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

I found out the following: the lotus is a water-resistant perennial herbaceous plant with a long stalk and large flowers reaching 30 centimeters in diameter and resting upon big leaves. The leaves of the lotus have interesting, peculiar properties: they are covered with a special waxy covering and don’t get wet in the water. I interpreted this fact in such a way that the soul can’t be spoiled by bad thoughts, or in other words, by the impact of animal nature. It will just keep sleeping.
The lotus flower has twenty-two to thirty petals, faintly pink at the foundation and bright at the top, located spirally around the seminal box. I glanced at the photo of the flower. This seminal box, located in the center of the flower, looked similar to a golden cork, with multiple fibers around of the same color. It is interesting that the lotus flowers are always facing the sun: a little lower than the point of the pedicle attachment, the lotus has a so-called reaction zone that catches the light.
I read even more stunning information about its seeds: lotus seeds possess the extraordinary ability to retain their germinating power a few hundred (and sometimes even a few thousand) years. This peculiarity of the lotus is supposed to be the reason for using it from the time immemorial as a symbol of immortality and resurrection.
Also, I managed to clarify one interesting detail. The lotus possesses homothermy. It means that the flower is able to maintain its internal temperature just like birds, mammals, and people do. The lotus flower has a significant place in the beliefs of different nations.
And that’s all that I succeeded in finding out. But this was enough to partially grasp the meaning of why the Art of Lotus constantly mentioned by Sensei is named in honor of this flower. However, the complete understanding of its meaning I felt somewhere inside of myself, in the very depth of my true “I”.

22

In a few days, when we were all going to the training, the guys started to share their impressions and results. It turned out that everybody understood Sensei and grew this internal love in a different way. Kostya imagined that he planted a lotus seed, as he said, “into some kind of a live substance of the universe.” He did it yesterday, while previously he was diligently searching through the literature looking for proof of Sensei’s words. He didn’t have any kind of feelings; he simply imagined the process and now is waiting for the result.
Tatyana imagined this love as the birth of Jesus in her heart, since she was brought up by her grandma as a faithful Christian. She had feelings of happiness, internal delight, and light pressure in the area of her heart. But her heart began to ache a little.
Andrew tried every day to concentrate purposefully on the area of the solar plexus in order to achieve at least some kind of feeling by thinking about the lotus. Only on the third day did he feel a slightly noticeable, light warmth, not warmth really, but as if “something was tickling in that place, as if touched by a feather.” And Slava wasn’t even able to imagine how all of this happens “inside of the organs.”
Before the beginning of the training, our company waited for a moment when Sensei wasn’t busy and came up to him with questions. We started to tell him about our feelings. Tatyana broke into the conversation out of turn and complained to Sensei about her heart. The Teacher took her hand and felt her pulse like a professional doctor.
“Right, tachycardia. What happened?”
“Don’t know. It started to ache after I concentrated on the birth of God in my heart…”
And then she spoke with more details about the awakening of her divine love.
“I see. You concentrated on the organ, on the heart. But you shouldn’t concentrate on an organ. The heart is the heart, it’s only a muscle, it’s the pump of the body. By concentrating on it, you bring it off its rhythm and interfere in its work. When you learn to control yourself, only then you will be able to concentrate on the work of the body and organs. By doing that now, you’ll only harm yourself. You need to concentrate exactly on the solar plexus. Everything is born from it. That is the primary chakra in Lotus, called Kuandalini.”
“Well, I read that when Kuandalini begins to awaken there, some kind of snake crawls along the spine,” Kostya bragged a little with his erudition.
“This definition is from yoga,” answered the Teacher. “It’s typical for people to mix up everything with time. Originally, in the Lotus, Kuandalini was a chakra located in the area of the solar plexus. What I told you about the lotus flower, I repeat, are just images, nothing more, so that for you it would be easier to understand, perceive and feel.”
“And in general, what does it look like in reality? Tell us, please, one more time, specially for dummies,” Andrew asked jesting.
“You simply feel the fibers, growing the internal power of love. Let’s say, you feel as if you were waiting for something very, very good. For example, you are waiting for some huge, long-awaited present you’ve dreamt about. And now you receive it, you’re happy, you’re overfilled with gratitude. You feel tingling all over your body, in other words, you perceive this feeling in the area of the solar plexus, as if something beautiful, good emanates from you, or you are waiting for that. You should have a feeling like this that you evoke artificially and permanently maintain in the area of the solar plexus. Finally, it becomes natural for you. And people begin to feel it. In other words, you radiate this happiness… And that’s all. It’s not necessary to have a flower there. These are just images for easier perception.”
“And the flower that should be around the body. How does that work?”
“Well, are you familiar with such notions as the astral, mental, and other energy bodies, simply saying, the multi-layer aura around a human?”
“Yes.”
“So, when this power field of good expands in you, then you start to feel a kind of multi-layer of petals. You feel that you are covered, protected, that you flourish in lotus. And at the same time, you feel that you are like the sun over the world, you warm everything with the warmth of your vast love.
“This is a permanent meditation, wherever you are and whatever you do, you evoke these fibers, these feelings, these flows of energies. The main sense is that the more you practice, the stronger they become. Finally, this process becomes material and you’ll really be able to have a positive effect on people. In other words, you’ll be able to do it only when you completely change yourself internally in thought, and externally in action.”
Andrew wanted to ask another question, but a lanky old man appeared in the doorway of the sports hall.
“Alright, guys,” Sensei said before Andrew could say anything, “We will discuss it later.”
We moved aside. The old man, greeting Sensei, started to speak with excitement, taking him aside, “You know, the academician from Leningrad called today,” he said, out of breath, “George Ivanovich. He asked me to tell you that he will come here for sure in three days…”
I did not quite catch the following words because “Lanky” coped with his excitement and switched to a whisper. I was extremely surprised by this message. What does an academician need here? One from Leningrad even? What does he need Sensei for? I was full of curiosity. But the training had started and Sensei entrusted the senior sempai to head it. There was no time to satisfy my curiosity.
During the training, having thought about Sensei’s words about waiting for a big present, I felt that these feelings worked a lot better in me because I remembered them well from childhood. Just when I had revived these long-forgotten feelings in my memory, I felt a pleasant tickling in the center of the solar plexus, spreading in different directions with light winding streams. It was really a nice and very pleasant feeling at that moment. But I couldn’t keep such a state even for a minute, and it disappeared by itself. My attempts to revive and to evoke these feelings took up a lot more time than I wanted them to. Thus, absorbed in my internal state, I didn’t notice that the training was over. My body wasn’t still aching after that memorable training, and the pain had gone away, like Sensei said, in exactly three days.

23

For the next few days, I tried to evoke these feelings while doing different things. But it worked well only when I specifically concentrated on the lotus flower, doing some kind of physical work. Furthermore, I began to keep track of my thoughts a bit. One day, while sitting at home and doing homework, I tried to recall all I had thought about that day but could not do it; not only thoughts, but also all of my actions. I was able to recall some general things while details surfaced with difficulty. Most importantly, my good deeds went under the category “that’s the way it should be,” and I hardly remembered them. However, negative moments, negative emotional upsets were engraved in my memory in detail. That was the case when I deliberately felt the power of the animal nature. Sensei’s words came to my memory by themselves, “A thought is material because it’s born in the material brain. That’s why a bad thought oppresses. This is the first guard, which always tries to defeat the human. One day I will tell you about it in greater detail, about how your thoughts are born and why their power is so strong over you.” I thought, “Why doesn’t Sensei say everything at once? Why does he keep postponing it until an indefinite later? This later may never happen for some of us... But on the other hand, the way I perceived his words at the first training and now is completely different. Before, I simply listened, and only now have I begun to understand things because I started to practice and to work on myself. I already have some results, some experience and, therefore, I now have concrete questions. Sensei always gives detailed answers to concrete questions. Suddenly I had an insight: “He just simply waits for us to understand his words, so to say, when we let them work through ourselves, when our minds conceive everything on their own and take the side of the soul. Otherwise, all this knowledge, as Sensei says, will remain for us as an empty ringing in an empty head. Sensei said that we have to work constantly on ourselves, that every minute of life is valuable, and we should use it as a gift of God for the perfection of our souls.” These words strengthened my confidence and optimism. Later on, I recalled them often, when my body was seized with apathy.

24

Despite the bad weather and traffic problems caused by the year’s first snow, which heaped up like never before, everybody came to the meditation training on time. Without wasting time, Sensei started discussing our attempts to bring up the flower of lotus. Nikolai Andreevich admired his results, in particular from the psychotherapeutic point of view, as one of the best ways to control thoughts. At the end of his story he said thoughtfully, “I was trying to analyze everything you said in more detail, and a question arose in me. You said that these vibrations of love protect a human from the negative influence of other people. From which one exactly, and how does it manifest?”
“Negative influence can