Sensei of Shambala by Anastasia Novykh (poetry books to read txt) 📕

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.

40

After the additional training, as usual we left together, and we saw the novice who had taken part in the conversation between Sensei and the minister. He stood near the club. Having noticed Sensei among us, he came up to him and inquired politely, “Excuse me, have you got a minute?”
“Yes, I am listening to you,” Sensei said calmly.
“The matter is that our conversation was interrupted… And I did not have time to ask you some questions that are of great importance for me. You have rather an unusual world outlook, at least I have not heard anything like that. And I feel that your words are not groundless, as they coincide to some degree with my concept of essence of things. If it will not bother you, could you answer some questions?”
“Yes, of course,” Sensei responded with the same politeness.
These words encouraged the novice. He grew bolder and said, “What is the true belief, the way to God in your understanding?”
“The true belief is knowledge. Certainly, there are a lot of ways to God, but you can wind along the pass repeatedly or you can go straight. A direct way to God is a way through knowledge and love.”
“How is this knowledge expressed?”
“It is expressed through versatile cognition of the world in its various aspects: beginning from microlife to the macroexistence of space systems; through cognition of yourself both as a biological and spiritual structure and accordingly the essence of things around you. Certainly, to learn everything is impossible, but you should aspire to it. A human should constantly grow in his knowledge, he should develop his intellect. The most valuable way is the cognition of God through your mind when true knowledge, overcoming the animal nature, opens the gate of the subconscious with the help of the key of love. It is an eternal unshakable truth that has always existed in the days of all highly developed human civilizations ever existing on the Earth.”
“Sorry, I have not understood everything. Could you explain it in a little bit more detail?”
“In general, it means complete maturation of the human soul, a full victory over the material essence, that is, over the Devil. In Christianity and in Islam it is called enlightenment, holiness which leads to paradise after death. In Buddhism, it is called awakening and coming out of a chain of reincarnations into nirvana, and so on. Actually everything is much simpler.
“I shall try to explain it to you in general. Figuratively speaking, it looks like this. We think that we are that very mind which sees, hears, thinks, and analyzes. But actually it is only a small part our consciousness. Let us name it Something. This small Something floats on a surface of an ocean. The ocean is our subconscious where all our genetic memory is stored in various depths, conditioned and unconditioned reflexes, that is, all our stored experience. But all this concerns our material essence. This is our animal nature. Underneath the subconscious at the bottom of the ocean, there is some kind of a gateway. Behind this gateway there is a soul, a little part of God. This is our spiritual nature. This is what we actually are and what we very occasionally feel in ourselves. The soul regenerates during reincarnation, it gradually ripens through knowledge and love from our mortal Something as far as Something is connected to the soul. But the problem is that this Something is also connected with the ocean. Moreover, from the outside it is more subject to the influence of the ocean. It is thrown constantly here and there with waves that are various thoughts, emotions, desires, and so on. Sometimes it is so overflowing that Something loses its touch with the soul and then, after a storm, tries again to grasp it. But when this Something becomes stronger in aspiring to reach the soul, without paying any attention to the storms of the ocean, and it pushes through the thickness of the waters into the bottom, having given up fear, then it finally reaches this gateway. With the help of a key of love, it opens this gate, joining the soul. Only then will a human understand who he really is. He fully realizes freedom, eternity and God. Only then is the soul free to go to nirvana, paradise, that is, into the world where only love reigns.
“So it turns out that this Something that is our consciousness determines the destiny of our soul, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely right. Everything depends on our choice and on our aspirations.”
The novice thought a little and then said quietly to himself, “So real paradise is not in the body.”
“The body will never give you paradise, as the body is an eternal worry, an eternal problem. Paradise can be reached only through the connection of the soul with God.”
“You said that very rarely do we feel ourselves being real, those who we actually are, our soul. How is this divine presence felt? Is it possible to understand with the help of these sensations what paradise is?”
“Only the human who looks at the world through a prism of love can understand divine presence. And to understand what paradise is… Well, for you to have a slight notion of it… If you choose the happiest moment in your life when your true love comes, when your life storms with waves of happiness and all-embracing joy, all these sensations will be equivalent to a small divine droplet of love scattered on you. But when a human enters nirvana, paradise, that moment when the soul joins God, figuratively speaking, is the same as if a human swims like a dolphin in the ocean of this infinite divine love. It is impossible to describe with words the fullness of these sensations, just as it is impossible to imagine it in full scope. Unfortunately, the human mind is limited, but in this limitation lies its beauty. Here, in a limited mind, an endless love should be developed.”
“Yes, everything is so simple and clear… You said that it is possible to reach the gateway through love and knowledge. In fact, people became saints in different times. It was through love, of course. What should we do with knowledge? In those times, people did not have all the information we do now.”
“People even now have too little information. But the matter is that when a human reaches this gateway, any knowledge becomes accessible to him with the help of it. There are no restrictions there.”
“I thought that if I limited my consciousness the way it was told to us in my sect, I shall come to God.”
“Well, first, when you are limiting your consciousness with blind belief, you need incredible efforts to resist the attacks of your animal nature. Why? Because blind belief gives the animal nature freedom of actions. At any moment, it can overflow your mind with unexpected doubts, and your belief will fail like a house made of cards. But if your belief is based on the strong foundation of knowledge, which allows you to prove to your mind in a well-reasoned and thorough way the real fact of the existence of God and by that to bring your animal nature in the corner and to leash it there, then you will receive real freedom and will be able to come to God.
“Second, Jesus never limited His pupils as your religious sect does. Your leaders try to build a small empire of authority based on the teachings. They force you to kiss their hands, to bow down in front of them. Who are they? Even Jesus, in spite of the fact that He was a Great Soul, was always a friend to the apostles, and if you remember this story, He even washed their feet. He did not bring people the enthrallment of a crowd but mostly the freedom of personal choice. He gave people a precept of love, this very key to the gateway. Recall His words, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with your entire mind.’ In this way, he showed that high morality, soul, and reason are the three components for maturation of a soul and its union with God. This was told by prophets of all teachings, for there is a sole source of knowledge. Let's choose Mohammed as an example…”
“Mohammed? Do you think his religion brings us closer to God?”
“Religion is created by people, but Mohammed preached the teachings. His true teaching is based on the same knowledge that Christ gave us.”
“It can not be true!”
“Why can it not be? Do you know anything about Mohammed?”
“I don't know about him, but I have met in person his fanatic, violent followers when I worked as a journalist in Afghanistan. Believe me, it left in my soul bad memories. I saw what Islam is.”
“You did not see Islam, you saw how the teaching of Mohammed was transformed by mercenary politicians. You can find fanatic believers in every religion. Is it possible to judge the teachings looking only at those people? Blind and furious fanaticism is the worst sign of any religion, the worst distortion of any teaching inasmuch as it completely awakens a person’s animal nature, covered by a shield of good intentions. It is a manifestation of politics, a longing for world domination that is inherent in the ruling clique of each religion. Study the teachings of prophets yourself, did they call for it? All of them called for the spiritual development of a human. They called for the whole world to be united in sole love for God, suppressing in ourselves our animal nature, a devil, call it as you wish. A human, being in God, can not do evil things.
“Mohammed was a very unique person. I advise you to read about his life simply from a human position, without bias and conventionalities. Beginning in childhood, he aspired to self-cognition, and first he was guided by natural human desires. He was a poor boy, an orphan, a usual shepherd. When Mohammed was young, he thought that if he became rich he will fully understand himself. At the age of twelve, he began to work as a caravan escort. Along one of his routes he met a wise man who gave him a grain of knowledge and trained him to meditate; as a result, it radically changed his destiny. Mohammed began with his spiritual practices in order to understand the essence of God.
“In a while, his early dream came true. A successful marriage to a notable woman made him rich. Mohammed understood, though, that richness was not the thing to which his soul aspired. He started to search for this something in authority, but couldn’t find it there either. This fact drove him to search inside himself, inside his human essence. Mohammed often spent long hours at night in meditations, and finally they brought him to enlightenment. He understood the sense of internal essence, the sense of existence of all mankind as a whole, he found God - "al-illah" – which means “worthy worshiping,” and due to that his soul woke up, having opened a source of true knowledge. Then, as the legend says, he received revelations from above, from archangel Gabriel or, as he is still called in the East, archangel Jibril. Mohammed not only received revelations from him but also became his favorite pupil. Gabriel told him sacrament of the teaching and the secret knowledge. In order to show the truth and the depth of knowledge of this teaching, he moved Mohammed in space and time, into the city of