The Whisper of Memories

The notion of "liberty, equality, fraternity," on the basis of which principles and values were reformatted in many developed countries, appeared a little later. Thanks to it, citizens of a lower social level became able, using their abilities and acquired knowledge, to rise to higher rungs of the social order. But even in this case, the public schools did not betray their chief rules. Even now they have remained the same, imparting only systemic knowledge aimed at the development of mechanical labor.

At the same time, the most important thing that the public school cultivates in children is submission and obedience. Submission to anyone of greater social status it cultivates by means of a humiliating method — assessing the knowledge children have acquired publicly, thereby breaking the healthy psyche of the child and destroying at the root any certainty in their own powers. With obedience matters go even better: over the course of ten or eleven long years the child is trained to follow particular templates — to live by a schedule, but not by their own will. Where it is important to know that the teachers are always right, since they have the ability to punish you by assessing your abilities.

In public schools, unlike in private ones, they do not teach communication, mutual understanding, respect for the opinions of others, financial literacy, a philosophy of life, or the search for truths through the examples of successful people. And most important of all, they cannot teach one to love oneself and one's surroundings. And so it is through this school that the parents pass, parents for whom the conditions in which their children find themselves are entirely acceptable. And these children must in the end walk the very same path, so as to repeat the same thing in the future with their own offspring. We are shown the technocratic evolution of humanity, being persuaded that we have thereby become freer. When in reality it is the wrapping that has changed and grown brighter, while the filling has remained the same.

This system, in which the slave voluntarily agrees to work more for the good of his master, was devised in Ancient Egypt by a certain priest. He advised the pharaoh, in order to avoid trouble with the periodic uprisings of slaves — among whom revolutionaries of various kinds kept appearing — to pay them for their work. The result astounded everyone to such a degree that millennia have passed, yet the system still continues its flawless existence. We are ready to work day and night to provide our loved ones with all that the rapidly developing economy of the world offers, while pushing into the very last place our sincere feelings toward those same loved ones.

In the end, pain becomes the one lifelong companion that compels us to obey blindly, if only so as not to disturb our hidden wounds. It is the same pain that forces us to wear masks: to be insincerely cheerful in company, displaying the image of a happy person; to show our sternness and self-importance, concealing behind it a spiritually weak personality; and always to hurt those around us, so as to delight in the sufferings of others. It is easier that way to endure one's own torments. It is easier that way simply to exist where almost everyone is playing the very same role.

How does one escape this seemingly hopeless situation? It is elementary. In every circumstance of life the parent's priority must be the child. No, not in order to manage to do everything for them, but so that in time — which is the decisive factor in achieving our intended goals — we place our children in first position. That is all. We will always find time to earn as much as is necessary to satisfy hunger and imitation. We will always find time to do all the necessary things in order to live in abundance and in harmony with the world around us. And so the first thing we must do is find time to give our offspring, besides genetics, our love and attention. This is the most important motivation any child can receive. From whom, if not from those closest to him, is he to receive it?

Returning to the origins of my childhood, it is impossible not to make mention of the country where it was destined for me to come into the world. Of proud Armenia. Its outwardly small yet at the same time boundless grandeur — boundless in the hearts of every Armenian — has an absolute right to its own existence, however arrogant this may appear. At the very least, the thousand-year age of this people, the envy of all its neighbors, demands a certain respect for itself. Everyone who has ever set foot upon this land steeped in ancient history remains its admirer for the rest of their life. And the reason is not that the people are hospitable, or that the nature is irresistible and the food superb. It is that this place exudes an extraordinary energy, which pierces the soul of every person with a certain majestic mystery, revealing itself to each in its own particular way.

Those who come to visit find answers to many questions that gave them no peace over many years, because their soul begins to resonate with the divine source of life amid the majestic mountains. As for the locals, they simply grow accustomed to this miracle from the very moment of birth and, from the excess of this very attention, whether they wish it or not, become overgrown with plain pride.

When in 1816 George Byron visited Armenia, he wrote the following about this country: "I have studied the Armenian language in order to understand how and in what tongue the gods spoke. For the Armenian language is the language of the gods, and Armenia is the homeland of the gods, and the gods hail from the valley of Ararat." Impressive, is it not, to what degree Byron grasped this divine attention? It is precisely because of such examples that the people of Armenia grew proud and, instead of taking delight in this gift, preferred to content themselves with only its glittering wrapping.

But Byron's words turned out not to be the only ones that exalted this country. In olden times Armenia was significant, as is attested by many examples from ancient sources: the cuneiform of the Sumerians, biblical narratives, and Iranian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman historical documents.

Armenia is first mentioned by the Sumerians, who named this country Aratta — the home of the supreme gods Enlil and his brother Ea. The land of Urartu, as it was called by the neighboring Assyrians and Greeks in their own dialect, was pronounced by the locals as Aratta. And it was precisely upon these lands that, at the request of the council of the gods, the god Enki together with his wife, the goddess Ninmah, created the first humans: Adapa (who, by the way, while a guest of the most high god Anu, refused to accept immortality from him) and Eve (Ninti, the maiden from the rib, the giver of life).

The people who began to be fruitful and multiply in the land of Aratta were no simple folk, but possessed all the qualities and abilities for spreading the divine wisdom and energy that they had absorbed from their creators. And perhaps it is precisely for this reason that there still glimmers within me a certain form of pride in the genes passed down to me from my ancestors. This feeling is strengthened in my consciousness by the reality that my people demonstrate — a people continuing their noble existence over many thousands of years, all the while preserving their unique identity.

I was fortunate to be born upon this land where, as history asserts, the gods once dwelt. Moreover, in that very city whose age numbers more years than that of its near contemporary, ancient Rome. Its antique name, Erebuni, which over time transformed into the modern Yerevan, has not in the least squandered its grandeur over the course of many thousands of years. It is impossible to explain my bond with this city and with this country, all the more so after I came to perceive myself as a man of the world, for whom the whole planet Earth has become a native home. But the fact that I feel it with my entire soul on any continent speaks volumes. I confess, to this day I have still not formed for myself an understanding of what exactly in Armenia draws my attention and, on the subconscious level, awakens pleasant feelings of attachment. Even if one leaves aside the energetics of the place, the smells and the tastes that sometimes somehow arise in memory instantly materialize on the physical plane through my biological receptors.

Surely everyone has rare moments when memory awakens certain images from the past through smells or familiar sounds resonating in the head. And this state, for an instant, makes you happy under a surge of already physical emotions. That is why I can tirelessly, day after day, wander the streets of Yerevan and travel across the mountain peaks of Armenia, reliving these sensations again and again. Committing to memory all the while every architectural detail of the buildings, every mountain ridge and crag, the countless springs, waterfalls, and lakes, and the sky of unimaginable beauty. And without feeling any fatigue at all — on the contrary, charging myself with new emotions and strength. I can simply converse with people in the courtyards and on the streets about various topics, saturating, without any exaggeration, my mind with their bottomless wisdom.

I remember that in childhood, during the summer holidays, for some reason it was precisely me, out of all the other grandchildren, that my old folk took with them to visit our numerous kin scattered all across the country. There were so many of them that at times we had to visit relatives in Georgia as well, in Tbilisi, from where, as young people, they had moved to Yerevan. It was an impressive spectacle for a boy raised in urban conditions. Naturally, most of the relatives lived in villages or in small settlements of an urban type. I remember as if it were today the smells of the domestic animals that almost everyone kept. I remember the taste of food that differed significantly from what I ate at home. I remember the sharp, all-piercing yet at the same time slightly intoxicating air. The evenings when I lay in a soft bed beneath the open sky, gazing into the boundless beauty of the Milky Way, stretching from the horizon to the edge of the world.

The relatives, as I have already mentioned, were many. It would happen that in a single town or village there were several families, and we had to visit a new home every day. And then, too, we would unfailingly go to the local churches to pray. Naturally, I did not know how to do this. Nor did anyone pay particular attention to it, owing to the Soviet atheistic ideology. But back then such subject matter did not interest me, and I delighted in what I had — namely, in conversing with people of differing mentalities, for each region of Armenia was renowned not merely for its diverse dialects, but also for its temperament of communication and its worldview, subjective to that particular locality.

On our dynamic tours, what I liked most of all was visiting the ancient churches. Plunging, as it were, into these stone structures with their carved ornaments that had already grown old, I would lose my connection with reality. The divine singing of the male choir, performing centuries-old prayers, carried my thoughts away from the people who surrounded me and from their conversations, which slightly resembled a kind of hum. It was as if to my inner gaze there was revealed a different mystery, inscribed in the memory of these stones and this music. I seemed to feel a vibration that whispered to me the history of this locality, awakening in my consciousness certain images, mostly in the context of what I had chanced to hear from the grown-ups.

And always, after my solitary excursion, I would gaze upward, where the blue sky of unimaginable beauty opened up to my perception a different reality of bygone events. I felt and imagined that all the history unfolding below was stored in the memory of this very bottomless sky. It seemed that if I concentrated my attention just a little more, then certain epic scenes from the past would surely appear among the clouds: historic battles or the raising of majestic cities. And in such moments, when your childhood consciousness stands on the threshold between two realities, doves would appear, which seemed to pursue me and scatter all my constructed images. And I, with a certain vexation, would return to my relatives, and we would go on plunging further into everyday cares.

From earliest childhood I was a silent observer. Indeed, such I remained my whole life. This innate quality allowed me to be at the center of all events and to hold in my hands the controlling levers over circumstances. My childhood circle entrusted me with all their sacred secrets for the reason that I knew how to listen, to understand, and, most important of all, not to betray. I was, as it were, a kind of grey cardinal in all the courtyard collectives where it was destined for me to appear. I gave directions to the heroes, pointing out the possibilities for achieving a goal — having, of course, my own dividends in this.

This did not at all mean that I was afraid to do anything myself and to take responsibility upon myself. On the contrary, in any case it was I who answered for everything, and this too brought me a kind of pleasure. But all the same I liked to be master of the situation, and at that time this was possible in the case when I kept myself at the distance of an observer, yet inside the very process. My mind delighted in the images of complex combinations it had devised, when I possessed all the information of the events taking place and therefore had every possibility of seeing several steps further than everyone else. Yes, it was a kind of experience of manipulation, which I subsequently and quite consciously renounced, having judged that such a methodology weakens my will. But that came later, and for now I delighted in my childhood adventures.

The grown-ups loved me. Wherever I went, within a short time I became the object of their admiration. Because I was not like, as they supposed, their unruly offspring. How were they to know that their children, to a greater extent, did what I wanted. The whole energetic flow of attention from the grown-ups, just as from my peers, more than compensated for my loneliness, which was a product of my character.

Over time, by about the age of ten, or more likely even earlier, I came to prefer the company of grown-ups to that of children. I found it more interesting to listen to the tales of my elders than to the fantasies of my peers, which had already grown stale in their content. However, very soon I understood that the greater part of the grown-ups were no different in their level of boasting from their own children, and in some respects in their development as well. Except that they knew how to present their pride in more interesting forms. But all the same this helped me to understand human relations better at higher levels.

I came to know the subtleties of psychological influence, so to speak, in practice. Although this does not mean that I made no mistakes. There were, in fact, far too many of them for an immature childhood consciousness. For the reason that my peers, however much they tried to display their importance and independence, were in reality obedient and compliant, and followed the decrees of their parents. Which, by and large, fenced them off from many subsequent disappointments of life. I, by the will of fate, began from an early age to live without a father, and as I have already mentioned, my mother, naturally, could not keep up with my adventures. For the most part I was raised by my old folk: my grandfather and grandmother. For which, in truth, I am very grateful to them, since the wisdom of the old folk was far more effective in the formation of my young worldview. But even they could not control my desire to gain bitter life experience.

This I understood much later: that adult life, whether we wish it or not, is built upon an emotional foundation laid back in childhood. The difficulty is that as an adult, even if fortune has smiled upon you and you have realized and beheld the source of your problems, you do not always have enough strength and knowledge to set them right. A foundation cast in childhood from a reinforced-concrete emotional mixture is practically impossible for a psychologically formed individual to reconstruct.

We try to correct the errors of the past with the help of therapy, but this merely adds new meanings to the existing perception. Feeding on the hope that by this we are acting upon the future. But this only adds one more layer of convictions to the program-cake that was launched in childhood. It is impossible to change the past while the mind is bound to it in an emotional coupling, packing consciousness into alternatives that arise under its influence.

Only when consciousness passes out of the zone of alternative realities — which the bipolar material actuality is — into the realm of the passive observer, do the miracles of the transformation of matter begin to occur. After which everything that was founded upon indestructible emotions is easily transformed into that which you yourself desire.

It is important to understand that the mind, being a product of the material world and concurrently serving as the chief controller in the life activity of a human being, executes its duty with virtuosity, tracing out all the paradigms along which our biological nature moves. It is also the mind that creates all the cause-and-effect connections, when our consciousness, under its direct influence, prefers to dwell either in the embrace of past disappointments — imagining that suffering in the present is the answer from the past — or to fret over the future, sensing the inevitable retribution of fate for the errors of that same past, the so-called karma.

But when consciousness manages to bridle the mind, all these fabricated prejudices lose their significance, for in reality they are groundless. You will never answer for anything until you confess to it and accept it as a foundation. But you will always answer even for what you did not commit, because that is what your mind demands of you under the pressure of the collective mind, already. One need only come to know this game of substituting concepts, and your mind quite calmly turns from the master of situations into an instrument in the hands of your consciousness. But this is possible in the case when you place your consciousness in the position of an observer who has no emotional connection whatsoever with the object of observation. You tear consciousness away, so to speak, from the direct influence of the mind.

The observer is capable of achieving a positive result only in harmony with himself. Otherwise concentration is impossible, since the voice in the head will whisper every second about numerous events from the past, the present, and the future, drawing the flows of energy you have generated away into an environment groundless for consciousness. Physical attention always awakens feelings, whose function is to bestow upon their master emotional flows of experiences. An emotion, by its structure, is the very physics that draws from space all the necessary energetic potential for the achievement of goals and intentions. In order to abide in an awakened state and to be aware of your presence here and now, it is necessary periodically to sever the connection between thoughts and emotions. Emotions must not be born of thoughts. They must manifest themselves in the heart, in the subconscious, protecting the mind from external oscillations. God is present in silence and dissolves into the dense noise created by the thoughts of the mind under external control.

For example, closer to the age of forty-five, or perhaps earlier, when I had become a fairly aware person but continued to come to know various meanings, I had to face one very global and unresolved problem from my past. In this a certain specialist in psychology from Miami helped me. His name was Pavel. More precisely, he helped me to behold the cause that had been hidden by my subconscious in a place where I could hardly have reached it. After I contacted him by telephone, within literally five minutes of our conversation he pointed out the cause and offered to help. His mission consisted in this: that over three months of therapy he would rid me of this psychological ailment. But since I had trained myself to achieve everything on my own, I solved this problem ten minutes after the moment our conversation ended, by switching the meanings around.

The cause of the ailment was as follows. My mother, who, as is known, was not able to cope on her own with the upbringing of her two offspring, resorted to the very methods through which she herself had had to pass in her time, as a child. Namely, in order that the children obey and be compliant, she often had to raise her voice, thus compelling us to carry out a certain order. But since she had forgotten other methods, this became the principal one throughout the whole of my subsequent growing up. And so my sister and I often preferred to hide behind the broad backs of our old folk, who somehow at least softened the emotional blows of our mother's wrath.

When, in the middle of our conversation, Pavel suddenly asked me what I felt toward my mother at that moment, the first word that came to mind was indifference. Not anger and not pity, but indifference. Why did he ask this question? At first I had explained to him that I had achieved a great deal in life, yet for some reason, no matter how hard I tried, my most cherished desires never came to fruition and collapsed halfway. To which I received a professional's answer: the indifference toward my mother that had been embedded in my subconscious over the years was being projected onto my own life. To say that this news shocked me in that instant would be to say nothing at all. I was crushed. For a moment I felt like a cornered beast with practically no way out in sight. And what I regretted most was the lost time, the fact that life had simply slipped through my fingers and that it had not been my fault.

And so, after the conversation with Pavel ended, I sat in my car and sank into deep reflection for some ten minutes. The first question I asked myself several times was: "What did I ever do to deserve this from you?" After which, for a moment, I simply turned into a pitiful creature that had lost everything it had. Fragments of childhood memories began to flash before my eyes, trying to piece together, bit by bit, the process by which this ill-fated program had been formed. But since by that time I had trained myself to deal with non-standard situations without delay, using a unique method, after, as I have already said, roughly ten minutes of self-flagellation, I began to search for a solution. The first thing I told myself was: "The result you were supposed to reach through therapy can be obtained here and now." And what then opened up to my consciousness struck my mind to such a degree that I could not immediately grasp its significance. In that instant I literally, physically felt how an enormous boulder that had pressed upon my shoulders throughout my entire life, falling away, gave a fresh stream of air access to my lungs. Afterward my body, for a moment, was literally numb and relaxed, as if for the first time it could feel the light breath of the wind.

The solution required first of all acknowledging the existence of the pain, knowing its cause, and establishing its position as a source of inspiration, thereby swapping the meanings within the existing program. And also recognizing in all of this the sole opportunity to transform my weak energy into strong energy. I realized and accepted that my mother had been the most important teacher in my life. She had sacrificed her life, taking on this form, so that I, having sunk to the very bottom thanks to her diligence, might in the end discover within myself a hidden strength of will and, pushing off from there, soar to the very top. Having recognized the ruinous sides of indifference through my own example, in the blink of an eye I was able to behold its illusory nature, for the source of its power lay in my vivid childhood emotional memories, fixed in the memory of my subconscious. And it fell to me to be rid of them.

After that the rest was simple: I acknowledged the significance of this principal lesson of my life. I raised its standing onto the very highest pedestal and freed it from the negative emotional background that had fed it, replacing, as I have already said, the meanings with one another. I entered into the image of an observer of my own self, who began to direct this whole process from the outside. As if I and the one who was considered to be me had ceased to be one whole. Severing this bond, I was able to behold the very pain that had tormented me, stirring up those same ruinous and hidden emotions through which I had been drawing all this reality to myself. Only in this way and in no other did it become possible for me to govern what lay in another dimension.