t the next training, the sports hall was so overcrowded that there was not an inch of room. Judging from the places the
beginners came from, the news about energy blow had probably spread through several cities. We had never trained in such a mess. Andrew and Kostya began to express their indignation about this crowd of people that suddenly overflowed ‘their’ sports hall. But the senior sempai quickly put the guys down, having reminded them that recently they were exactly the same beginners in a crowd and no one objected to their practicing here. He also reproached them with words of the Teacher, that it is necessary to respect another person’s aspiration for knowledge instead of immediately attacking him with bayonets of your own egocentrism. After that the guys were ashamed, kept silent, and did not utter any evil word during the entire training. As for Andrew, he decided to rehabilitate himself somehow in the eyes of the senior sempai and even diligently began to help the beginners master movements that were new for them.
While people were practicing the techniques during the optional program, a man asked Sensei to meet him outside. At this time, Tatyana and I were next to the open door, as it was very stuffy in the sports hall even with the open windows. Three humble men, one of them under fifty and the other two under thirty, had politely knocked on the open door, drawing our attention. As we appeared to be standing nearer than the others, they also politely inquired about the name of our Teacher and the possibility of talking to him. Of course, we did what they asked. When Sensei came up, they started to talk to him about something.
At first, I did not pay attention to the conversation, fulfilling my task. But the words I could hear raised my curiosity more and more. These men appeared to be representatives of some religious sect that had recently grown in our city like mushrooms after rain. Obviously, having seen the number of young people training in the sports hall, they suggested Sensei and his pupils to visit their meeting that day in a cinema hall. A free presentation of a film about Jesus Christ was to take place there. Sensei politely thanked them for the invitation without promising anything concrete. But their leader, the elder one, who turned out to be their minister, began to ask Sensei leading questions about his knowledge of Jesus and his attitude to His teachings.
Sensei started off answering politely and laconically, letting him know that the training wasn’t over. But the minister was not in a hurry to part with Sensei. Every short answer of Sensei met an extremely verbose explanation of the advantages of their church and their ‘true’ view of the teachings of Christ. Within ten minutes, the conversation had tired Sensei because he started to break all their seducing reasons down to ashes with precise arguments, quoting dates, figures, and events which, apparently, were unknown even to the minister. By this time, our curious company had left the sports hall to listen what was going on. Eugene and Stas followed us. Then came Ruslan and Yura, who were standing not far from the door.
“…Wouldn’t you like to live eternally in paradise on Earth, in the kingdom of God?” the minister uttered in a pacifying voice.
“Eternally, on Earth, in paradise?!” grinned Sensei. “Do not hasten to reject eternal life as an unrealizable dream,” the minister interrupted him. “Pay attention to how your body is created. In fact, you practically know nothing about it. Everything in it has been conceived with the utmost detail. We have hearing, sight, taste, the sense of smell and touch. There are so many things in the world that bring pleasure due to our sense organs: tasty food, pleasant friendly relations, picturesque landscapes, and so on. We can enjoy this all due to our amazing brain. Do you know that our brain is perfect and it surpasses any computer, any supercomputer?! And do you really think that our Creator wants you to die and to lose all this? It is logical to conclude that He wishes eternal life for His righteous men, doesn’t He?”
“Happy and eternal life on Earth in a body?! Do you think at all when you are speaking to people?” the Teacher said. “What kind of eternal paradise can there be in a body? Any body as any biological structure demands your constant attention. It wants to eat, it is sick, it is tired, it wants pleasure. And you call this matter a paradise and dream of living with its biological needs eternally?! For sure it is an eternal hell instead of paradise!”
“Then if you think so, why did God create the human body?”
“God created the human body as the most convenient form and protection for the maturation of a still weak soul. Even the Bible you hold in your hands says, ‘And the Lord God created a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and a man became a living soul.’”
“Right, but the true sense of these words is a bit different,” the minister spoke instructively. “The authors of the Bible, when using the word ‘spirit’ in this context, did not mean an intangible soul that continues to live after death.”
“Really?!” Sensei was surprised. “How do you know the true sense of these words? Do you know it from the literature and instructions that the leaders of your sect present and put into your heads in ready-made form? Did you think it over yourself? Do you know your leaders personally, do you know their inner world? Did you reflect on why do they need all of this, in fact, this unlimited power over you? For them and their special agents…”
As Sensei spoke, the minister’s nostrils dilated more and more.
“Let’s not speak about it further,” he sharply interrupted Sensei. Having come round, he softly added, “We say that, according to the interpretation of the Bible, the spirit is a vital force. When a person dies, this vital force ceases to support the life in cells of his body, just as a light becomes dim when you switch off the electricity. When the vital force ceases to support the human body, the person - the soul - dies. It is written in Ecclesiastes 12:1,7; in Psalm…”
“It is written in Ecclesiastes 12:1, ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.’ These words do not even relate to the topic of our conversation. And Ecclesiastes 12:7 only proves what I have already told you, ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it,” Sensei quoted by heart. “If you read ancient scriptures of different religions, you will see that the same eternal truth about the development of the soul in a body, about its numerous reincarnations in achievement of perfection, can be traced everywhere. Read something besides the Bible; for example, the most ancient sacred book of Hinduism, Veda, from the end of the second or beginning of the first millennium B.C.; or one of its commentaries, the Upanishads, which are the basis of all the orthodox religious and philosophical systems of India; or the Buddhist canon Tripitaka; the sacred book of Islam, the Koran, written around 650 A.D.; the sacred book of Shintoism, Nihonshoki, from 720 A.D.; or the book of wisdom Zhuangzi, the treatise of Laozi Daodejin, the works of Confucius from the 6th to 5th centuries B.C. You will see in all these works a single grain of wisdom that was given in different times by different people for different levels of human formation.”
“All religions of the world are from Satan, therefore they are not even worthy of our attention,” the minister said with a hint of rage in his voice. “Satan influences political forces and promotes religions in which people without knowing it worship him instead of God. Only our belief is the true belief. It is the only path to the salvation of mankind.”
“Well, every religion and sect considers their belief to be true, otherwise they would not create a separate organization for themselves. But don’t you think that it looks slightly egocentric on the part of religious leaders? In fact, they get their knowledge from the same books and simply transform this information according to their level of moral perception and their vision of the world.
“Your idea that all religions of the world are from Satan is absolutely wrong. Yes, religions were created on the basis of teachings of great people by others who simply used their point of view and benefited from it. From the time immemorial, religion has been a powerful political lever in the world, and consequently it has rendered a huge influence on the consciousness of a crowd. Each religion has its own exaggerations, complications, and even wrong views. But for many centuries, the relations between God and mankind were conducted basically through religion. Though world religions have greatly complicated the knowledge given to people for salvation of their souls, nevertheless all of them were based on it. In the past, it was only through religion that people could revive a belief in themselves, a blind belief but sincere, and they could slightly improve their souls. During those dark times when the consciousness of our society stood at an absolute low, religion was the only engine in the progress of mankind.”
“Isn't it the same now?” one of young novices of the minister asked with interest.
“Now the time of blind belief has passed. The time of global changes has come. And the basis of future progress in knowledge of God is the science.”
“But how can it be science if it officially rejects God?” the novice asked in surprise.
“Science is only partly understood by mankind. If science still cannot explain the original source of the electromagnetic field, what can be said about it? Its current level can be compared to the stage of development of a one-year-old child who crawls in the space limited by his parents so as not to injure himself and learns the world through toys that are given to him. But it does not mean at all that he does not have any prospect of growth and true comprehension of the present values of the world.”
“An interesting definition. Who are these parents in your opinion?” a young interlocutor got interested.
“Everyone has got the Father, God. But beside the parent, there are also tutors who look after children and give them these toys.”
“This is even more interesting… Who are these tutors?”
“These creatures are known by different names. In Christianity, they are called angels, archangels who are next to God and take care of people. In the East, they are perceived more realistically and are called Bodhisattvas from Shambala…”
“My brother, you are falling into heresy!” the minister cried angrily at his novice. Addressing to Sensei, he threateningly added, “You are a deeply stray person. You are absolutely wrong. People can not transform the world nor aspire to learn about God through science. Science is the intrigue of the Devil, who convinces people by his discoveries that God does not exist. Satan covered the world with a net of technologies to catch people, to dull minds with TV and devilish literature and to make a person worship only him as today he is the Prince of this world. Only the word of God written down in the only sacred book, the Bible, is true and right. And only through it you can learn God…”
“Yes, in your instructed interpretation,” Sensei grinned. “How can science come from the Devil?! You are fooling people's heads with this nonsense. The Devil can't give anything to people at all. Who is God, and who is the Devil? The Devil is nothing more than the animal nature that is a part of each person, generating negative ideas. Even the translation of a word ‘satan’ comes from Hebrew, where originally this word meant ‘counteracting’. The manifestation of the Devil is just what we notice in ourselves, in our bad thoughts. It simply seems to us that we are good. But in fact, look how many times a day in actions and thoughts we awake in ourselves the animal nature, that is, we appeal to the Devil, not to God. How many times a day we cherish vanity and flesh in our thoughts.”
“The Devil is not in thoughts, it is an awful creature, a beast…”
“A creature? People defaced him and presented him as a beast, having made a scapegoat out of him. People are afraid of his attack from the outside. But he is inside of us, he is our integral part. He strikes a blow where it is not expected, that is from our thoughts. To defeat the Devil does not mean to renounce everything in the world. To defeat the Devil means to defeat your negative thoughts, to put things in order in your mind. As ancient people said, the biggest achievement that every person can reach working on himself is to kill a dragon inside. Have you heard such an expression, ‘Know yourself and you will know the whole world’? All outstanding people came to comprehend God through cognition of themselves. God is an omnipresent substance existing everywhere. God is an almighty, united, reasonable force. Everything that is given by God is given for the good of mankind. Why, for example, are science and technologies given? They are given to people for collecting information for communication, for exchanging experiences without difficulties. They are given for the constant development of a person and saving time for every possible versatile cognition of the secrets of nature. All this will inevitably result in comprehension of God and the real fact of His existence.
“And what do you do? You limit the consciousness of people: do not read this, do not do this, do not go there, do not engage yourself with it. People, do not make trouble! Do not follow your mercenary ambitions. You impede the development of human souls, you are throwing them again into the hell of reincarnation.” “Reincarnation does not exist in nature!” the minister exclaimed in a rage.
“Brother, brother, calm down,” the novice hastened to interfere in the conversation. “You said yourself that anger is evil.”
The minister hissed at him but nevertheless pulled himself together and continued the conversation, “It is necessary for you to read the Bible more and to clear your mind of sinful thoughts because you are a terrible person. Come to us and repent because Satan has seized your mind. We shall teach you the true understanding of God, we shall teach you how to save your soul.”
With those last words, Sensei's face changed, and he said calmly, articulating each word, “Explain to me how a man drowning in a bog can save a man standing on the bank of the river?”
But the minister grasped only the first word, ‘explain,’ and for the next several minutes he tried to ‘teach’ Sensei with his admonitions, quoting different chapters from the Bible.
“… and if you will take it as a rule to attend our meetings, it will be the most powerful protection against demon attacks. You will apply pieces of advice that are given at meetings, and it will help you to be saved from Gehenna. Be sure that God will completely compensate everything you will sacrifice for the sake of worshiping Him. It is written in Malachi 3:10. For the time of the Armageddon will come soon and will destroy the sinful of mankind. Only the righteous people will remain alive in the world. We should wait with obedience and humility for the day when the Lord Jesus Christ will take measures against Satan and his adherents. It is written in Revelation 20:1-3. And when the last fight of God with Devil begins…”
“Not only did you not listen to everything I told you, you do not even think about what you say. Just ponder a little, how can the Devil fight with God? How can you say that? God is almighty, the Devil is nothing in comparison with him. Everything, every person, including Lucifer, serves God. People have just ennobled the power of Lucifer to have someone to blame for their stupidity. Lucifer, like any other angel, just serves God executing only His will…”
These words got the minister so mad that he did not even give Sensei an opportunity to finish his speech and screamed in fury, “When Satan comes, you will be his left hand!”
Turning his back sharply, he went away. The second novice quickly followed the tutor, but the first novice who asked questions loitered a little, obviously wishing to hear the end of Sensei's story. But the second novice called him, and he followed them.
Meanwhile, Eugene could hardly help laughing. He said with obvious pleasure, addressing our crowd, “Yes, yes, have you heard what a clever person has said? Remember what I told you!”
Now we also could not help laughing together with the senior guys, recollecting cheerfully Eugene's joke during our first visit to the glade. Laughing, our crowd went to the sports hall.
Sensei thought a bit and said half in jest, half seriously, “Why exactly the left hand? Is the Devil really left-handed? I didn’t notice that.”
Our young company looked at Sensei in surprise. The senior guys burst out laughing again, supplementing this juicy detail with different jokes. We quickly returned to our interrupted exercises. After that we trained without incident.
