Sensei of Shambala - Anastasia Novykh (english novels for students .txt) 📗

the technique. Your son has spent years learning this Wisdom. Without this source of power, he would not be able to make a single step on the way of the warrior.’
“Rejoicing at his son’s success the king said, ‘Now I see that he deserves to take a throne.’
“‘No, father,’ the young warrior replied. ‘I have found something greater. Before my mind was limited only to material wishes, but now it is endless in spiritual cognition. The greatest power, all the gold of the world, fades compared to it like a gray dust under the foot of the wanderer. And the wanderer is not interested in the dust, he is fully devoted with each step to the new discoveries over the horizon.’”
Andrew hung his head ashamed. There was a long pause. But then Nikolai Andreevich joined our company and the discussion switched to other problems, including the meditations practiced by us at home.
“I felt again this paresthesia,” Kostya said. “Is this all right?”
“Of course. What is the main point in it? You have to feel these ants that appear with the first breaths in your head. You have to feel how they ‘run’ inside of your arms and, most importantly, how they jump out of the centre of your palms to the earth. That is, you have to feel your inward and outward breath. And you should not have any outside thoughts at all.”
“This is the most difficult thing to do. When I concentrate on the tip of my nose, the ants start coming to my head, catching on each other. And the most amazing thing is that I even do not notice when they appear.”
“Right you are. It means that we are not used to controlling our thoughts in our daily life. That is why they guide us to any direction they want, confusing us in their ‘logical’ chains. And the uncontrolled thought may lead mainly to negative things as it is managed by the animal nature of people. That’s why there are different spiritual practices and meditations, to learn to control the thought first of all.”
We talked a little more about the stiking points of our home practice. And then it came to the next meditation.
“Today we will unite two parts of the meditation into one,” Sensei said, “so that you understand how it should work and try to reach it in your individual training. Now find a comfortable position…”
Following his words, we relaxed as usual and concentrated on the meditation practice. First, we concentrated on the tip of the nose as the last time. Then the Teacher said, “Do not distract your attention and vision from the tip of the nose. Take an inward breath through the bottom of your stomach, through your stomach, breast… Outward breath through shoulders, hands, chakras of the palms to the earth. With the outward breath, a small light flares up more and more. Breathe in… Breathe out… Breathe in… Breathe out… Concentrate on the nose tip… Breathe in…”
I was completely confused. As soon as I had concentrated on the ‘streamlet’, which I could feel clearly as partial movement through the arms, I immediately lost control over my nose tip. And as soon as I had concentrated on the ’flashing’ nose tip, my ‘streamlet’ disappeared. It all happened when my ‘outside’ thoughts came to me. I was unable somehow to unite it all. During one of my next attempts, I heard Sensei’s voice, which informed us of the end of the meditation. As it turned out, this incident happened not only with me but with my friends as well.
“It is natural,” Sensei said. “You should not think it over, just observe. Then you will succeed.”
It seemed completely unreal to me. But I was encouraged by the fact that Nikolai Andreevich and the senior guys didn’t have any problems with this meditation. “It means that not everything is so hopeless,” I reassured myself. “If they can do it, why can’t I do the same? I just also have to practice hard. That is the point.” There I caught myself on the fact that even in my thoughts I had started to speak with the words of Sensei. While I was reflecting on this, one of the guys asked a question.
“So you want to say that the way to self-recognition starts with observing yourself and your thoughts?”
“Of course. Self-observance and control over your thoughts can be practiced little by little during everyday training. And for this you need an elementary knowledge base. It’s a natural way of any training, either physical or spiritual. Just a simple example. A man lifts a weight of 20 kg. If he trains for a month, he will easily lift 25 kg, and so on. The same happens at the spiritual level. If you are prepared, it will be much easier for you to master more difficult techniques.”
“But there are a lot of different meditations and modifications. It’s difficult to understand which one leads to the peak,” Kostya as usual made a show of his erudition.
“It’s too far to reach the peak. All these meditations that exist in the world practice are just an alphabet that has been never a secret. And the real knowledge leading to the peak starts from the ability to put together words from this alphabet and to understand their meaning. Reading the books is a privilege of the chosen ones.”
“Not so bad! Everything is so complicated,” Andrew said.
“There is nothing complicated in it. You just need the desire.”
“And if you have the desire but hesitate?” Slava asked.
“If you have doubts, someone should beat your head with a heavy hammer so that you understand that you’re a dunderhead. A person who hesitates is very much stuck in the material world, in the logic and egoism of his thoughts, his mind… if he possesses one at all.”
The guys smiled at these words, and Sensei went on, “If you sincerely strive towards self-recognition, with pure belief in your soul, you will surely succeed. It’s a law of nature… And the spiritually developed individual will succeed even more.”
Andrew said with a thoughtful view, “Well, the alphabet is clear, but I don’t quite understand about the composition of words. Is that also a meditation?”
“Let’s say it’s something higher - a spiritual practice, an ancient primordial technique that allows us to work not only with the consciousness but, what is more important, with unconsciousness. There is a set of certain meditations that lead to a respective spiritual level… It’s simple. The main point is that an individual should overcome his guard, his material thinking, with the same desire so he can conquer the whole world… The same eternal truth as usual, and the same eternal stumbling-block. If an individual is able to overcome it, he will become human.”
“I wonder, if someone reaches perfection through training his body, does it mean something?” Yura asked.
“It’s one of the ways of alphabet learning.”
“Recently we watched video about martial arts with Yura,” Ruslan inserted into conversation. “And before it they showed a documentary on people’s achievements in self-perfection of their body. Just imagine such a trick, one guy put a spear edge to his throat, fixed its handle to a minivan and pushed it without hands, not injuring himself. Another one lay on his back under heavy things. And nothing happened! The third one smashed bricks with a blow of his hand. But the most interesting was in the end. They took an ordinary bull bone and poured highly concentrated acid over it. Of course, it was destroyed. Then they poured this acid over a man. It immediately destroyed his clothes but brought no harm to his body.”
“Incredible!” Andrew exclaimed. “I can’t believe it!”
“It’s not unusual,” Sensei said, evenly as always. “The potential of a human is limited by his fantasy.”
“And what was that, Qigong?”
“Well, let’s say, aside from Qigong, there are a lot of similar techniques. But the source of the knowledge, including Qigong, is the same. That is, this is a work with energy “Qi” – the constructive energy of the air.”
“I have read somewhere that “Qi” is life energy, and you call it constructive. Why?” Kostya asked.
“Because energies, chakras, channels, and even energy centers in different teachings are known by different names. For example, under the energy ‘Chi’ in yoga, they mean noble recoverable energy. But in the science of ‘Lotus’ under the ‘Chi,’ initially it meant a powerful destructive energy. The same is true with ’Qi’.”
After keeping silent for a while, the Teacher added, “People just assume but they don’t possess precise information about the real nature of this knowledge. Therefore they mix up the meanings. As they say, it’s better to stand on the head than to hang in the air.”
“Hmm, that’s true,” Volodya agreed. “If to paraphrase my favorite poster that is an eyesore to all in front of our house, ‘There is no such obstacle that we can’t create for ourselves!’”
The guys smiled.
“What is Qigong in relation to the art of Lotus?” Andrew came back again to the serious issues.
“For you to understand it, Qigong like kindergarten and the art of Lotus is like an academy. One of the first stages in learning the highest art is full control over the thoughts. If you can control your thoughts, everything will be under your control.
“Oh, it will be possible to…” Slava started to talk with excitement.
“No, impossible, because you will control your thought. That is, you will not be able to do something negative and wrong. That is the whole sense. We learn and practice Qigong, but in the art of Lotus we don’t train, we recall all things hidden in our soul.
“And those body phenomena we have seen in the film, is it possible for us to learn them?” Ruslan asked, thinking about something.
“Of course. It’s easy if you can use this energy in the right way.”
“And what is needed for it?”
“Elementary skills, concentration of breathing, a certain understanding of the essence of this phenomenon…”
“I just can’t grasp it,” Jura said in a thoughtful way. “How did that guy manage to break bricks with his hand?”
“Did you want him to break them with another part of the body?” Eugene poked fun at him.
“It’s possible to break them with another part as well,” Sensei smiled, “if you want strongly enough to do so. The point is that with a certain concentration and breathing exercises you can accumulate the Qi energy in any part of the body, in this case in the hand. And at the moment of the blow, the chakra opens up in the palm, and all this power is released to break something. It’s very important, I say it again, the very process of mind concentration, that is, the process of focused concentration.
“Does it have any effect on the change in the level of brain activity?” Nikolai Andreevich asked.
“Sure. It creates a very interesting process in the brain. To put it in medical terms, a beta rhythm may be registered at the moment of the blow preparation and full mental concentration. A few minutes before the blow itself, an individual stops thinking about what he is doing. At this moment, his mind activity changes from beta rhythm to alpha rhythm, and it’s similar with the shock state. In this state, a blow is being struck. It is like a stoppage of time, perhaps. It’s not difficult. Just physics. That’s all.”
“We have one soldier in our platoon who breaks bricks,” Volodya joined the discussion. “The others tried to imitate him but