Chapter 16
At nights and stars still hang,
But nobody knows at what price...
Svetlana Kekova
Let us address to paranormal abilities (vibhuti or siddhi) which, as they say, are peculiar to people having mastered and regularly practicing yoga. The hypotheses stated in the given chapter are no more than an attempt to recognize events which inevitably arise since some moment in life of an adherent.
Thus: «Samyama is a set of ways for working with consciousness, including concentration, dhyana, and engrossment. These three are the essence of means of realization of paranormal abilities» («Classical Yoga», p. 231).
Or: «Thanks to samyama, on three changes (dharana, dhyana, samadhi) appears knowledge of the past and the future» (ibid, III, 16).
And further: «Due to direct perception of the content of the cognitive act there is knowledge of another’s mentality» (ibid, III, 19).
«Thanks to samyama in the world there is a vision of siddhis in the head» (ibid, III, 32).
«Omniscience sets in due to intuitive inspiration» (ibid, III, 33).
Siddhi arise, says Vyasa, as a result of irreproachable practicing samyama. But at the same time: «They are obstacles at yogical concentration, and magic perfections at the «awakened» state of consciousness» (ibid, III, 37).
«We achieve the full intuitive knowledge on what we concentrate. Maximum abilities of feelings (hyperesthesia) due to which yogin can see and hear at distance appear as result of concentration. We can reach also the direct knowledge of subconscious impressions and due to them — knowledge of our last lives. Yogin can make his body invisible.
Supernatural forces actually interfere with samadhis though they are considered as perfections when somebody reaches them. They are a by-product of the highest life» («Indian philosophy», vol. 2, 323-324).
Ascetics of the Sivaistic sect of kapalics aspired exactly to siddhas: « … Their primary purpose was not so much the mystical unification with the deity as achievement of yogical forces — such as teleportation, ability to become invisible, to penetrate into the mind of other person, to go on water, and to fly in the air». For this purpose they among other things: «…Practiced severe exercises of Hatha Yoga» («Wandering Yogins», p. 24).
Earlier one mentioned exceptional abilities of Yogi Fakirs, one of which was our contemporary Svami Rama. Behind these miracles there is a refined communication of consciousness with the body and its processes; however these opportunities are local and limited by the body of the fakir.
In the beginning of the 1980th when I was adapting to the Moscow life, mum had a heart attack which parents hid. Then I had a dream which frightened me so that I in the middle of the night rushed to phone Sudak. The essence of the dream consisted in that my mum had died, but for some reason in Moscow. Father called, and I am in horror rushing out of the Scientific Research Institute on Vernadsky’s prospectus and waving a car down …
Years went by, gradually all this was forgotten. My parents have got over from Sudak to Kharkov, then to Izyum, and already in the 1987th — to Moscow. How much I remember, my mother always suffered from the heart which was killed by angina as long ago as in the 1942nd, at the front, and then it was completed by rheumatism, and in the summer of 1988 the inevitable had happened.
That day, since the morning, I felt so out of place that, having come to work, I decided to go to surrender in the first-aid post. But then my father called and told in an altered voice that I should go as soon as possible, mum is not well. And when I, being beside myself, had jumped out on the traffic area at my Scientific Research Institute and waved rushing cars down — in consciousness flashed the very dream. Having named the address a driver, I already knew that as well as then in dream, I shall not have time to see mum alive. And I have not had time.
Everything what was in that old dream has coincided with reality, up to color of the car. In his work «Synchronicity», K.G. Jung tells about his friend who went for a walk in a Spanish town, being guided by an earlier seen dream, and mentions a fact from Swedenborg’s biography, who observed in his dream the burning Stockholm, being rather far from it. In the first case, the information gets in consciousness, «ignoring» space and time, in the second — only space.
The extraordinary perception quite often declares itself by people with heavy brain pathology; it is a vision through material barriers, knowledge of the future, definition of taste and color by touch, etc. (see works by Lee and Vassileva). That the brain is capable to such perception as well in a healthy state, confirms phenomenon of siddhas (though, according to criteria of modern psychiatry, yogis who have such abilities, are not healthy people).
Long before Fermi and Scillard, physics encountered the phenomenon of radioactive decay, but nobody noticed it, did not know what exactly needs to be noticed. As soon as the phenomenon has been realized, named and described, it began to occur fairly often. Perhaps, in the case of siddhas, do not stereotyped explanations give any opportunity to share the new point of view?
Casual names Jung the phenomena, absence of the reasons at which is precisely proved. An example: a woman takes a photograph of her newborn son and leaves for other town, having left to develop photographic plates in Strasbourg. War broke out; she could not return to take photos with her. Three years later, already in Frankfurt, to take pictures of the newborn daughter, she buys photographic plates in some shop. When one of them was developed, it turned out that the image of the daughter was imposed on the photo of her son made three years ago.
Jung named such events synchronicitical, they are based on simultaneous presence of two conditions: either something alien interferes in daily occurrence, or with the mental content of consciousness start suddenly to coincide material artefacts, no one knows whence they have appeared.
In 1994, on seacoast I have told to my son: «How much spoil lanterns of these snack bars all charm of the Crimean night!» After my words the coast has instantly plunged into darkness. The son has exclaimed: «You should work in circus, daddy». Then, illuminating the path with an electric torch, we came back on the cut way. Approaching in pitch darkness to the small house, I have told: «All this is, certainly, well, but it would be a good idea for me to work…» Windows of small houses of our holiday camp and the shore below at the sea have instantly been illuminated with electricity.
It is possible to remember a lot of similar incidents. Here is, for example, a plot, I had dreamed in the spring of 1993. Preparing for resettlement, my schoolmate Valera whom I had not recollected God knows how much time, was packing things in the native Simferopol, in the ancient house on Kuibyshev Street which had very long time ago been demolished. And I did not manage to talk with him in my dream; there was the late mother of Valery there, and even his neighbors. In the same summer, on Pushkar, I met a classmate, once we had shared the same desk and have not seen each other exactly thirty years. When, touching in conversation upon our schoolmates, we have reached up to Arsentyev, Nina told, having darkened: «He hanged himself in the spring, jim-jams …»
The next group of casual events is given by parapsychology. Jung in his statistics had used experiences of J. B. Rhine where cards with special symbols were shuffled by a machine. Then they were spread by series of five by five; the testee, guessing, named a card which for check was overturned. One young man received results much above predicted. Once he has guessed in succession a series from 25 cards; the probability of that makes up 1: 298023876953 that is at one attempt per second the similar case could really take place once for eight thousand years (some rather interesting facts of similar things were published in journal «Psychophysics» — Center of Vassilyev).
Jung had classified these phenomena as follows:
1). Coincidence of experiences of an observer with an event taking place at this moment nearby at which the observer personally is not present, but his mental condition completely answers the content of the given event.
2). Coincidence of a state of the observer with an event occurring at the same time, but at a great distance.
3). Coincidence of psychical and mental experience with a future event, which reality can be established only later.
Common for all these phenomena remote from the subject in time and space is a full equivalence (semantic or material) with what he learns from nowhere or simply feels. These phenomena are possible under two conditions: either the psyche of the individual is independent of space-time, or it is built in a global system of interactions, unknown to us for the time being.
Let’s try to look from the certain point of view at the correlation of the general and private, consistent with the laws of nature and casual. On the one hand, the human body is a typical «product» replicated today in more than six billions of copies; the organization and principles of its functioning are also the same. On the other hand, undoubtedly there are in each body unique features, providing its originality.
The American researchers have established that all population of our planet is represented by one hundred thousands of human faces that is everyone living has today approximately sixty thousands of doubles (without taking into account age distinctions).
Except for coincidence on faces there are inevitably doubles on constitution. If both groups of signs plus age coincide, we have practically a full physical identity.
Tyrants and dictators frequently selected for themselves doubles; sometimes the lasts were found themselves. Known is Berliner Gustav Weler who according to an official decree of authorities of the Nazi Germany could not grow his moustache doing him to a copy of Führer. One can recollect Stalin and Michael Gelovani or, for example, an episode described by Paustovsky in the autobiographical cycle («The Restless Youth», М., 1968, vol. 4, p. 372).
The phenomenon of twins (let alone cloning) once again shows that human beings can be not only similar, but also actually identical. Relying on the preserved archives and portrait galleries, genetics investigated a number of aristocratic dynasties of Europe. At the same time a most interesting fact has come to light: children are quite often similar not to parents, grandmothers or grandfathers, but repeat — from the full external similarity up to personality properties — cast of mind and sometimes also the destiny of people having lived many generations ago.
There are two basic kinds of identity: uterine twins (today there are known to be about twenty millions pairs of the twins as like as two peas) and the casual ones, existing in one (horizontal) time «layer». There are known to be also twins in a «vertical direction» — at different times («Do not speak that once it has already been for once it still will be, and do not speak that once it will be for once all this has already been»).
So, the physical uniqueness of a person is rather relative, however the contrary is the case with mentality and consciousness.
A great number of amazingly stereotyped (by appearances and structural features) creations of civilization had arisen completely independently and at various times; it concerns first of all constructions and ornaments. «However, references to similarities of materials, tools, and external conditions are nevertheless not quite convincing. They do not allow to explain completely similarity and coincidences of features of the mentioned above works of art» («Beauty and the Brain», p. 23-24).
Creation of identical ornaments is more probable rather than discovery of the relativity theory; nevertheless, it goes into frameworks of a hypothesis that matter generates duplicates both of the first kind — physical bodies and the second — results of intellectual activity.
As Homo sapiens genus makes up so far (according to the western statistics) about eighty five billions of people lived (and living nowadays) on the planet; therefore the body of every person living at present is either a duplicate of those who had already been earlier, or a forerunner of those who will appear in the future. And all mankind is an integrated four-dimensional biological conglomerate.
Arising and developing in the unique volume of space, even twins, starting in life with the minimal time lag, live a unique destiny. But on the other hand, we never think over, how much typical is in physical being of a person. In particle physics there are known experiments when photon is split into daughter and grand-nephew quanta. After that one pair of the grand-nephew ones, regardless of external circumstances, simultaneously and for no reason duplicates everything what occurs to the first. In other words, the quanta received at splitting of a photon, remain parts of an integrated tangible object and behave as a single whole, regardless of how much time ago there was division, and at what distance they are from each other. The real behavior of them is such, as if they are on the opposite ends of an as much as long, absolutely firm rod; and any movement of one object is instantly reflected on the other. Simply speaking, they somehow exist in the unknown to science field of interactions, information rate in which is infinitely large, and time equals zero. Seditious and forgotten nowadays astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev asserted that time transforms the Universe into a flat wave front and is an equivalent of ether due to what all macrobodies possess ability of instant communication. If, according to one of the hypotheses, the mankind has descended from one pair of protopeople, so today this matrix consists of billions of «cells», and dubbing-in at the physical level is inevitable. When the total number of people on the planet exceeds twenty billions (the approximate quantity of brain neurons), occurrence of subjects with identical mentality becomes probable.
The matrix mentioned above presumably has a three-layer structure, and it is underlain by a «databank» of time. The first level is the independent organism exchanging with the external world for substance, information, and energy. The second — the ego, a part of individual mentality («chip» in grey matter), possessing self-consciousness and built in the independent body (except for Siamese twins). And, at last, the third level is the unconscious, connected with history of genus («chip» in white matter), «answering» for archetypical and paranormal phenomena, including siddhis.
It looks to me as though exactly this last, not found out by science yet, chip realizes including field (the Network or the Just One) function. Judging by situation in which mankind has got today, many troubles result from absence of necessary contact of the individual with matrix. Consciousness can work highly successfully for the welfare of the person, but it does not mean advantage in wider context at all – for the environment and the successful development of civilization. The cancer functions successfully too — grows quickly, but its development absolutely contradicts interests of the organism.
While the person remained an organic part of nature and did not ruin it more quickly than it was restored, there was simply no need in global restriction of his actions and desires whatsoever. But today it is, moreover – it is not possible just to brush it aside any more. World religions do nothing in this respect, they work in sphere of society; and that is not effectively; for example, murder during centuries has remained a problem not decided by them. And relations between the person and nature are for church simply uninteresting.
Yes, Alexander the Great, Qín Shǐ Huáng—dì, Timur, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin had eliminated many millions of people, their behavior was absolutely not ecological with respect to own genus. Nevertheless, these were intraspecific shoot-outs; in spite of everything, mankind size grew all time, and this tendency is kept.
If to consider relations between civilization and nature — global ecology, so there is essentially other situation there. Accepting strategic decisions, political and industrial elites of all states of the world, and also the wealthy do not see need (do not wish – they like it already) to realize themselves as a part of nature; as a result biosphere and including mankind by leaps and bounds degrades, coming down to irreversible state.
In this sense yoga can be extremely useful to each of us and the society as a whole since its practice, on the one hand, makes healthier, on the other — does not give any opportunity to overlook that he, the individual is a part of the whole. If the tumor realizes context and reconstructs its behavior, it ceases to be the cancerous at least that is leading hopelessly to downfall, it is compatible with life.
Neurosurgeon K. Pribram («Languages of the Brain», 1975) has noted «Scientists come to the idea that the external world is constructed according to holographic and structural principle just as we came in this book to a conclusion about the holographic and structural organization of the nervous system. Hence, between the brain and other physical devices there is a known isomorphism».
The concept of «bootstrap», developed by Jeffrey Chu, is also based on hypothesis of the general structure of world interactions; each point comprises the information on all other points of space-time.
«Interaction of the brain with the holographically organized ambient matter is based on that it has an opportunity to address to memory which capacitor system is outside of the brain. In this case the brain carries out the function of the interface, the connecting system of a computer, and the information itself is somewhere in the other place. It remembers only parameters of plural channels of information, through which it is possible to address in the register of the memory laying in ambient space» («Outside the Brain», p. 228).
Judging by a great number of the facts, accumulated for today in the most different aspects of human studying, the brain is capable «to join» somehow in the structure of a higher order, becoming a transceiving element. But concerning the scale of its influence… The question to adherents of anthroposophical «cosmism»: On what volume of space, commensurable at least with the solar system, let alone Galaxy, extends the influence of mankind? The answer is monosemantic: this volume equals to zero. If the communicative Network of mankind also exists, most likely, it has arisen rather recently and is a consequence either of increase in quantity of people or of evolutionary changes of the brain itself. If the field ways of contact were realized by evolution, in fauna (to which also the genus Homo sapiens belongs) there would hardly be natural selection: What is reason to wolves to die of starvation if they could in extrasensory way «take the bearings» of prey beyond the horizon?
Anyway, the science has not created for the time being anthropogenic methods of communication with the system mind and the Just One; there is only yoga or the initiative of the Network itself — if such one exists, though the phenomenon of interpersonal communications is, perhaps, a fluctuation of some local conditions.
Optimization of own psyche — the decision of this problem can bring to mankind dividends, which size and importance is difficult to imagine. While it has not taken place, the destructive behavior in respect of nature (no longer speaking about fellow creatures), remains constant.
From G. Bateson’s point of view: «The mind is a necessary and inevitable consequence of achievement of the certain complexity by a structure, arising long before the brain and CNS are formed in organism. Mental characteristics are peculiar not only to individual organisms, but also to social and ecological systems; this mind is inherent not only to the body, but also to conduction pathways and messages outside of the body» («Lessons of Wisdom», p. 74).
So, the hypothetical cerebral chip (or the brain itself which under certain conditions functions as an element of the unknown whole) can become more active by means of some events (for example — practice of yoga or accidents of consciousness and the body); as result there arise siddhis (miracles) which always caused in people sensation of presence in the world of the omnipresent, almighty and incomprehensible power, called God.
Do physical traumas cause loss of adaptation to the external world, or do they simply isolate the brain from field? Is always reorganization of communication during a long-term practice of yoga accompanied by field displays?
It is not clear what decisively influences quality and longevity of an individual: the full autonomy of consciousness or the fact of its communications with the Network? And how is the personality influenced by understanding (experience) that he is a trifling part of the boundless great number? Is the brain only an organ of reflection and if not what are criteria of its Network «connection»? How to distinguish a neurophysiological spasm from the original contact?
The brain and the produced by it (or included by the Network) local consciousness of the individual is a universal organ of adaptation to the world around. Animals do not have self-consciousness, therefore their adaptable opportunities are rather limited, but ideal under conditions of high stability of environment parameters. Communities of ants and bees behave so orderedly that they look conscious; the information exchange between them is effectively carried out in absence of the brain as the nervous system of an insect is a simple chain of ganglia. A colony of insects is a structure from the mobile units possessing a minimum of the programmed autonomy and a limited set of built-in reactions under constant external conditions.
Experts in resuscitation and doctors of «ambulance cars» know well that shock, coma, and loss of consciousness not always disconnect perception. Moreover, communication of the subject with the external world is at times kept even at clinical death. Penfield has promulgated data according to which consciousness functions at deep anesthesia, in spite of absence of activity of the brain (it is not possible to record EEG).
Mavromatis (1991) marks: «The most various forms of altered states of consciousness have in their basis preservation of its general arousal at reduction of the physiological one, what is marked by the parasympathetic dominant». In other words, productive altered states of consciousness, instead of deafening, are achievable only at immovability and a deep mental relaxation what by law of a vegetative pendulum arises after a good loading and achievement of the initial stage of chitta vritti nirodho, received in traditional practice of asanas.
«Does exist in us along with cortex any other nervous basis capable to thinking, or are the processes, occurring during loss of consciousness, phenomena of synchronicity? That is, are they not connected with organic processes?» («Synchronicity», p. 290).
And further: «Coma of the person does not paralyze the vegetative nervous system. Does it perhaps at this time become the carrier of psychical functions? Are dreams a generation of not so much a sleeping cortex (consciousness «is switched off», during dream it is absent — V.B.), as a product of a not sleeping vegetative nervous system? That is, whether dreams are of transcendental nature?» (ibid, p. 297). It is known that consciousness, and to be more precise, its physiological correlates, is absent in a deep stage of dream. In it, by the way, one can observe the paradoxical activity of ANS and at the same time its sympathetic part.
Robert A. Monroe, the author of Hemi-Sync techniques (in Russian translation «Travel outside of the Body»), asserts that consciousness and the mind are not local phenomena; he names telepathy as nonverbal communication (NVC).
Does the field in the certain situations take upon itself functions of perception which are usually inherent in consciousness of the individual? Not ANS, as it was assumed by Jung, but exactly field (Network)? What is in general primary – the field or the brain? Did field exist before mankind, or the last only «has joined» in its structure? Is, perhaps, this out of spatial and timeless substance similar to the dynamic vacuum a general bank of the information of living material of the planet?
Or are field phenomena an indemnification for splitness of psyche of the civilized person? Or is field the following stage of development, the third signaling system, forming gradually, and is the mass «connection» of mankind to it with the help of yoga still ahead? I am far from idea that today the ability of such «connection» is possessed by the chosen ones. Personally for me, Occam’s razor cuts the creator hypothesis, the founder and the manager of everything. Today the civilization is at the crossroads: either to begin the process of cyborgization, implantations of various devices in the human body or to improve existing systems and to form the new? Basically, there are developments on the one and on the other hand. And where will mankind go, it is not clear. The second way is more perspective, as it does the subject independent, not dependent on energy sources and manufacturers. Already now there are techniques of formation of additional sensory canals, stabilization of adaptable mechanisms, etc. Taking into account, that these changes are strictly physiological, the probability of their hereditary transmission is great enough.
Consciousness is, first of all, interaction with its body, representatives of species and nature. It is not yet clear, as far as the brain is occupied with the current adaptation, and in what cases it is switching in the field mode. Does it take, place, perhaps, during creativity? In the usual, vigilant state of consciousness, activity of the cortex is rather great; it simply «suppresses» signals of the subcortex, not giving them to filter into consciousness. And just the subcortex with its ancient, prehuman layers produces most likely siddhas. Not casually the spontaneous output of the intuitive information occurs more often in altered state of consciousness at the cortex activity decrease — «God’s fools», shamans with psychetropes, chitta vritti nirodho in yoga.
It is impossible to understand when and how the system mind does insert its «two copecks» (or fifty one?) in any human displays. And surely, are these two copecks, and not ninety eight? Though the idea itself that the controlling block of behavioural reactions belongs to something (someone), being outside of the mind, is humiliating. But consciousness assumes too much and is not equal to the task at hand, and the field (Network) has no accessible means for its persuasion just as the organism cannot cope with cancer cells, a sad analogy.
The person is ambivalent: the body aspires to self-preservation, the soul — to encroachment. The high degree of egocentrism excludes the individual from the system behavior. As a result it gains the total destructiveness; and it is most mournful that exactly such kind of autonomy provides wealth, success, and power.
The constant prevalence of the field adjustment makes the person (or the given type of culture) organically unable to a power redivision of the world order according to his understanding (called usually «improvement»); perhaps, exactly for this reason, India, despite of all enlightenments of yogins, did not become the cradle of the anthropogenic civilization.
So, in the status of the person is incorporated «the double confusion»: if the individual consciousness is torn off from «the rest of» the psyche and is in «free flight», the civilization inevitably gets in a mode of development with a sharpening and a high probability of disintegration.
If the field predominance outweighs, each subject and the whole community are drawn towards ultrastability, preservation of harmony with environment at the minimum of evolutionary dynamics — it is a stagnation and degeneration. Both ways are unacceptable. On the one hand, we cannot wait for favour from nature and influence on it destructively by our activity, on the other – for survival of species it is necessary to keep harmony with nature, first of all, with our own.
I see a break in the deadlock as such one: the society should be informed of the true state of ecology, it is necessary to minimize the corporate lie with its scientific covering, as well as spreading of esoteric and religious obscurantism. Everyone, whose being becomes intolerable, and today such persons in megacities are the overwhelming majority, should have an opportunity of self-recovery — including yoga — without drop-out from society.
Ideally, each individual should clearly imagine borders of the personal autonomy in behavior and costs of its surplus, first of all, for himself, not being drawn towards imposing of these costs on descendants and/or on the world around. On the one hand, one should go through or feel, on the other — to understand his belonging to the universal order which so persistently proves in field phenomena, including siddhis. The psyche has an opportunity to connect the animality of the person with the social one, consciousness with the unconscious, the ego with the Field being outside of usual dimension of the world and its cause-and-effect relationship.
So, we come back to conditions of communication of the ego with the full (system) mind, but as though already on the other hand, having established, that each individual contains an element of eternity.
The fully developed consciousness is simultaneously both a condition of contact and an obstacle to it. That the opportunity of the communications with field would become real, the person should not have rough cerebral defects and also an esoteric or religious dominant. Besides, one can get in the field mode only at the specific deactivation of consciousness; usual activity of the cortex makes this process impossible, but this activity is successfully inhibited by yoga.
«Special states of psyche consist in achievement and keeping of some minimum levels of wakefulness with the purpose of stimulation of psychophysiological processes responsible for display of the biofield phenomena.
The system functioning in such mode is at the «bifurcation point», what in vibration theory means the extremely unstable state. The energy, capable to bring out the certain element of system from such point, can be extraordinarily weak and be in zone of ideal stimuli. Findings have confirmed that instability of system is one of the main conditions of its high sensitivity to biofield influences» («Hypnosis and Criminality», p. 226-227).
All cunning of meditation consists in steady safety of simple attention; the mind is temporarily immobilized and deenergized, only then on its pure «screen» can appear a deep psyche content. Especially impressively the given process proceeds by people with prevalence of the visual modality of perception, by others it is observed only indirectly, and results are realized post factum.
Consciousness in its usual condition contacts with field extremely seldom and in exclusive cases. The world is full of the description of such contacts and attendant miracles, but to transform communication with a field into the constant reality is given to a mere handful of people. Such exception having drawn information from field, was Vanga, but she extremely seldom spoke what exactly should be made that troubles in the future of the given person have not come (according to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences about 80 % of her prophecies have come true).
How to influence on the Network that there would be a necessary response? Here one can apply only intention. In meditation self-sensibleness is minimal, but operative memory stores the recall of desirability of the certain course of events. With a high probability, it will draw a corresponding deep response — the communication will be developed in a vein of an intention. Any variants of contact do not pass at will! Intention is homeopathic, the thousandfold dilution – that is an example of an ideal stimulus, causing the necessary reaction. Any manipulations and tricks with the purpose to receive unusual abilities are fruitless or unpredictably dangerous according to their consequences; as a rule, all is solved by the Network. Or Lady Fortune.
According to displays of field effects it is possible to subdivide mankind into the following conditional groups:
-Madmen and feeble-minded — the consciousness is fragmentary, no personality, there is nobody for contacts;
-People with obvious reduction of mental abilities — «God’s fools», the blessed ones. Contact is possible, but fruitless; it is a parody of communication, which is very often accepted by people around them for revelation;
-Those who for not clear reasons (from God, as a result of an accident or catastrophe) get access to the Network or it itself selects them.
— The average group unfamiliar with neuroses and borderline states; field phenomena extremely seldom interfere in their life, being called as miracles, a case or a diabolical vision;
-People possessing primitive vital energy, which allows to ignore the unconscious; these are earliest explorers, revolutionaries, destructors and breakers, conquerors and adventurers. They realize their aspirations only on the basis of personal abilities;
— Those by whom at clarity of mind and not ordinary potentialities prevail the desires immixed by instincts (an example – Sigismund Malatesta, one of the characters of the Renaissance);
— The ascetics contacting with confessional model of the Just One (not with the true Network!) through religious rituals (see the chapter «Yoga and Christian Mysticism»);
— Those who after contact creatively transform energy of the archetypical, creating timeless products, from Yoga Sutras and The Divine Comedy up to paintings of the Sistine Chapel and Relativity theory;
-Those who can operate siddhis are great yogis. Possessing a real force, they never touch the current configuration of events, so far as they imagine well consequences of such intervention including for itself;
— Spiritual reformers, perhaps, the chosen ones and plenipotentiaries of the Network.
In process of accumulation of yoga practice, «calibre» of siddhas (and their personal force) grows, but this circumstance in no way guarantees contact with the Just One. Attempts to influence another’s destiny are fraught with loss of the personal field status.
In the middle of 1990 at one of my Ural seminars has appeared a certain Oxana, the mathematician by profession. For one year of regular practicing she had solved problems with her health, but then she had plunged into Buddhism and began to neglect yoga, having for the sake of extra earnings occupied herself with «karma removal» in Yekaterinburg. I dropped her a hint that to get involved in these games, not having a corresponding safety factor, can only kamikaze. In the spring of 1998 she has called me with the request to take for her questionnaires for entry into country in the Embassy of Australia. I have executed her request and have again advised not to tempt the Lord her God. Having burst out laughing, she has answered that one pays for «karma» well, but on the other hand in Australia it will be possible to work, at last, according to her specialty. Two months later, Oxana, her mother, and, daughter were killed in a road accident on the highway Chelyabinsk — Yekaterinburg. There were five in the car, and not any scratch on other two survived. «The one who is endowed with hearing — will understand, the one who is not endowed with understanding — will not hear» (Lao-tzu).
Extrasensory individuals — subjects with specific abilities (which can be attributed to «small siddhas») can influence on general state and condition of the people around them. As a rule, these people do not understand mechanisms and reasons of their abilities. They can remove some rather heavy symptomatology or pain, and also are capable to slow down for some time development of disorders not dangerous to life. It is necessary with a big care to combine practice of yoga with extrasensory influence, as superimposition of effects can be dangerous. I remember a former sportsman who has come in yoga for deliverance from numerous traumas. In the process of practice, the skew of his back was gradually displaced in pelvis, and in Pashimottanasana which according to the form turned out pretty well, his right hip joint of a hip began to hurt. This guy had a familiar psychic who has declared that he «sees» in a leg an energy » plug» and «removed» it safely. The leg became as if a new one; as a matter of fact, unpleasant sensations have disappeared together with the flexibility. When half a year later, the form of Pashimottanasana had been restored, there returned also the problem which should be sorted out long enough.
«The condition, in which the ego and not-ego do not contradict each other anymore, is axis of Dao. The enlightenment – it is when you use your mental vision, your mental hearing in order to penetrate into heart of things, and you do not need any knowledge given by the mind» (Chuang Tzu).
«It is impossible that someone saw something from eternity if he does not become similar to that» (The Gospel of Philip).
«The absolute knowledge at synchronicity which cannot be received with the help of sense organs, speaks about the transcendental form of meaning existence» («Synchronicity», p. 292).
«Psyche exists in the material body and merges with the information field through the unconscious» (ibid, p. 8).
The same is said by V.V. Nalimov who has suggested a concept of semantic vacuum, containing potentially an infinite quantity of meanings which need «only» to be retrieved.
Jung has noted that, coming into contact with a field, the person becomes to a certain extent immortal; this thesis is polysemantic; I understand it so that the field, perhaps, somehow duplicates the structures, being of interest to it.
Sometimes the person practices yoga systematically and competently, but «the rest of his life» gives siddhis a negative sign.
The first story. When in 1991 the Moscow Center «Classical yoga» ha been founded, it had consisted of four persons: the author of these lines, Boris Martynov (having later published a number of useful books, including translations of «Yoga Upanishad»), Konstantin Danilchenko, and Roman Amelin, a painfully corpulent guy behind whose external coolness there were brilliant abilities and the outstanding mind. Knowing English perfectly, Roman had absolute pitch, he finished brilliantly a musical school and tried repeatedly to enter conservatory. But when he has understood that it is possible to get there only under the patronage, he lost his temper and went on a spree for a long time, until his poor health hinted about itself. By time of our acquaintance he had had time to penetrate thoroughly into yoga, as a matter of fact, basically theoretically, as he used a thematic selection of the Anglo-Saxon literature of the Cultural Center at the Indian Embassy in Moscow. In the same place, we studied with the first in Russia professional teacher of yoga Lakshman Kumar.
At the first acquaintance, I had been struck by Roman’s theoretical knowledge; besides he fantastically sang mantras and constantly was engaged in some meditative things, not giving at the same time any attention to the body, and when he felt unwell, he managed with Prakshalana.
I constantly proved to him necessity of a regular asanas practicing, but Roman was a hard nut to crack; and our struggle lasted with variable success about two years. Sometimes he started to practice more or less on a regular basis, sometimes he neglect it for a long time, preferring to linger once again over coffee in «Jantarang» or to entertain us with a magnificent pilau of his own manufacturing. Then it had occurred to him idée fixe: to get in the Bihar Ashram, to receive the program of recovery of his health directly in place. No sooner said than done, shortly Roman has left for India.
His knowledge of the English language, philosophy of yoga, and mantras made such an impression on Indians that he had an opportunity of the direct dialogue with Swami Niranjanananda, the head of Ashram. After a month of daily conversations he gave Roman a mantra- and asana-diksha (diksha — personal dedication). After the first mantra’s use, Roman for two days was flat on his back and became covered with black sweat. With asanas it was even cooler; not less than one hour a day, he should carry out Sukshma vyayama (articular warm-up), and then in succession about forty postures. Besides, Roman was forbidden by Niranjan tea, coffee, and sharp seasonings.
«You were right», he said, — «if I would not loaf these two years! In fact it turns out to be nonsense: visualization and everything else goes superb, but my general state is worse and worse».
In the then summer, I and my son leaved for the Crimea, and I have advised Roman to start practicing, not waiting my returning.
«No», he said apathetically, «without you I do not want, I shall get ready morally; when you return, then we shall start …»
And we have left. Once in the morning I beheld with surprise on the beach of Laspi bay my old friend whom I had not seen some years. He greeted me and asked: «Look, do you have in Moscow an acquaintance, by the name of Roman? Keep in mind; it had happened with him something bad…»
Roman has not had time to begin work with the body what he so needed and what neglected with such a fatal persistence; he was killed in an extremely nonsensical car wreck. If the spirit develops without accompanying transformation of the physical cover, the destiny starts to work since some moment for burst.
The second story began in 1989. Before the First All-Union Yoga Conference I was invited to visit by Yelena Olegovna Fedotova. In 1988 together with a representative of P.K. Anokhin Scientific Research Institute of Normal Physiology she had been directed by the Scientific and Technical Department of the Ministry of Public Health of the USSR (headed then by Professor V.I. Ilyin) to India where they had visited a number of Ashrams. This trip had been undertaken within the framework of preparation for the conference, signifying the withdrawal of yoga from disgrace. In our conversation, Fedotova told that due to her diligence the world famous guru B. K. S. Iyengar arrives in Moscow and it would be good, if somebody from our amateur yogis strikes him with his successes so that he would open here his branch.
«He should know better», I told then, «that is, if God please».
It happened so that Iyengar marked me out from the crowd of enthusiasts during the mass training in the Sport Center of the 2-nd Medical Institute; he even personally (exerting by his weight additional pressure on my waist to the floor) walked around me with feet in Supta Virasana. Having lit up at once, Dharma Ver Singh and Faek Biria congratulated me: «For a pupil, it is the great honor!»
Next day together with both secretaries, Iyengar made a visit to me, on the Lenin prospectus; Fedotova was present as translator. Then, sometime later, after departure for India, he sent her and me invitations to a one-month course to Poona. I did not begin to fidget, as I had not then any opportunity and special desire. Besides, my understanding of yoga, rather distinct from method of Iyengar, has quite developed by then. Fedotova went through the course in India, received the certificate of participation in seminar and, without further ado, founded the Moscow Center of Iyengar Yoga. After that, having neglected her basic form of activity, Yelena Olegovna has rushed into tumultuous events marking withdrawal of yoga from underground. She can be understood: there are plenty of candidates of sciences, and the opportunity to become a proprietor of own business offers far from being to everyone.
That was a legendary time: the great number of Zubkov’s apologists were legalized, and the newly made center of Fedotova was perfectly at one with muddy guys from sports state structures. One of them Yu. Belous, the then head of TPC (Theoretical and Practical Center) at the Scientific Research Institute of Goskomsport, immediately after Iyengar has shown thought for me, has suggested to place myself at the head of their section of yoga instead of L. Teternikov, but I have refused. By that moment Teternikov left the firm of Belous already. After conference, he as vice-president of the Yoga Association of the USSR held all the aces. At once, he appropriated constituent documents, the seal of the organization and has left for independent navigation. Nobody could find him by phone or personally. I as before worked in my Scientific Research Institute, being engaged at leisure with therapy and observing strange events in the yogical world, and there were things to be surprised. In continuous mess of seminars on «yoga», twirled by Teternikov across the whole collapsing USSR (he made the best use of his status in the Association, whose work he paralyzed himself) Fedotova took the most active participation as an expert though she should understand that got mixed up with an inveterate swindler. Peripheral people were flocking to these seminars, not having the slightest idea about what yoga is. There were no competitors, candidates of chemical (Teternikov) and psychological (Fedotova) sciences creamed off across towns and villages, especially as because there was nothing to be afraid at coming lawlessness and anarchy.
Video, having been shot by Dal Orlov, where Iyengar about one hour showed by me nuances of asanas to participants of the Conference, has sunk into nonexistence. Fedotova herself did not make her appearance any more, and when she should, against her own free will, visit my house twice together with Faek, she was colder than ice. At trainings in her Center she behaved in respect of beginners with absolute impudence, not to speak a stronger language, and this manner was soon adopted by her nearest environment. It was clear that yoga was for Yelena Olegovna exclusively a business; and I, being publicly approved by the guru, was the most dangerous competitor. She did not suspect that I had not the slightest desire to be involved in her self-forgetful struggle for banknotes. In 1993, Fedotova has published her translation of «Yoga Dipika», and soon left with her son for the USA, Stanford, to the husband who already had been working there for a long time under a grant. She handed her Moscow brainchild (I do not know on what terms) to Yelena Ulmasbaeva, and herself began to teach yoga at a new place of residence. I could not understand: How can a person teach people something, not to speak of yoga, if his own behavior contradicts the elementary politeness. However God waits for a long time, but beats hard; made by us comes inevitably back to us. In ancient times, such course of events was called harmonies, secret footpaths of the order, equilibrating human actions. Fedotova penetrated into sphere of yoga, not having any grounds for it. And that (in my opinion — just that!) had led to that in the autumn of 1998 she, her husband, and the twelve-year son had been brutally killed in the paradisiacal small town of Stanford’s professorate; the police have not found committers of this crime.
If Roman missed himself physically, so Fedotova which did not have any problems with the body, was ruined by the mental and ethical denseness. In both cases the result has turned out as equivalently disastrous. In order not to finish the chapter on the minor note, I shall tell a pair of curious cases. After several years of trainings, siddhi of one of my pupils have started to be shown rather specifically. For example, once in the morning she got a precise sensation that something will happen with her son at school. Clearly, if to leave him at home, this «something» will take place too, and it may happen that in a much worse variant. Having thought, lady has sent her son to school, having warned him very strictly that he would behave as silently as possible, and then she got in touch on the phone with the familiar surgeon. In the afternoon, during running about in time of a long break the child was pushed, and he rammed sideways into the window corner. From the house, having felt an indisposition, he at once has been delivered to hospital where has undergone a successful operation on elimination of splenic rupture.
One more lady after a year after the beginning of practice somehow began «to see» interiors of associates, in particular — the places struck with illness. It plunged her into such shock, that for some time she ceased to use public transport. When we discussed the situation, and it was formulated a necessary intention, the ability «to see» began to be included only at will.
The life of everyone who masters yoga gradually becomes fine and surprising, and it is the most important miracle. One can compare siddhi with confetti. But if confetti is an attribute of a holiday, so siddhi is an indication of the future perfection, its primary symptom, similar to rise of temperature after an inoculation. But if the temperature does not fal…