Chapter 4
WHO ARE THEY?

Later on after I had spent three days in her company, I understood something about her way of life. At the same time some vexing questions occurred to me concerning our own way of life. Especially one question, which stayed in my mind relentlessly.

“Well”, I thought to myself, we have created a vast and complicated educational system.

Being guided by the system, we are teaching our children and one another: at kindergartens, schools, colleges and postgraduate study. This system gives us an opportunity to create, invent, fly to the cosmos and investigate. On following the system, we are, accordingly, creating our way of life. We are striving to get to know the cosmos, the atom, and all kinds of abnormal phenomena which we enjoy discussing and describing in sensational articles and popular science publications.

Yet there is one phenomenon which, somehow, we are trying to evade. It looks as if we are afraid to speak about it. Maybe, we are afraid to do it simply because, it can easily break our system of education and scientific conclusions. Because it laughs at the objective reality of our existence. We are trying hard to pretend that this phenomenon does not exist.

Though it does and will exist, no matter how hard we try to ignore it by turning our backs or trying to bypass it. Isn't it high time to take a closer and more attentive look at it. Who knows, maybe, by joining the efforts of the human mind as a whole, we'll manage to answer the question:

Why have all, without exception, great thinkers of all times who have created different religious teachings, before creating these teachings had to go away from the civilized life to forests or deserts and live as hermits?

"Put a mind to it, please, - they did not go to a | world famous library or a super academy, ---just to a forest! Now the great majority of humankind follows or tries to follow these teachings. Why did Moses from the Old Testament go to Mount Sinai to write the famous Ten Commandments.

Why did Jesus Christ seclude himself even from his disciples, when he left for the desert?

Why did Siddhartha Gautama (later on they started to call him Buddha), the man who lived in India in the middle of the 6-th century B. C., seclude himself in a forest for seven years and after that came out and brought to the people his great Teaching? Hence it became stimulating, opening and extending human minds and is known as Buddhism.

Or why not take our close predecessors who lived not long ago, prominent historical personalities: Serafim Sarovskey or Serge Radonezskey?

They also went to a forest and shortly after that they managed to perceive such depths of universal wisdom that the mundane Tsars had to take the impassable roads just to get a piece of good advice from them.

After a while at the place of their hermitages people constructed cloisters and majestic cathedrals. For example, the Troyitse-Serguievskaya Lavra in the city of Sergiev Posad in the Moscow region keeps attracting throngs of people. Can you believe it that everything had started just from a hermit?!

Why? What or who was helping those people to get wisdom, giving them knowledge and pushing them closer to comprehension on the essence of existence? How did they live there? What were they doing? What were they thinking about staying alone, far away from human society?”

These questions continued to bother me like an obsession soon after my contact with Anastasia.

Therefore after I left the forest, I started to read everything I could find about hermits, though I have failed to get any answer. Strange as it may seem, nothing is available about their lives as hermits.

This is my story, but now I am trying my best to describe the events of my three days stay in the forest at Anastasia's. I am describing my feelings and impressions which were influenced by my communication with her since I hope that some of my readers will manage to comprehend the essence of this phenomenon.

Right now, after having drawn a bottom line under everything I had seen and heard, one thing is beyond any doubt. The people who are living a lonely life in the forest, as hermits, including Anastasia, can see everything which is taking place in our everyday life from an absolutely different perspective.

Some of her notions and affirmations are diametrically opposed to those which we call “universally acknowledged” ones. Who is closer to the truth? Who can be a judge? My duty is just to describe everything exactly the way I had seen and heard it. By doing so I hope to give an opportunity to others to determine the answers on their own.

Anastasia lives in the forest absolutely all by herself. She does not have any dwelling, she hardly wears any clothes and does not store any food to nourish herself. She is a descendant of those who have been living there for thousands and thousands of years and it looks like a different civilization. Anastasia was born there and is an inseparable part of Mother Nature.

The phenomenon which looks extraordinary at first sight (remember, when I was overwhelmed by strong fears while I was trying to take possession of Anastasia and lost my consciousness) happens becomes very simple later on. For instance, a man tames a cat, a dog, an elephant, a tiger, an eagle and what not. In this particular case EVERYTHING around is tamed.

And this “EVERYTHING” can't allow anything bad to happen to her.

Anastasia told me that when she was quite a little baby her mother could leave her all by herself just on grass under a tree.

“Why didn't you die of starvation?" I asked.

The response was just a snap of her fingers. A squirrel appeared by her side and jumped right on her hand. Anastasia moved her hand with the animal close to her mouth and the squirrel passed a kernel of a cedar nut from its mouth right into Anastasia's.

I did not take it as a miracle, because I remembered that in Novosibirsk Academy Township I saw a lot of squirrels. They are not afraid of people and even beg food from passers by, moreover they even get angry when they are not treated. Though in this case I had an opportunity to watch a radically opposite process.

We know of numerous cases from fiction, press and TV programs in which babies were brought up by wild animals like wolves, for instance.

In this particular case we can see that generation after generation are living permanently in close contact with Mother Nature and their relationship with the wild world differs from ours or any other known native tribes on Earth.

“Why don't you feel cold while I need to wear a jacket?” I asked her.

 

“Because”, she answered, "the people who are covering themselves with clothes, hiding themselves from heat and cold in shelters eventually lose more and more of their abilities to adapt to environmental fluctuations. I have not lost this ability, that's why I don't need much clothing”.

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