he next day, I received quite unpleasant news. My mother again fell ill with a sharp, horrible pain in her back. Lately
she was greatly nervous because she, as a good specialist, was simply overloaded with work. Moreover, she had to finish the work that had piled up during her absence and they had regular inspections at her workplace. In general, due to sitting for a long time, her back and nerves couldn’t endure such an overload. That day she got up from bed with great difficulty, with horrible, unbearable pain in her waist.
This was, of course, a shock for us. We worried horribly. Each of us tried to help her in his own way. My father started to call all our relatives and consulted about other methods of treatment because my mother didn’t want to undergo surgery. Most likely, she was scared not by the surgery itself, but by the consequences that she had seen and heard from many people while in the neurology ward. My mother didn’t at all like the prospect of becoming disabled for her entire life. But the pain became so strong that she agreed to do anything.
Meanwhile, my father called his direct commander, the general, to obtain leave for the following day. My father was saying that this general was a good man. He, with fatherly concern, took care of and worried about all his subordinates and always helped them and their families as much as he could. This time, he didn’t betray his principals and didn’t ditch his deputy officer. The general, having listened to father, advised him to visit a good chiropractor, giving him the corresponding address. Then he asked my father to calm mother down because he had had a similar story when he pulled a muscle in his leg. He received treatment from this chiropractor and was able to move, and after two years, everything was still all right.
After that call, my mum and dad unanimously decided to drive there the next day. I, honestly speaking, was doubtful. In my mind, I simply couldn’t grasp how my mother could be treated just with bare hands if even injections and pills didn’t help her. I decided to treat my mother in my own way, as Sensei had said. He told us that any man can make a matrix of health with the power of his deep, internal love, if he believes in it very much.
Before going to bed, after all my meditations, I concentrated on an image of health for my mother. I imagined her completely healthy, happy, cheerful, with her beautiful, sweet smile and kind eyes. I silently asked forgiveness from God for all my sins, if I had such in His opinion. I sincerely asked Him to help her, because I greatly love my mother. I was asking so strongly that I shed tears. I wanted so much for mother to recover quickly that after this peculiar meditation, I ran to my parents’ room to see if maybe something had already changed.
My father was working on some papers at his writing table while my mother was already sleeping. Her face was slightly frowning. Her back was probably hurting her, even in her dreams. I came back to my room and thought, “Maybe my power alone is not enough. Of course, I will continue doing this technique to create a matrix of health, but it would be great if Sensei would join this. Then success is guaranteed. He has such spiritual power, such solid internal faith, and such knowledge that can do anything, if he was able to save me from death just with his power of thought. I will need to speak with him at the next training. He is kind; he will help.” With these good thoughts, I fell asleep.
The next day I went to the chiropractor with my mother. The general cared for us and provided us with his black Volga car and personal driver, who knew that place and the roads well. On the way, I imagined how this decrepit (in my imagination) old man, the chiropractor, having looked at mother, would tell her that everything is well with her, that this is a mistake, and she is healthy. Meanwhile I noticed that the driver turned towards the district where we went for spiritual meditations. “Familiar places,” I grinned to myself. “It’s strange that such a remote district is so famous for its people.” And again I concentrated on a desirable result.
We arrived at a private sector. I noticed from afar the house where evidently the chiropractor lived. Or rather, I did not notice the house itself, but rather a huge crowd of people who stood near a small but tidy house. There were a lot of people there. The driver could barely park his car among the multitude of other cars, drawing his professional attention to the many license plates that were not just from different regions, but even from different republics. It so surprised me that this god-forsaken place was so famous.
People stood in line as if a thick wall. It didn’t even help us that we came in a black Volga. No matter how we tried to break through the crowd, we weren’t able to. We had to stand in line like everybody else. My mother, meanwhile, was half-lying in the car. Our number was four hundred seventy-three. But when people found out that my mother had a sharp pain, we were told that the chiropractor takes those with such pain without waiting in line, and that we need to stand in a different line, which was ahead. We hurried to join the out-of-turn people, and there were only fifty of them. My mother was even given a place on the bench by those who at least could stand on their legs. And we began waiting.
I was very surprised by such a large number of people and even got a little flustered. People in line were of different ages, from seniors to young people with children. Ahead there stood a woman with a tiny baby. They said he was only five days old and already had plexitis. His hand didn’t rise due to some kind of pathology of delivery. In general, the public gathered here had various illnesses of the spinal cord that I’d never even heard of before.
A senior lady sitting next to my mother said that the chiropractor takes twenty women, twenty men, and later ten out-of-turn people. The line, she said, wasn’t very long; according to her estimations, we would be taken in only two hours. I thought that in this case I had time to concentrate on my healing meditation for mother. For around ten minutes, I tried to do it. But concentrating wasn’t easy because the crowd was silently buzzing in unceasing conversation, creating an obstructive noise. Unwillingly, I began listening to the conversations.
“We had such misfortune, such grief,” lamented an old woman standing next to a girl around fifteen years old. “It is horrible even to recall. There is nothing more bitter in the world than to have a sick child. My grandchild had a horrible kyphoscoliosis, a real hump. The doctors prophesized that she would be disabled for her entire life. The girl came back from school in tears every day. Though she had a beautiful face, her classmates teased her, calling her a freak. And we went everywhere, showed her to all doctors, and even took her to psychics, but it was all in vain. We were all in despair. One time we just barely managed, God help us, to pull the girl out of a noose. She was crying about her life, that nobody would ever fall in love with her. She was crying, we were crying, such grief, in a word, can’t even tell it...”
The woman’s voice trembled and she furtively wiped a rolling tear.
“Don’t cry, grandma,” pleaded her granddaughter. “Everything is already over.”
“Yes… So, I went that… day to the church, prayed to God. And the next morning, I received a fresh newspaper and there was an article about our chiropractor. We, of course, at first doubted whether we should go and entrust our child to just another doctor, because she had already been examined by many specialists. But… all these last events… At the end we decided that if God gives us one more chance, we shouldn’t refuse, because it can’t get any worse…
“We worried when came to the reception. But the people in line spoke well of him. And when we entered and I saw his eyes, all doubts dissolved for some reason. He has such luminous, blue eyes, such a peacegiving gaze that even a light shone in my heart…”
“Yes,” said another woman. “His eyes are really somehow unusual, so bottomless. As if they know everything, as if he feels your pain.”
“I have also never seen in my life such calm and smart eyes,” pronounced a young woman standing next to her.
The women nodded their heads, agreeing with the opinions.
“And what a pleasant, melodic voice he has, a calm manner of speaking. He speaks so politely with everybody…”
“After speaking with him, my mood always gets better. After all these endured pains, even I want to live.”
“I too have such a feeling.”
“That’s what it means to be a good man.”
Listening to these words, I halted all my fruitless attempts to concentrate and began carefully listening to the conversation.
“That’s what I’m saying,” pronounced the old woman. “Something in him was quite unusual, hopegiving. He looked at the girl and said that he will fix her back, but we will have to come here and perform all his recommendations at home. You can’t imagine how his vivifying words affected the girl. We came for treatment a lot, for almost a year, even though we live in another region. Sometimes there was foul weather and it was hard to come, but Anna always insisted on the trip. She became so purposeful that we just rejoiced and crossed ourselves. Every day at home she diligently performed the entire complex of curative gymnastics recommended by the chiropractor. And in a year, there wasn’t a trace left of her hump! You can’t imagine how happy we were. Anna blossomed; so many fiancés appeared right away; now they are running after her in crowds... Now we have come for a check-up. Oh! We pray God to give him great health. His golden hands simply created a miracle!”
“Yes, his hands are really golden,” confirmed another woman around forty years old. “He is a professional in the full sense of the word. Rarely can you find such a specialist who possesses a talent from God and such fine knowledge of medicine… I, for example, suffered from headaches for ten years. I passed through a lot of hospitals with no result: sleepless nights and even loss of consciousness because of the headaches. And two years ago, I’m even afraid to recall those days, I couldn’t walk. You wouldn’t wish this experience on your enemy, this state of confusion and helplessness, and such a strong pain in the waist, in the legs. Again sleepless nights, injections with no result. There were even horrible minutes of despair from pain and suffering. Even though by nature I am a courageous woman and always was a leader, suddenly my entire life stopped, everything froze, I felt only pain and suffering.
“The doctors of course, insisted on surgery and were convinced that nothing but surgical intervention would help. But they couldn’t guarantee a full recovery. To put it briefly: disability for life. And then my mother came to me and began telling me about our chiropractor, persuading me to go to visit him. I consulted with my doctors, but they just laughed in my face and said that nobody in the world, even among prominent doctors, could cure a herniated disk or neck in a nonsurgical way. They said, go if you want, but you are going to come back to us. But my mother insisted.
“When I was brought here, I didn’t have hope after the doctors’ verdict. However, surprisingly, after the first seven visits, I started to move one toe and the pain was relieved a little. That’s when I really began to believe in recovery, though the chiropractor even on the very first day said, ‘It’s hard and long, but we will fix it.’ With each day I started to notice small but stable changes for the better. Slowly I began moving without assistance and dressing myself. So, in half a year I returned to a normal human life, and now I’m finishing up treatment. I can’t believe that my horror is over and everything turned out so fortunately. To cure such a serious and terrible disease without surgery is really a miracle!
“When I returned to a normal life, I came to my city and went to show the result to my doctors, who hadn’t believed in the chiropractor. They only shrugged their shoulders. Can you imagine, none of them even asked about how I achieved such results even though all of them once yelled that it would be impossible. Here is this knowledge, just introduce it into medicine. It may help so many people! But no, their pride doesn’t let it… I will be grateful to Igor Mikhailovich to the end of my days for everything that he did with his golden hands! How many people did he put on their feet? When I came here, I saw a lot. People came here with their last hope for recovery. Even those doctors and professors bring their kids and grandchildren here.”
I flinched at the mention of the name of the chiropractor. “Is it really… No way, it can’t be!” I thought, getting lost in guesses. Everything inside of me strained and turned into a listening ear. Then the line buzzed in a new wave.
“Yes, he is a man with a big soul!” said another woman. “People say that his great-grandfather also was a famous chiropractor in the Orlovsk region. They say that he was a man with a gift from God and diagnosed disease unmistakably.”
“Our doctor is also very strong, he looks as if with X-ray. I had a dislocation of the disk and he said right away, ‘six millimeters.’ And later I had films taken, and really, everything coincided.”
“It is because his hands are especially sensitive. I read in the newspaper that he can find a child’s hair, akin to a human nerve, hidden under forty pages of paper. Journalists conducted this experiment. ‘This is the same’ he said, ‘as finding the exact place of the strangulated nerve and releasing it by manipulations of the hands.’”
“Thank God there is such a man. Thanks that He led us to him,” the old woman, who was talking about her granddaughter Anna, crossed herself.
“You know, last year, I had osteochondrosis that he treated,” an old woman with white-grey hair said. “This year, I lifted a heavy weight and again disrupted my back. It was so painful that I could not sleep for two nights. I had a gnawing pain and fainted because of it, as I completely ran out of power. And our chiropractor came up to me in a dream, touched me on the head, and said, ‘Don’t be afraid; now you’ll feel better and tomorrow come to me. Everything will be all right.’ So, what do you think, I stood up in the morning completely different, even the pain slightly let go. Now, I have visited for a third time, and I feel completely revived. Otherwise, I just couldn’t find a place for myself... But what’s strange is that in the dream he had hair down to his shoulders, as an angel, and his eyes were so kind...”
“Yes, he has an unusual hair color, such a blond color is so rare.”
“What would we do without him? Really, probably, God sent us an angel.”
After these words, the very decrepit old woman who, up to this moment, had been dozing on the edge of a bench, unexpectedly squeaked, “Not an angel but an archangel.”
She again submerged into her drowsiness. This unspeakably surprised the whole crowd.
Finally some miner, judging by the black edging around his eyes, said, “I don’t know what kind of angel or archangel he is, but he is a great man! He put me back on my legs, though I don’t believe in God.”
“I also didn’t believe,” remarked a tough old man. “Thirty years I had the Communist Party membership card, and now look…” He pulled out a cross on a string and showed it to the crowd. “I have this cross. All this happened after one case. I will never forget it... That memorable day, I had to go to the shift. While the night before this I had seen our Igor Mikhailovich in my dream who said, ‘Tomorrow come to visit me, don’t go to work. If you go, you won’t come back.’ Well, before that, I was receiving treatment from him, but then I had a break in treatment. I woke up in the morning and my back was hurting. Well, I thought, it probably ached at night; that’s why I dreamt of him. I got ready to go to work, and then I thought, why should I go? I will need to lift heavy weights. How can I do it? My back will collapse. Well, I decided to go to the chiropractor and obtained a leave permit. Can you imagine, that day there was an explosion in the blast furnace and almost my entire brigade perished. If I had been there, because I stand next to the blast furnace hearth, I wouldn’t be here now. So, how can all this be understood by a common mortal? I wanted to talk about this with Igor Mikhailovich, but he put his finger to his lips, hinting at me to keep silent. And that’s all… How can I not start believing in God after this?”
“Oh, you know, a similar incident happened to our neighbor,” said a woman around thirty years old who had joined the conversation. “He, by the way, gave me the address of the chiropractor. He was receiving treatment one day. And last year, our neighbor got into a trouble. Remember, if you are local, that explosion at the mine? He was buried under the support. As he told me, ‘I was lying alone in the darkness, buried by rock. I was terribly afraid of being buried alive. I had already bid farewell to life, to all my relatives. Suddenly I saw before my eyes, as if from the fog, the figure of our chiropractor, who said so calmly with his melodious voice, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. It’s too early for you to die. I will stay with you, until you are saved…”’ And when he came back to consciousness, he said he was already being pulled up by rescuers. He alone survived out of the entire crew. After that case, the man completely changed. He stopped drinking, started to believe in God. His wife and kids can’t stop rejoicing. He became a really nice guy!”
Meanwhile, the line moved ahead. In front of the crowd someone came out in a white smock. I was so surprised that my bag almost slipped out of my hands.
“Sensei,” I silently whispered, but in the next instant yelled at top of my voice, “Sens…oops, Igor Mikhailovich!!!”
Sensei turned around and, on seeing me, gave a sign to come up. I barely squeezed through the crowd. My heart was beating fast in my chest. Having greeted me, he asked, “Why are you here? What happened?”
“Well, my mother has problems with her back…”
We moved off to a corner, where Igor Mikhailovich lit a cigarette.
“My father’s general gave us this address,” I let out all the ‘state secrets’ in a single breath. “He even gave us his Volga.”
Sensei glanced at the cars.
“Ah, Alexander Vasilievich. How’s he doing?”
“Well, as he said to my dad, he has had no problems with motion for two years.”
“Alright. And what happened to your mother?”
I began telling everything in detail, actively gesticulating with my hands from excitement. Having listened to me, Sensei pronounced, “Alright, take your mum and follow me.”
I ran up to my mum with joy and said that Igor Mikhailovich will take us out of order. My mother was happy, of course, but she was very surprised. She got up with difficulty, and we returned with her to the chiropractor.
“This is my Sensei, Igor Mikhailovich,” I introduced him to my mother with indescribable pride.
We walked deep into the house, filled with people waiting. In the waiting room stood a trestle-bed, and in the corner there was a small icon with a lit lamp. I helped mother undress to the waist and lie down on the trestle-bed. Walking out of the room, I saw how Igor Mikhailovich inclined above mother’s back, palpating her vertebrae with his hands. Already behind the curtain in the neighboring room, I heard Sensei’s voice, “Yes, you know, here is a serious problem, a dorsolateral prolapse up to seven millimeters in segment L4-L5 that’s causing stenosis of the intervertebral foramen. As a consequence, it leads to a compression of the spinal root.”
“Can you explain it more simply?”
“Simply saying, it’s a disk herniation. As a result of the destruction of the disk, its sequestrum, in other words, small pieces of this disk, dropped into the spinal canal towards the spinal foramen and are pushing on the spinal root. That’s what caused these pains… This, of course, is a serious problem, but curable.”
Behind the thick curtain, I heard a light crackling of vertebrae and a few unusual claps. In a few minutes, Sensei called me so that I could help my mother get dressed. Having agreed on the next visit, we bid farewell and slowly walked towards the car.
“How are you?” I asked my mother.
“It’s all right,” she replied.
When we were driving home, the entire way I couldn’t calm down, thinking about Sensei. I considered him everything: physicist, chemist, philosopher, historian, orientalist, physiologist. But an ordinary chiropractor, that was too much! Well, not ordinary, but pretty famous… And still, with his inconceivable potential of knowledge, with his phenomenal abilities and, in the end, with such unusually pure human morals, he could become a prominent scientist, politician, or whoever, moving up the ranks of society with his level of knowledge. But what is he spending his potential on?! If it weren’t for how he helped my mother, my mind would have kept rebelling longer.
Driving out of this god-forsaken place by back roads, we drove past a shabby, half tumbledown church, evidently built before the revolution. My thoughts switched to thinking about the eternal, about God, about faith, about the Great. And suddenly a thought flashed across my mind, “Sensei really helps people! With his hands he cures thousands of bodies tormented by pain, thousands of souls seized by sorrow, restoring people’s health, faith, and joy of life… God, that’s how all the Great acted! Each of them went to people with an open soul and performed good deeds. Sensei one time mentioned about… Can it be that he…? Oho!”
I feverishly began remembering all the moments, supporting my guesses. After coming back home, I reread in my diary everything concerning Sensei’s personality. Yes, the fact that he is a chiropractor supplemented the main missing link in my logical chain in proving it to my own mind. “It is most important that he cures the bodies and souls of different people. Consequently, speaking with such a huge number of people, each of them with his concrete destiny, problem, and pain, he knows much better than all politicians the intentions of the common people, their attitude towards life, as well as their spiritual level of development. It’s not possible to imagine any better profession for the earthly life of a Bodhisattva.” These discoveries caused a wave of small ants on my skin while my solar plexus began tickling with its spiral waves.
As soon as my agitated thoughts began to calm down, my common sense hurried to take up the vacant place. On the other hand, I thought, “Why did I exalt him so much? Maybe all this is just my imagination. I got tired, worried too much, had heard in line the different conversations, and have made hasty, fantastic conclusions. Alright, he helps people, he has a talent for this and abilities, so what? Simply, he is a good professional, as that woman from the line said. That is all. By appearance he is a common man, with a common face that looks like all other human faces. His appearance does not differ from others. He is the same like everybody…”
And here I noticed that the deeper I developed my common sense theory, the more something bad appeared in me, some kind of anger or something, some kind of dark envy that Sensei possessed such talent and abilities and I didn’t. And here, my thoughts became so dark that I even got scared of myself, “Stop, stop, stop! Who is creating a tempest in a teapot? Comrades, it isn’t me! Can the soul really think so badly? No. It is kind by itself. Where did all this filth come from? It is not my opinion. Some kind of fixed ideas, thoughts which impudently keep coming back again and again, and they awaken in me anger and hate… These are the instincts of the animal nature!” And here I completely got angry with myself and thought, “I am fed up with them! For how long can I keep being a dumb, stubborn beast?! I’ve had enough, simply had enough. If I continue like that my whole life will pass in evil intentions and vanity…”
Then I was visited by another thought, “Maybe because of our blown-up egocentrism, we don’t notice what wonderful chances destiny grants us. And for the soul, wandering through the centuries in darkness, maybe, such a chance occurs only once in a thousand years. Who knows what we don’t see because of our envy and anger. God, why are we so blind? Why do we start really valuing something only when we lose it? Why do we praise the Great only after their death?”
Christ was crucified because of somebody’s blownup megalomania and our gregarious egocentrism. And what a great man He was, how many good deeds for human souls He could’ve done. If He were alive and people opened up their hearts at least a little, maybe human civilization would’ve made such a jump in its evolution that we, their descendants, would already live in a real, united, free society, without borders and government, without violence and terror, in a world of harmony. But no, even during the life of Jesus few people really valued Him. But the majority, probably, were envious of Him, gloated and upbraided Him with their animal vanity, with rottenness, with hate and indifference. But after His death everybody started to believe in him right away!
Just take our contemporaries, the prominent individuals. When are they all being acknowledged? In general, after death. It is only after their deaths that people speak well about them, even those who, during their life, did many mean things. However, these people are probably glad in their private thoughts that their rival has died. That’s authentic animal nature.
When will we finally wake up, when will we be thinking with our souls and not our bodies? Because then the whole world will change and will become completely different! I just want to yell this to the entire world. But what for?! I shouldn’t yell but instead do something and change myself and not permit these parasites to enter into my consciousness or mind. Yes, if only this could be understood by the majority of people then, maybe, we could all learn together to value and respect those geniuses who are so rarely sent by nature to the world! As one great classic stated, “Mother Nature, if you didn’t send such people to the world, the field of life would’ve died.”
