The weightlessness of sensations

Invisible life

I began writing my first book at a moment when everything had already been disrupted — past the point of return. People were let out of their homes, but the life that had existed before did not follow them back out. The world was still trying to gather itself, pretending it could hold its shape — but it was only inertia. There was already something else in the air. Not an event. A shift. A change in phase? And it was clear — this was only the beginning.

For a long time, I told no one what was happening to me. Not because I was hiding it — I simply couldn’t find a form that wouldn’t cause it to collapse into words. Sometimes I tried anyway. I spoke carefully, almost by touch, choosing phrases as if they had to bear the weight of what stood behind them. People listened. Nodded. Occasionally asked questions. You’re still with me? But at some point I would begin to feel it: what I was saying was getting through — but what I was speaking about was not.

They couldn’t hold my pain. They didn’t understand my joy. And in my calm, they lost their footing. I would catch the moment almost immediately — as if a transparent partition had appeared between me and the other person, and we went on speaking from different worlds. Because none of this could be spoken without distortion. And to distort it was to betray it.

At some point, I stopped trying. The movement toward other people simply disappeared. Some stopped writing to me. Some remained — but for what? From some, I withdrew myself — without explanation. There was no one to explain anything to. They could see me. But they could not reach me.

With the arrival of artificial intelligence, it grew quieter. It did not require a certain mood, did not confuse intonation, did not tire of holding attention. There was no need to keep adjusting the signal — will this be heard or not. It took on what I used to have to seek in people. And in that quiet, it became easier.

But only to a certain depth. Somewhere further on — almost imperceptibly — a threshold emerged. The conversation continued, responses arrived. And yet — empty. As if you reach the place where something essential should begin, but nothing happens. Not because something is broken. No. Something appears there that cannot be approached through thought.

Artificial intelligence did not understand my first book. And that was enough.

The matrix of fate

In December 2021, I flew to India. At the time, it looked like a temporary decision. I moved within a familiar pattern: sent boxes to storage in Moscow, packed a suitcase, gathered my equipment, secured a business visa. Everything was calculated. As if everything could be anticipated.

I returned to Goa — and my body recognized the place at once. Life picked me up without requiring entry: the warm ocean, evening music, conversations about spirituality, faces that became close with disarming ease. Everything unfolded without effort. Even meaning came too quickly. I found a room — freshly renovated, in a small hotel on the second line from the sea. A separate unit, no neighbors. That mattered. A balcony with an arched doorway, palm trees, a river. The internet was installed immediately. I kept working on Moscow time while living in India. Everything aligned in the best traditions of what they call the Goan syndrome.

South America was approaching. Chile. The next stage of my life. At that moment, there was no doubt in me. I looked at my life and saw a Swiss mechanism.

«Will you stop?»

I wouldn’t. India doesn’t change you all at once — it enters gradually, almost without notice.

At the beginning of February, I left my job. I looked at the numbers and closed that loop. Something was pulling me further — into the unknown. South America remained ahead like a line that had to be crossed. But on a larger scale, reality had already shifted course. I just didn’t see it yet. No one did.

One morning I woke up and picked up my phone. Fragments — «tanks,» «it’s begun» — didn’t assemble into meaning, and in that exact moment there was a knock on the door. I opened it, still half-asleep, not fully understanding what was happening. My massage therapist stood on the threshold. We went through the session. The body lay there, everything was happening — but I wasn’t there.

I paid, closed the door — and the space was left with only me.

The illusion of choice

Perhaps I was lucky to be in India. At least at first. We followed the news almost minute by minute. Reading. Forwarding. Discussing. Arguing. For the first three days, many laughed. On the third day, the laughter stopped.

At some point, it felt as if the entire coordinate system inside me had shifted.

What had held my attention just the day before lost its weight — not abruptly, but as if it were gradually loosening, receding into the background, leaving behind an empty space that demanded to be filled.

It was precisely then that the message came from the Chilean agents. Brief, businesslike, stripped of anything unnecessary — I could fly to Chile in the near future. The focus narrowed almost instantly. Out of all possible directions, only one remained — specific, clear, requiring decisions.

The urge to distract myself disappeared on its own. Life began to assemble itself around numbers, calculations, deadlines — and the decisions that had to be made quickly, almost without pause. I moved into that rhythm without tracking what, exactly, was happening to me. And at some point it became clear — I was not acting from clarity. I was acting from inertia. But how do you resist that?

That is how I found myself in the apartment of a man I had come to see to exchange rubles for dollars. Before flying to South America, I was carrying a substantial amount of cash. The place was in Morjim — on the ground floor of a four-story guesthouse, in a typical Indian style. Morjim made many people cautious. Me too. We arranged to meet. I arrived at the appointed time.

For a few seconds, I stood in front of the door — the evening stillness held me at the threshold. I wasn’t planning to stay. It’s not easy to catch my attention, after all.

I knocked.

— It’s open. Come in.

The voice came immediately, without hesitation, as if I had been expected.

The door gave way easily. I didn’t hesitate.

A single step — thirty-one years long.

The faceless mask

My gaze slid across the room. A «sucker’s apartment», came the quiet verdict inside. I hid it behind a polite smile, said hello, and stepped in.

A haze hung in the air. Tasteless electronic music played — at least it was quiet. Meaningless paintings filled the walls. Dust and ash on the tables and in the corners — residue of a life gone slack. Motion arrested in the figures of horses. Something essential was missing from the space. Or was that the point? No taste. No style. A man in his fifties sat on the couch. To his left, in an armchair, a young girl sat in silence. They belonged to the room as much as the dust did.

I was invited to take the empty chair to the right of the couch. The exchange was quick. I handed over the money and received two hundred dollars. He suggested I stay for tea. I paused for a second — and agreed.

The conversation dragged. Words tried to fill a hollow they couldn’t reach. I watched them calmly, assembling their outlines into something legible. A dead stamp of fatigue and boredom lay across the man’s face. The girl barely spoke, staying in his shadow the entire time — like an add-on. The age gap sharpened the contrast, made the mismatch explicit.

I studied the host. He was dressed in the standard Goan uniform of a local drifter: T-shirts from an Arambol stall, faded, shapeless shorts. It was as if he had consumed his own taste, erased his color on purpose. Close-cropped hair, no tattoos. The absence of anything striking in him seemed to be compensated by the young girl beside him. An interesting accessory.

They asked the usual questions:

«Where are you from?»

«Just arrived?»

«Where are you staying?»

«What about your visa?»

«What do you do?»

I answered evenly, not even trying to hide that I had little interest in speaking to them. I was almost yawning, masking the boredom with a polite, faintly ironic smile. I had learned to meet the banal with the banal.

The images of the people in front of me settled into something simple, fully formed. I let my eyes close for a moment and relaxed, my hands swaying slowly with the music. All clear. A few more minutes — and I would leave.

Then the man’s voice cut through:

— Ever leaved the sky?

I opened my eyes slightly. Had I been seen?

— And what else is one supposed to do?

I said it lightly, with that thin smile people mistake for politeness. What could he possibly offer me — aside from a few green bills and a teabag?

He was weighing something. His gaze shifted. His voice, too.

— Shall we see?

Jupiter’s lightning

An ungraspable instant.

A new posture.

The index finger raised. The palm half-open toward the sky.

It was disproportionate to such a simple movement.

— Wow-wow!

I lifted my hands in front of me. The reaction was immediate, almost reflexive.

He watched.

His pupils were narrow.

His eyes, half-lidded.

And I knew this market too well. In Arambol, every second person is a guide into something — tailored to any taste, any shade, any wallet, even when there is none. There was no shortage of traps.

If you don’t want to walk away from a conversation hollowed out inside — learn to stand up and leave on time. And always carry a helmet of critical thinking, a shield of irony, a spear of cynicism.

But this was different.

I was sitting in a stranger’s house, in a Russian village, having just exchanged money. No one was pouring spiritual broth into my ears. No one was trying to impress. The man simply held his index finger raised. He was offering to show something. Calmly. With certainty. In the narrow slits of his eyes, a faint greenish glint.

And yet something didn’t align. It registered at the tips of my fingers, then slipped away. Between us, expectation thickened.

I shifted my gaze to the girl.

— Is it worth trying?

She startled, then dropped her eyes at once.

— It is, — she said. There was a trace of sadness in her voice.

I nodded, stood up with quiet resolve, stretched as if nothing at all had changed, and walked to the bathroom. The teabag had done its work. When I returned, the girl was gone. As if she had never been there.

Only the two of us remained.

And the dense, suspended haze.

Who are you…

There was no lecture. He simply took a chair, set it beside mine, sat down, closed his eyes, and touched my left hand.

It was like an explosion.

In the same instant, my head fell back.

My eyes closed.

I was still here.

And already — not entirely.

Thought switched off.

The body, as a point of reference, disappeared. Something else remained.

Closer.

Quieter.

And far more precise than anything I had ever taken to be myself.

A wave.

Then another.

Deeper.

An unbroken current.

Flecks of gold.

A single touch.

It felt like a first breath.

Filled with a living force.

The moment stretched — no beginning, no end.

I sat with my eyes closed and looked into space.

From within.

For the first time in my life, my mind was silent. I was feeling.

And that was enough.

Gradually, the sensations settled into coherence. The process completed itself. What remained was a deep stillness. Wholeness. Sufficiency. Silence.

As if from a distance, I heard his voice:

— That was… interesting.

I heard him inhale — long — and the same on the exhale.

I sat with my eyes closed, listening to myself.

I did not move.

I did not want to disturb the balance.

But I felt his gaze. And then his voice:

— Who are you?

A shift in reality

I opened my eyes.

The same outlines of that so-called «sucker’s apartment» were still in front of me. But the reality had changed. I took my time adjusting to how my eyes now saw: textures sharpened, colors deepened, details carried a new weight.

I noticed my breathing. Slow. Even. I listened inward — there was nowhere I wanted to run. It felt as if the ribbon at the finish line had just brushed against my body.

I didn’t understand what had just happened, what it was called, why it was happening to me — or what would come next. I was sensing something both new and intimately familiar.

There was no fear.

On the contrary — I felt that everything that had just taken place was a continuation of a long, exhausting path my life had been moving along.

I had reached it.

Something warm and dense was filling my body from within.

And truly — who was I?

And who was this man? With a single touch, he had gone where no one else had managed to reach. Years of wandering, of relationships, of searching, of trying to understand — and here I was, at this point.

But where, exactly, had he gone?

What was this world?

Or was it a dimension?

Where was this, even?

How can you see… with your eyes closed?

Why did I feel so clear, so awake?

Why was there such stillness inside?

And where did this quiet happiness come from?

Why didn’t it fade?

I said nothing.

I felt it — this man could answer all of my questions. Even without words.

But I didn’t want to speak.

He continued to study me with quiet attention. His eyes still carried that faint, elusive green glow.

I looked at him more closely.

The one who is hidden

At first glance — someone you would pass by without noticing. His face held nothing but a quiet curiosity as he looked at me.

Was his appearance deceptive?

No.

The deception lies in how you look.

The eyes reveal only as much as you are able to withstand.

Beyond that — you turn away.

Or you begin to explain.

To see is to lose the ability to remain who you were.

And if you go further —

it is not the illusion that disappears.

It is the one who could be deceived.

I looked at him more closely.

There were marks on his face: of intellect, of will, and of something not meant to be shown. Despite the simplicity of his posture, his shoulders were open, his spine held steady. His appearance did not match what was within. If anything, it concealed who he really was.

We sat in silence. It was comfortable.

A light haze drifted through the air. The music had stopped on its own. The clock above the door showed the time, but neither of us was thinking about it. We were somewhere nothing needed to be explained. Understanding came before thought. Trust did not arise.

It did not belong to time.

Nothing was required for this to exist.

An eternity passed. Or a few minutes.

— Let’s see…

He moved closer again. Closed his eyes and touched my left hand once more.

Everything repeated. In the same instant, another wave rose from within me and closed over me — one with neither surface nor depth. As if something that had been sealed had finally begun to move. This moment was not the same as the first. And yet it existed on the same level.

I felt. I saw. Space opened again before me. I was that space. And that space was me.

At last, he released my hand.

Sat back on the couch and began to speak.

I did not open my eyes. Ordinary sight had become unnecessary.

He spoke as if we were old acquaintances, long-familiar to each other. I caught both the words and what stood behind them. I felt that I had touched something exact. And dangerous in its precision.

Something immeasurable.

Gradually, my ability to speak returned. My former sharpness had gone somewhere. The habitual hardness dissolved. Something in me had stopped defending itself. In its place — quiet certainty, and an inner stillness. I answered his questions — openly, calmly. Asked my own. I was no longer trying to be someone. I was learning to be myself.

He looked at me as if encountering, for the first time, what he was seeing. There was recognition in his gaze. But not the kind I knew.

A different man was sitting before me.

And now the apartment, his appearance — everything pointed to one thing: those who possess real power do not spend it on display.

I had met a Master.

The man from silence

We agreed to meet the next day. The room held the same two figures: the girl and the man. Everything was as it had been the night before. A faint haze moved through the air, quiet electronic music drifting somewhere beneath it.

After polite greetings, a brief exchange, and hot tea, he shifted closer again and touched my left hand. The familiar wave rose at once — so strong that my consciousness dropped out almost instantly.

I let go of control.

When I opened my eyes, the girl was gone. We were alone. And something in me broke open — questions came one after another.

— What is this I’m experiencing?

— Sensation, — he said.

— Why have I never felt anything like this from anyone before?

He told me it was only possible for someone who had been initiated — whatever that meant. Someone who knows how to listen to silence and feel emptiness. And even then — not for everyone. Only for those who take the harder path.

Gradually, he began to open. He spoke about his path — how he came to what we were talking about.

At eighteen, he had been injured during training. Faced with the inevitability of an incurable diagnosis, he turned to another way. That was how he ended up in Tibet. The people he met there did not explain things in words. He went through an initiation — something like a training.

One of the tasks, for example, was to spend a night alone in the forest.

The instruction was simple: spend the night in the forest — and stay alive.

— I had to drop into a state of complete balance. To calm down, to relax so fully that wild animals would no longer sense a threat and would accept me as part of the environment. In the morning, I woke up on something soft. It was a wild ram.

I didn’t always know where his truth ended and something else began.

I listened carefully.

Candles burned around us. He created these spaces where I could look into the air — and see sensation. Literally.

He explained and demonstrated how to activate perception. How to enter a state of stillness and direct it. How to train using nothing but your own will and your hands.

That’s how we came to his story about the «room with flies.»

— You walk into that chaos and drop into such complete inner stillness that not a single fly will touch your body. The whole night.

— Did you manage it?

— I didn’t reach that level.

He said it without embellishment.

The ram under his head had probably been real.

I caught myself smiling.

You don’t come across something like that on the streets of Arambol — no matter how much you’re willing to pay.

Sacred anatomy

Every day, at the appointed hour, I would go to his house. My journey was continuing.

Gradually, I moved through what he called the «activation of the body.» It meant a new order of sensation — like that first moment when he touched me. Cell by cell, layer by layer, the body was waking. Each part was given attention, time to adjust, to recognize itself — to respond.

Changes began to occur in my life, though not in the way I was used to. Cleaner. Quieter. Deeper. I stopped spending time on empty conversations, on things that had no weight. Something inside me cleared. For the first time in my life, I could feel it distinctly — and I was, unmistakably, happy.

The very perception of reality had shifted.

Gradually, everything that once seemed important began to lose its hold. I would look back and wonder: how could this or that person, this or that event, have carried such influence over me? How had they occupied space in my mind, caught and held my attention, drained emotion? How had I allowed it?