the time?” Ruslan asked.
“Of course,” Sensei answered “Just follow your thoughts carefully. People spend a lot of time visualizing different conflict situations, negative memories of the past, they imagine as they quarrel, prove something, deceive someone or hit back, they think of their illnesses, material deprivations, and so on. It means they always keep a lot of negative thoughts in their mind.
“By doing this practice, you intentionally get rid of all these negative thoughts by internal control. And the more positive image that you keep in your mind, the quicker the growth of the seed of Love. In the beginning, you imagine that a seed starts growing, and a small stalk appears. It grows further, leaves cover the stalk, then comes a small flower bud. And finally, getting more and more of the power of love, the bud blossoms out into a Lotus. The Lotus Flower is at first golden, but on growing it becomes dazzling white.”
“How much time does it take it to grow?” I asked.
“Actually, it depends on you. Some people need years, and others just months, or days, or even seconds. It all depends on your desire, whether you will make an effort. It is necessary not only to grow this flower, but also to support it by the power of your love so that it will not fade or die. This constant feeling of growth should be held at the level of subconscious or, to say it more precisely, at the level of a controllable, remote consciousness. The more love you give to this little flower, the more you cherish it in your mind, take care of it, protect it from surrounding negative ¬influences, the more it grows. This flower is generated by the energy of love, I emphasize, by the internal energy of love. And the more you feel love towards the whole world, to all the people and to your surroundings, the bigger the flower becomes. And if you start to get angry, the flower becomes weak. If you yield to anger, the flower fades and becomes ill. Then it is necessary to put forth the maximum effort to restore it. It is a kind of control.
“Thus, when this flower blossoms and starts to increase in size, it starts to emit vibrations instead of a scent, the so-called leptons or gravitons, call them as you like, that is, the energy of love. You feel the moving petals of this flower that bring vibrations to your whole body, to all the space around you, radiating love and harmony to the world.”
“And is it somehow felt at the physical level?” Eugene asked.
“Yes. The Lotus can be felt as though the regions of a solar plexus are burning, spreading heat. That is, these feelings arise in the regions of a solar plexus where, as legends say, our soul is hidden. These regions start getting warmer and warmer. The main sense of all of this is that wherever you are, whomever you are with or whatever you do or think, you should always feel this heat, heat that warms not only your body but also your soul. This internal concentration of love is located in the flower. Finally, the more you take care of it and glorify this love, the more you feel that this flower expands and tightly surrounds your body with its petals, and you stand inside of the huge Lotus.
“And then it comes to a very important point. When you reach the stage when Lotus petals surround you from all sides, you feel two flowers. One is inside under your heart that is warmed all the time by the feeling of internal love. Another one, the bigger one, is like the astral shell of this flower that surrounds you. On the one hand, it radiates the vibration of love to the world and on the other hand, it protects you from the negative influence of other people. Thus the cause-andeffect law works. To put it in the language of physics, there is a wave effect. Briefly, you radiate waves of good feelings, intensifying them manifold and thus creating a graceful wave field. You can feel this wave field all the time supported by your heart and soul of love, and it positively impacts not only you but also the surrounding world.
“This happens with everyday practice. First, you always control your thoughts, learning to concentrate on positive things. Therefore you are not automatically able to wish bad things to anybody or to be bad. This practice should be done every day and every second for your whole life. It is some kind of distraction method, as nobody can fight with negative thoughts by force. Love cannot be compelled. Therefore you should distract your attention. If a negative or undesirable thought comes, you concentrate on your flower, you start to give your love to it, that is, you forget all the negative things. Or you switch your attention to something else, to something positive. But you feel the flower all the time: going to bed, getting up, at night, during the day, whatever you do, when studying, working, doing sports, etc. You feel how love flares up, how currents of love are moving in your chest and are filling your body. You feel how this flower starts heating up inside with a special warmth, the divine warmth of love. And the more you give, the bigger the love is inside. Constantly radiating this love, you perceive people from the position of love. That is, second, what is very important, that you tune yourself into the frequency of the good.
“And the good means success, luck, health. It means everything! You start feeling happier, and that has a positive impact on your mind. The central nervous system is the main regulator of all vital activity. Therefore, first of all, this practice improves your health. Besides, your life becomes smoother as you start finding reconciliation with everybody. Nobody wants to quarrel with you, you are welcome everywhere. You won’t have any major problems. Why? Because even if you have some troubles in life, as life is life, you start perceiving them in a completely different way than just ordinary people. You already have a new vision of the life that helps you to find the most optimal decision for the situation. Because the wisdom of life awakens in you, you start feeling yourself becoming human, you come to understand who is God, that God is an all-encompassing substance, and not just a fantasy of a few idiots. You start feeling the divine presence in yourself and strengthen this power by your positive thoughts and feelings. You will never feel alone in this world anymore as God is in you and with you, you feel His real presence. There is an expression, ’If you are in love, you are in God, and God is in you as God is love.’ It is very important that you start feeling the aura of the flower that is inside and outside of you.
“How is the aura felt around the body?” Stas asked.
“With the lapse of time, you see this vibration around yourself as a glowing light. The air seems to become lighter and more transparent, and the surrounding world turns more intensive in its colours. The most fascinating thing is that people start noticing these transformations in you. There is a common expression, ’a man glows, shines.’ That actually means the glow of this wave field resulting from the workings of love in the individual. People surrounding him also start feeling this field. They are glad when this individual is somewhere near, as they also start feeling joy, internal excitement. Many people are getting better. They will feel good even in his presence, however sick they have been. Everybody is attracted by this person, wishing to open their hearts and souls to him. That means that people perceive love. This is the heart’s open gate towards God. This is what all the great souls said and what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Open your heart to God.’
“This spiritual practice of Lotus has been used since time immemorial. Since olden times, the Lotus was said to beget God, as God awakens in the Lotus. A divine substance – a soul – awakens in the Lotus flower, in harmony and love inside of you. You should always take care of your flower, controlling at all times your thoughts and feelings so that the Lotus flower does not fade.”
“Is there a real flower?” Slava asked with surprise. “No. The material flower does not exist there, of course. It is imaginary. This process can be discussed in a different way: the awakening of divine love, the reaching of enlightenment, full unity with God – moksha, dao, shinto. Call it what you like. But all of this is just words and religion. And in fact it means that you create by your positive thoughts and feeling of love a certain force field that, on the one hand, affects the real world around you and, on the other hand, changes the internal frequency of your mind.”
“And the soul?” I asked.
“The soul is you, it is a kind of eternal generator of divine power, if you wish, but it needs to be activated by your constant thoughts of love… Later I will tell you about the soul and its meaning in detail.”
But then Kostya joined the discussion, “You have said that this practice is very ancient. How old is it?”
“I have already told you that it has existed as long as people have existed as Homo sapiens.”
“Well, how long, seven, ten thousand years?”
“That’s too short a period of time. Mankind in its civilized form has existed a lot of times before, with much better technologies than now. Another thing is why these civilizations disappeared. At some point, I will tell you about that too.”
“But if this practice is so ancient, there should be some memory of it in our civilization.”
“Certainly. The fact that the spiritual practice of the Lotus Flower has existed for so long may be proven by various ancient sources. The Lotus was given, for example, to some Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. And if you look for the literature on this issue, you will find evidence that Egyptian myths and legends say that even their Sun God was born out of the lotus flower. This flower served as a throne for Isis, Horus, and Osiris.
“In ancient Veda, the oldest Hindu books written in Sanskrit, the Lotus is one of the central issues. In particular, regarding the three main male incarnations of God – Brahma-Creator, Vishnu-Protector, and ShivaDestroyer – they say the following, ‘The body of the God Vishnu bore a giant golden lotus with lotus-born Brahma-Creator on it. The golden thousand-petalled lotus was growing and the universe followed it growing.’
“In China and India, this flower depicts purity and chastity. The best human qualities and intentions were associated by people with the lotus. In China, they think that there is a special Western heaven with a lotus lake and that every flower growing there is bound to the soul of a dead person. If an individual was virtuous, his flower blossomed out, otherwise the flower faded.
“In Greece, the lotus was considered to be a plant devoted to the goddess Hera. Hercules made his voyage in a lotus-shaped boat.
“However, all these legends and myths are not made up by people. They appeared because of people’s self-development with this ancient spiritual practice. As earlier the animal nature prevailed in most people, the Lotus Flower was given only to the chosen ones, spiritually mature individuals. It is natural that other people later regarded these individuals as gods. An individual with a grown-up Lotus and awakened soul becomes God-like as he can create love just by his thought.
“And when it was time to spiritually educate people, the Bodhisattvas of Shambala gave this spiritual practice to Buddha. Due to practicing this technique of the Lotus, Siddhartha Gautama reached enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi tree. On approval of Rigden, Buddha gave it to his disciples for further dissemination within people. Unfortunately, over time, people distorted the teachings of Buddha and created a whole religion based on this practice. The Buddhists imagine their paradise as an unusual place where people are born like gods on the lotus flower. They are looking for this place, although it is always inside of them. They made Buddha into a god, even though he was just a human who had known the truth due to this spiritual practice. In such a way, the Lotus became a symbol of Buddhism. There is even an expression, ’Buddha sits in a lotus’ or ‘Buddha stands in a lotus.’ He has shown people by example what an individual can reach by defeating his animal nature. He has really done a lot of useful things for the spiritual development of mankind by disseminating this spiritual practice among people in its original form.
“The same prayer was given by Jesus Christ to revoke the divine love.”
“Does it mean that prayer and meditation are the same thing?” Tatyana asked.
“Actually, yes. The prayer ‘Our Father’ is the same. It is just so simple, people ask for bread and so on, but the main sense is the same: an individual develops himself, grows out his soul by controlling his thoughts, by his desire, by his firm belief and love.
“In general, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and all the great souls knew this spiritual practice, as they used the same source. It helped them not only to become themselves but also to help other people know their divine nature. Why was it so pleasant for all to be near Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed? Why are saints said to shine? Why don’t we like to leave strangers on meeting them? Because they radiate this love. Because they always strengthen this power, the power of good, the power of love, the power of this divine emanation in people. They say that God is in this human. And it is true.”
“So, does it mean that you should just think with love about this flower?” Andrew asked.
“No. You should not only concentrate yourself and think over it but, most importantly, awaken this feeling of warmth in the regions of the solar plexus and support it at all times with your positive thoughts. Not everybody can reach it at once. Therefore you should go into the root of the matter, get the more realistic view of it, and, I repeat, awaken all these feelings. Why do I draw your attention to it? Because when an individual awakens these feelings, he starts supporting them not just with his mind but also at the level of his subconscious. And it leads to an awakening of the soul. It just can’t help but awaken. And the more love you share, the more it will be awakened, and the faster you will become yourself, as you have always been inside, and not in your external mortal body shell.”
After keeping silent for a while, Sensei added, “Life is too short, and you’d better progress in glorifying your spiritual nature.”
Our entire group of different ages stood silent, thinking about Sensei’s words. I felt some kind of tingling sensation in my body from the sudden delight and inspiration. I was so amazed by all I had heard, so shocked by this unexpected information, that it was hard for me to believe that these words were spoken by an ordinary man. His deep knowledge, from my point of view, was evidently not of this world. I wanted to ask about that, but something was holding me back. I suspected that this something already knew about everything because it was pulling me towards this creature with all my heart and soul. But as soon as I thought about that, my mind again started to argue with me, assuring me that this is an ordinary, simple man, just competently understanding philosophy, religion, psychology, history, physiology, medicine, and physics. “Stop! Where am I heading?” I thought. “Is it possible that a man can accumulate so much fundamental knowledge at one time? But on the other hand, why not? There happen to be talented people, like Lomonosov or Leonardo da Vinci, who was far ahead of this time in his knowledge. But I don’t remember them speaking clearly about the soul. And in general, why do I rack my brains wondering who he really is? The main thing is that I got answers to the questions that I had been asking for so long. It’s true, as they say, the one who searches will always find.”
I was sincerely happy, like a child. Can it really be? This is the way to reach that edge of eternity where the great contemplate the world! This is my only chance, my only straw. It’s not just a straw, it’s an entire saving ark, in which even physical death is not to be feared, in which it’s not scary to swim into eternity.
“So, any more questions?” Sensei asked.
We kept silent, looking at him with admiring eyes. Only Nikolai Andreevich, who was more or less the sober-minded man in our group, replied, “Well, let’s assume that I don’t believe in God. From the point of view of psychology, though, this is quite an interesting variant. Everything needs to be pondered… There is a lot of information, and I need to examine everything. Questions will arise later.”
“All right,” the Teacher answered genially. “Then, I suppose, it is enough for today, let’s go home.” .
