Sensei of Shambala - Sensei of Shambala. Book IV

But my mask of the “brave person” didn’t last long. As soon as I seized the fin, Sensei playfully splashed the water and the dolphin got off with a jerk and rushed alongside the coast. Our of fear I held his fin so strongly as if it were my last hope on the sinking ship. However the dolphin was moving with steady speed leaving his fin over the water and making maneuvers with his strong tail. Out of fear I closed my eyes tight and left only narrow chinks for vigilance. We flew like an arrow with such a speed that I was seriously frightened. Though it was a clever dolphin but he was an animal and what could he intend each next moment? How could I “ask” him to go back? If he really heads for the sea I won’t be able to reach the coast! So, all this cocktail of panic feelings of my Animal nature and such an incredible “water flying” could make my hair stand on end if it were not wet.

The dolphin continued to twist quickly joyfully rushing along the sea space with my person as a human “load”. But the biggest fun still awaited for me. My worst fears became to come true quite fast. Having swum some distance the dolphin began to turn towards the sea. My instinct of self-preservation immediately prevailed. Having let off the fin, I swam as hard as I could to the coast. But in comparison with the previous torpedo flight my own speed reminded more the lazy turtle slowly moving on the land in the full blaze of the sun.

However the dolphin wasn’t going to leave me to the mercy of fate. Having turned towards Sensei he swam to me very close by from the right side as if offering me his help. Floundering in the water I seized with one hand his fin. And the dolphin as if on command rushed again playfully towards Sensei. I had to pull myself up in order to seize the fin with the left hand. How come the dolphins have so much strength? Coming back to our point of departure all my fears disappeared at once and it was a great pleasure for me to ride at such a speed and to be close to such a friendly unordinary creature.

Quite amazing but as soon as my fear disappeared I cognized and felt what I didn’t notice when my Animal nature dominated. I have caught myself on the thought that I treated the dolphin like a human. As if I started to understand him and to anticipate somehow changes in his movements. For example, when we were in the middle of our way, the dolphin began to swim slower and to deepen gradually. I let off the fin somehow without fear clearly knowing on the subconsciousness level what was going to be but I didn’t understand it. The dolphin turned on his back in a funny manner showing me his belly and nearing like two hands his two side fins. I took them. In this position the dolphin again speeded up rushing with me to Sensei. Meanwhile the second dolphin “met” us and accompanied us playfully aside. This way we reached our group. I was fully delighted with the dolphins. They are so kind and friendly creatures!

Our company has also admired what they have seen.

“Why have you let him off when he turned back?” Kostya and Andrew began mocking at me.

Hardly had I wanted to confess frankly that I was scared, Eugene “stood up” for me, “She got embarassed! Have you forgotten that yesterday she’d got the gills when she’d been sitting under the water for ten minutes. And the dolphins felt her their relative at once! Have you seen that horizontal races!”

We laughed and the guys began joking about it and asking me about my feelings. Some of them also wanted to take a ride but this time attention of the dolphins changed to another kind of a game. Probably when I have been still floundering in the water, one of the stripes fell down unnoticeably from my hair. I used it to tie up the hair so that it would not hinder during swimming. And the smaller dolphin picked it up to his side fin and began racing with it around in circles. And the second dolphin started catching him up, archly hunting this stripe. Even when I “sacrificed” them the second stripe for fun, they still tried to take it away from each other in a such funny way that it made all our group laugh.

Part of the guys left to observe the game of the dolphins and even tried to take part in it, the rest went just swimming. Eugene was most active in diving trying to get rid of some intrusive green flies which circled around him even after he went into the water. What was most strange is that they intended to sit only on him, without disturbing anybody else.

“What’s up?!” Eugene got indignant laughing. “Mosquitoes ate me in the night and flies in the morning. Where did they get from, damn them!”

In reply Volodya who was swimming not far from him noticed, “Of course, I’m not against flies as insects but I should say that flies won’t sit on something without a reason!”

Stas picked up this joke and began developing it. “Well, you should be done from something in order to attract their attention to you.”

“You want to say that I’m that something that doesn’t sink?!” Eugene grinned with indignation.

Victor who listened to their conversation laughed together with the guys and suggested, “We can easily check it!”

He rushed to drown Eugene with a boyish enthusiasm. The last one slipped out his hands, felt down aside and shouted, “It’s a lie! You will get into it but won’t catch it! That something doesn’t sink in the fire and doesn’t burn in the water!”

The guys rolled again laughing after the last Eugene’s pun.

Time of this unusual swimming with dolphins together with such a merry company flew by unnoticeably. Having probably played enough the dolphins made a few circles of honour around us and having left one stripe to Sensei, took the other one with them to the sea. We also began going from the water to the sand.

“They are really intelligent creatures!” Victor said with delight looking back to the swimming away dolphins.

“You can’t even imagine how intelligent they are,” emphasized Sensei. “How amazing their “social” ingenuity is. They don’t just follow the programmed standard instincts, but agree on their actions in favour of the population in general, its stability and self-preservation.” And he added with a smile. “By the way, unlike human demos kratos, they have a real democracy.”

“What do you mean?” Victor didn’t grasp.

“They don’t have special distinctions between leaders and subordinates. The leader differs from others only by the fact that he takes over responsibility in the critical situation.”

“In which way?” asked Kostya who listened to them with interest.

“Well… For example, a ship is coming close to dolphins. One or two dolphins-leaders swim close to it, investigate the object in details, and the others wait on secure distance for their decision whether they have to fear this object or to ignore it, etc.”

“So to say, a leader is the one who shows his bum in the critical situation?” Volodya specified with a smile. “Well, then that’s a true democracy. We don’t expect this even from the authorities of the ministry, moreover from the government.”

“That’s right.” Sensei nodded grinning. “People have something to be learnt from dolphins.” And in a while he added. “They really have a highly organized society. And “social” organization of dolphins is in some sense a copy of the primary structure of the human society about which people remember little and because of lack of knowledge they call it primitive matriarchy.”

“Which knowledge do you mean?” Nikolai Andreevich got interested at once.

“I will tell you later some day,” Sensei replied. And reaching the coast he suggested, “Wouldn’t you mind to have a breakfast? What do you think?”

Our company supported this idea and began to cook the late breakfast with enthusiasm.

* * *

Despite the collective activities in cooking food, it was eaten with real appetite only Sensei, Nikolai Andreevich and, what surprised me, I. I had such an appetite as if I have been starving for a week. The other guys ate with no interest, sitting around the table more to keep us company. They didn’t stop joking. Eugene was our star. By the way he didn’t take a seat at all but was walking in circles around us, picking fruits or biscuits. Somehow he wasn’t able to sit. As soon as he tried to take a seat, he was immediately accompanied by green flies around him that made attempts to sit on the food. So the guys lost the patience and having given him a paper-bag with food sent him to the “long walking journey”, so to say, far from our common table.

“So, Eugene, are we going to visit Pripyat?” Stas asked him with a cunning smile.

“What for?” He didn’t understand.

“What for? To catch crayfish.”

“Fie, I beg you, don’t remind me about them. Otherwise my mind will wrongly interpret your offer and will give a signal to the stomach so that it would return all its contents to the irritant which sent it this word impulse.”

“Well! What a vocabulary,” Stas grinned. “It seems like Ariman completely cleaned up your ground, up to the scalp foundation.”

“Right you are,” Victor nodded with a smile. “He began to sing like an important bird.”

In reply Eugene mumbled like an old man and with a creak voice of an experienced man answered, “Well, when life squeezes you, you will sing in falsetto voice! Where shall you hide from its kind pincers? However good or bad but it’s my own Fate.”

The company laughed and Stas uttered, “So you are a masochist besides all?! I didn’t know it. Only at rest-time we discover all personal features of a friend.”

“But seriously, Eugene, how do you feel?” Nikolai Andreevich asked a pragmatic question. “Do you feel a bit better after the “heavy morning”?”

“That’s all right, doc,” replied the guy. “My symptoms are already over.” And having caught skilfully a green fly circling around him he added, “just the clinical presentations left.”

While the seniour guys were joking, our young company has been talking quietly about other things. Eating food I all the time asked my friends to hand me over either a fresh tomato, or a cucumber which I couldn’t take myself as they were far from my plate. They didn’t eat practically anything and Tatyana “poured oil to the flames”, “I wish I could eat that caviar from the golden jar on the table of Ariman.”

“Or one of those salads, at least,” Kostya added dreamily.

“Or grilled shark pieces,” inserted Andrew. “Well, Ariman had a first class food, not this one.”

The guy nodded to the table with disgust.

“Don’t tell me,” backed him Tatiana and making a wry face told me, “How can you eat all of that?”

“Me?” My person got surprised. “With great appetite! Why don’t you like this food? Everything is fresh and delicious.”

“Hem, delicious,” she mimicked me and declared arrogantly in an expert tone, “You’d better try that food yesterday, when there was such a chance. Then you would understand the difference!”

“This food is also good!” I answered merrily trying to clear the air of discontent among my friends.

“This food,” hemmed Kostya and fell into memories of the day before. “Have you seen his yacht! I will also buy one day the same one.”

“Aha, just dream of it,” Slava grinned. “You know how much money you have to earn for it!”

In reply Kostya said arrogantly, “Don’t humiliate yourself to the slave’s thinking level! Believe in yourself! Then you will have good chances.”

Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect to hear it from Kostya and uttered with a smile, “You took over the Ariman’s philosophy so quickly.”

“Philosophy?” Kostya looked sulky. “That’s life, if you didn’t understand it yet! That’s the reality! And you have to use it when you are still alive. And all the rest is philosophy!”

I looked into Kostya’s eyes still hoping that he was just joking. But I met such a cold and sharp gaze that I decided not to reply. Though it was obvious that he waited for my reply probably to splash out fully his protest. But I felt that if I say a word it would lead to an empty conflict and anger. Why should I provoke him? Kostya isn’t a bad fellow. Just he didn’t grasp in full measure which trap Ariman put yesterday, and Kostya managed to be entrapped in it like a silly sparrow. Finally everybody makes his choice in this life and bears responsibility for it.

I lowered my gaze to the plate and continued my meal. After he haven’t received an answer Kostya repeated again insistently, “Yes, it’s just a philosophy!”

No objection followed his phrase. Tatiana said with a dreaming sigh, “What a cool yacht he has! And the furniture inside!”

“One gets used to the good things very quickly,” noticed Andrew.

“Don’t mention it,” nodded Tatiana. “After that luxury I can’t see this slum…”

“It’s a slum indeed,” smugly hemmed Kostya, looking contemptuously around and stopping his gaze at the table. “Let’s go swimming or what. Otherwise I will feel sick looking at this food.”

The guys nodded together agreeing with him. And they began to stand up from our improvised table.

“Are you going?” Tatiana invited me.

“No, thanks, I’d rather stay,” I uttered with a smile. “Unlike Kostya I have strong Siberian health.”

Though we had parted in a peaceful way, I had an unpleasant after-feeling. However I didn’t let me get upset because of such trifles. Having sending my bad thoughts far away, I rubbed my hands anticipating to try biscuits and sweets. And filling my plate with different sweeties in order not to stretch myself for them, I sat closer to the group of the seniour guys headed by Sensei.

Nikolai Andreevich glanced at many sweeties I brought with myself and held me up as an example, “Look how you should eat! And I hear from you just “don’t want”, “merci”, “pardon”!

“Right,” Stas agreed to him merrily. “She needs it! Otherwise she will be blown by the wind! Especially after the dolphins shook her last kilocalories.”

The guys laughed again. However Nikolai Andreevich like a careful parent went on insisting that the guys would eat something “serious”. In reply Victor responded for all of them in jest, “No, no, doctor, don’t insist, I mean, force us. We don’t want at all! Yesterday we arimaned so much that today food evokes the same response like Eugene felt in the story with crawfish.”

“What?!” Eugene roused himself and touched his back probably as he hasn’t heard well the words. That made all of us roll with laughter.

“I’m telling about the story with crawfish”, Victor repeated distinctly with a smile while explaining the guy what had just happened.

“Ah,” Eugene calmed down a bit. “And I thought you are talking about my Achilles’ heel! What a cruel fiend, I thought! It ached the whole night and now he is jeering at it with his emanations.”

While the guys were exchanging phrases, Stas told Sensei with sympathy, “Well, after yesterday sparrings… Ariman stroke him so well, now he’s got such a big bruise!..”

“You should put an ointment to it,” Nikolai Andreevich gave an advice immediately.

Eugene have seen how Stas bent towards Sensei and called him in a comic and pretension way, “Hey, you, why are you betraying all military secrets?! You are a spy!”

“Me? A spy?! You see, I try to help him, appeal to all the medic and rescue service of our good team! And he calls me a spy…”

Victor who sat near Stas, pushed him to the side with an elbow and asked with a humour, “And how come, you know about the size of his “military secret”?”

“How? I’m his friend!” Stas said. And looking at him grinning he added with a smile, shaking his finger, “Just a friend, nothing more.”

When everybody laughed enough, Volodya said in a bass voice, “Well, it were cool arimanic Olympic games in the cross-country yesterday for our brains.”

“Aha,” Eugene hurried up to share his impressions. “My tunnels are still suffering from labyrinth complex.”

“That’s true! A real cool championship,” Stas agreed with Volodya.

“Don’t say it,” Victor smirked and nodded. “As they say, illusions of pleasures scheduled by the couch Ariman leave just a reality of total defeats…”

“Yes… and a lot of diseases, not to mention bruises,” in a plaintive voice uttered Eugene. And counting on fingers he started to enlist industriously, “First of all, indigestion, second, thoughts attack. And in general… total lowering of spirit under the ground! Third!”

Eugene interrupted himself with a loud laughter. In reply Sensei remarked with a grin, “These are typical symptoms for a person with hesitating nature who like a pendulum rushes between his Animal and Spiritual nature.”

Volodya nodded.

“Like in a joke «What makes the tattler and the pendulum similar to each other? Both are needed to be stopped from time to time”.”

“Need to be stopped?!” repeated Victor. “Hem, in our case you will get tired to push the brake and emergency brake.”

“Right!” confirmed Stas.

Sensei glanced at the guys and uttered, “Alright, stop criticize yourselves. That’s the human nature to make mistakes.”

“Yes,” agreed Eugene, “but it’s ill luck of my homo sapiens even-toed nature: I do it often and with pleasure!” On saying that the guy was surprised by his words himself. “Ah! That’s the place where my mean little gall-and-kidney stone is located and rubs outgoing tracts of my purest Conscience!”

These Eugene’s reasonings made our company sincerely laugh. Sensei and Nikolai Andreevich laughed louder than the others.

“Eugene! Gall-and-kidney stone doesn’t exist,” uttered Nikolai Andreevich wiping tears caused by laugh. “Gall-bladder and kidney are two different organs, therefore stones may be both in the gall-bladder and in kidneys, but separately.”

“Really?” Eugene was surprised but immediately found an “explanation” to his words. “But it’s with normal people so… which don’t possess conscience. However I’m fed up with this arimanic syndrome with its symptoms.”

Sensei and Nikolai Andreevich exchanges surprised gazes. And Eugene went on arguing. “Eh, life is life! Yesterday I have felt myself on my own back that sometimes it’s better to bit my tongue than later to bit other parts of my body escaping flies… in the head.”

Stas pretended to get surprised, “Have you seen that! Sensei, look, it’s a miracle! Eugene saw the light!”

The guys began to joke about that. Having laughed enough the company turned in the further conversation to discuss impressions received yesterday.

“We believed the fairy-tales of Ariman like little kids,” uttered Volodya.

In reply Nikolai Andreevich reacted with humour, “Well, but fairy-tales bring also a certain experience. What are fairy-tales in fact? They are scary stories which carefully prepare kids to read the modern press.”

“That’s true!” grinned Sensei.

“And he nicely described us “the society of equal opportunities”,” not without humour said Volodya.

“When people take everything from the life!” added Victor.

“It means, all are equal in their opportunities but some are more equal than the others,” summarized Stas.

“What did you want?” Volodya said again in a bass voice. “Ariman gave us a right of choice. His elections have the only motto: “The rich get the real power! The poor only arguments and facts!””

“Aha,” hemmed Stas. “And the only candidate during these elections is Ariman! Just try to vote against, you will immediately sing in falsetto voice.”

The guys laughed again but then gradually calmed down, probably thinking about something personal. Their jokes induced my thoughts about the duality structure of this world. But as soon as I deepened into them Victor again uttered with a sad smile, “I have thought that nobody and nothing may divert me from the spiritual way. But this case…”

“Ariman entrapped us so cunningly,” Stas agreed with him.

“How did I get entrapped, I can’t understand?!”

“Me, too,” Eugene assented to Victor. “I listened to him, it seemed that he takes care about our spiritual development. So I, the dunderhead, opened my mouth.”

“If you were the only dunderhead,” Stas said friendly, “then no problem. But now after Ariman there is a true jungle in my head.”

“Right,” Volodya nodded with a grin. “Impassable jungle!”

“So why do you need to neglect your thoughts till the state of impassable jungle?” half in jest said Sensei. “Take the instruments and change this jungle to the noble garden. Put your thoughts into order. Since that’s you who decide whether you will lose you way in impassable jungle like monkeys in search of bananas or you will pass the life like wisemen walking around the cultivated garden. Since this jungle only seem to be impassable as it’s your Animal nature presented it to you so, for whom Ariman is a Master, therefore he is a king of this jungle. But if you evaluate the events from the spiritual point of view bringing your thoughts to the order, you will reveal a very precious lesson in the yesterday’s visit, where the lecturer was the most merciless and hard-edged teacher. Only mature pure souls may overcome all his hinders, pass final exams and completely leave the circle of reincarnations if they are full of sincere stable desire to come back home.”

We quietened, thinking over the words of Sensei. Meanwhile Ruslan who together with Yura before didn’t take part in the conversation but just listened and laughed with all of us also made up his mind to speak out.

“On the one side that’s true… But I have also thought that Ariman takes care about our spiritual development. In the beginning he was also talking about achieving happiness, success, spiritual development. It’s the same what you, Sense, were talking to us about.”

“Never, it’s not the same,” Victor objected to him. “I have also thought about it yesterday. But then I fixed it out! There is a serious cheating!”

Sensei only smiled to the guy’s conversation and uttered, “And you get surprised why pure knowledge has been lost. This is a clear example for you how the pure knowledge is turned into religion, how its true sense is substituted, how the spiritual strives are changed by the wishes of the Animal nature.”

“It means that Ariman is guilty in all of this!” Ruslan made a conclusion declaring it with some inflection of aggression and discontent.

“What has Ariman to do with that?” said Volodya in a thoughtful way. “He has just done his job well. Ariman only advised us, he didn’t press on us. We listened to him deliberately and made our choice.”

Sensei nodded agreeing with his answer, “The problem is that people want what Ariman was talking about. They want to become significant in this material world in front of other people, to satisfy the ambitions of their Animal nature, but not to prove God that they are worth to be called Human, to strive to Him and to take care of their soul. They want to become here and now superrich, famous, coming over all possible boundaries for the sake of their stupid dreams, no matter in which way, just to achieve their goal. They live to be not worse than others, and if it’s possible to be much better than others. Many of them try to become leaders. Almost everybody assumes that if he’s got a chance to be born in this world he should certainly live better that others and achieve certain peaks in career, society rank, material wealth.”

Nikolai Andreevich looked at Sensei as if he intended to ask him something obviously connected with his last statement. But he refrained from that and kept silence.

“Eh,” Victor sighed. “That’s right. You should be always vigilant regarding your thoughts and be careful in choosing your wishes.”

“Well, I agree, it’s good when you are just vigilant and careful,” uttered Stas. “But if you are attacked by such slogans as “freedom” and “equal opportunities”, if you are suggested by that from all sides, but in fact you are just used as a slave?”

Sensei replied, “‘Freedom’ and ‘equality’ are the most seducing trap words of Ariman, since a person reacts on them depending on his spiritual needs but then due to the shrewd interpretation of the Ariman’s ‘democracy’…”

“…He steps into the full… material,” Volodya added with a grin.

“Right you are.”

“Is it something like ‘the democracy is the way to choose you slave owner?’” joked Victor.

“Something like that,” nodded Sensei. “As Ariman manipulating with a word ‘freedom’ leads a human to the understanding that he can achieve it only through money, when he has enough of it. Richness and power is the main weapon of managing the consciousness of people. But the true freedom is when a human becomes higher than this world, higher than material wishes, when a human lives each day, each hour for the sake of his soul, enriching its treasury with good doings, thoughts, help to surrounding people. When a human doesn’t live for the sake of his egoism and significance, but for the sake of other people, in the name of God.

“These are golden words!” Eugene nodded seriously. “I’m, for example, with all my hands and other extremities “pro” good doings, and thoughts, and help. But what can I do if I can’t manage my thoughts? Frankly speaking, I’m fed up with them! I can’t bear all of that.

The guy was saying this so sincerely that I even felt sorry for him. In certain sense he got it in the neck by Ariman more than most of us. And nevertheless taking into account his internal struggle and sufferings about it, he behaved worthy of respect, didn’t complain or show aggression towards others as some of us because of the internal conflict, he even didn’t complain about the physical pain, though the day before he got a lot of serious grazes in sparrings. But it was obvious that the guy was on the verge and let splash out his “indignation” only through the prism of his endless humour, as they say, without detriment to other people.

Looking at him I sincerely offered, “Eugene, try a new meditation of Lotus flower. I’ve done it today. It’s so nice! My bad thoughts disappeared and my mood became perfect!”

In reply Eugene said, “I’ve tried this method not once.” And already addressing to Sensei he asked, “By the way, Sensei, I don’t understand what is the matter? However hard I tried with this meditation it doesn’t work and that’s al. Everything stays at the level of bare imagination.”

“It’s really a complicated meditation,” Sensei replied to him. “And in order to achieve much success in it, you should be persistent, hard-working and have a special state of will. Then your “resistance” will disappear and you will see a completely different reality.”

“It’s a bright perspective,” smiled the guy. “But I seem to have a growth problem. All my attempts don’t let me achieve another level, I have only after-effects caused by excessive pressure. Maybe there is some complementary additional “device” for such dummies like me?” As always, Eugene could avoid humour even in such delicate issues. Having heavily sighed the guy added with a supplication in his voice, “Sensei, throw me to this ocean of turbulent elements of my Animal nature a little straw to catch! As my Buyan isle was washed away together with a palace and a squirrel with golden nuts. I don’t care about the palace, but Sensei, help to save at least a squirrel!”

We couldn’t stop laughing hearing this sincere confession of the guy. Sensei uttered with a smile, “Well, I feel pity about the animal. Alright, let’s help it. We will throw it a straw, maybe it will become a Human with the time.” And having considered for a while, he uttered slowly, “You say, a straw… There is one.” And he added more seriously, “this meditation also belongs to the Lotus ones. It’s very helpful and effective in such cases. And the main thing, it’s easy for every “drowning” man in the ocean of the Animal nature. It’s like this. First, as usual, you concentrate on the solar plexus, show there a lotus flower and concentrate all your love on its growing, that is, you practice the meditation of Lotus flower. When you more or less calm down your thoughts and concentrate on positive side, you start imagining that your body consists of many little balls, or atoms, or cells, in general, as many as you have imagination. It’s very important to see the structure of your body, to visualize each cell. Having seen all this conglomeration of cells you take each ball or cell, as you wish, and visually write on it, as if writing carefully each letter, a very strong spiritual formula which consists of two simple words, “Love and Gratitude”. The language, you are writing these words on, does not matter, because that’s the essence which is important. This formula works the same way as the Grail. Since Love and Gratitude are the only two things that a human being is able to give God.

Thus during this meditation, you gradually fill billions of your cells with these inscriptions, and as a result your thoughts are concentrated on this powerful formula and improve both your physical and spiritual health. The cell, on which you leave such an inscription, will forever stay under the protection of this effective and strong formula, like under protection of a talisman or tamga. When you fill yourself with this formula, you don’t only cleanse yourself from the dirt of negative thoughts, but you also reveal the inner light coming from these cells. It’s as if you light up a lot of tiny light bulbs, and it becomes so bright inside of you that even shadows disappear… It’s important also that you concentrate during this meditation only on these words and switch off all the other, irrelevant thoughts.

“Irrelevant?!” Ruslan said, either answering himself, or asking Sensei… though, Sensei was talking directly to Eugene.