From Book 2. EXTRATERRESTRIAL OR HUMAN?

Before relating further events connected with Anastasia, I want to thank all the religious leaders, scientists, journalists, and ordinary readers for their letters, religious literature, and commentary regarding the events set forth in my first book.
All kinds of definitions have been applied to Anastasia. The press has called her "Mistress of the Taiga," "Siberian Sorceress," "Soothsayer," "Divine Manifestation," and "Extraterrestrial."
So to the question of one Moscow journalist, "Do you love Anastasia now?" I replied, "I can't sort out my own feelings." Then and there the rumor went out that I was incapable of understanding her due to my spiritual incompetence.
But how can you love if you can't figure out whom you're loving? After all, to this day no one definition has been applied to Anastasia. I have attempted, basing myself on her assertion ("I am a human being, a woman"), to convince myself that this is so and to find explanations for her unusual abilities. At first, this all went well.
Who is Anastasia?
A young woman born and living as a hermit in the deep Siberian taiga, raised after her parents' death by her grandfather and great-grandfather, who also lead a hermit's life.
Can the wild beasts' devotion to her be considered unusual? There is nothing unusual about it. All kinds of animals live together peacefully in a peasant's yard and treat their master with respect.
It was more difficult to define the mechanism that allowed her to see at a distance, know about various events in detail (even those that happened a thousand years ago), and sort through our present-day life freely. How did her Ray work, healing people at a distance, penetrating deep into the past, and gazing into the future?
In his works devoted to analyzing Anastasia's statements and actions, K. I. Shilin, a philosophy professor and corresponding member of the Moscow Aviation Institute, has written:
Anastasia's creative potential is universal and not a purely individual gift from God or Nature. Each and every one of us is connected to the Cosmos.
A solution to the impending disaster can be seen in the harmonious synthesis of cultures and principles. The development of these cultures of a harmoniously pure Childhood yields the "feminine" type of culture. This type of culture has been expressed most fully and vividly in Buddhism, but also in our Anastasia. For this reason, I give the following chain of identities:
Anastasia = Tara = Buddha = Maitreya
Anastasia is a perfect human being akin to God.
Whether or not this is so is not for me to judge. However, I can't understand why then she doesn't write down her teachings, as all enlightened people akin to God have, but instead has spent her twenty conscious years working with her summer people.
Nevertheless, reading scientists' statements, I was able to conclude that she was not crazy, because scientists have at least hypothesized about what she was saying and are conducting experiments in specific areas.
For example, when I asked, "Anastasia, how do you discern various situations from a thousand years ago and how are you able to see even the thoughts of the great men of the past?" she replied, "The first thought and first word were the Creator's. His thoughts live on today, surrounding us invisibly and filling the universal dimension, reflected in material living creations, which were created for what is most important, man.
"Man is the Creator's child, and like any parent, He could not wish less for His child than He himself had. He gave him everything and more: the freedom to choose. Man can create and perfect the world through the power of his thoughts.
"Any thought produced by man cannot vanish into nothingness. If it is light, it fills the dimension of light and stands on the side of the forces of light; if it is dark, on the opposite side. Today, any person can make use of any thought ever produced by people or the Creator."
"Why, then, doesn't everyone use them?"
"Everyone does, but to varying degrees. In order to use them, you need to think, and not everyone can do that because of the daily hustle-and-bustle."
"You mean, all you have to do is think about it, and everything will work out? You can even know the thoughts of the Creator?"
"To know the thoughts of the Creator, you have to achieve the purity of intentions inherent in Him and also the speed of His thought. To know the thoughts of the enlightened, you need their purity of intentions and the speed of their thought.
"If a person's intentions are not pure enough to communicate with the forces of light, the dimension in which shining thoughts live, then that person will draw his thoughts from its dark opposite and will come to torment himself and others as a result."
I don't know whether the explanation by academician A.E. Akimov, director of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, for these statements of hers is oblique or direct, but in his article "Physics Recognizes the Super Intellect," which appeared in the journal Miracles and Adventures, he writes,
There have always been two approaches to knowing Nature. One is represented by Western science—that is, knowledge gained by the methodology possessed by the West: proof, experiment, and so forth.
The other is Eastern—that is, knowledge received from without, by esoteric means through meditation. Man does not obtain esoteric knowledge, it is given him.
It just so happened that at a certain stage, this esoteric path was lost, and another path arose that was extremely complex and slow. Over the last thousand years we have followed this path and have arrived at knowledge known in the East three thousand years ago.
I have an intuitive conviction that those were right who said that the matter that fills the entire Universe on the field level is an interconnected structure. In "The Universe as Supercomputer," from his book Summa Technologiae, Stanislaw Lem postulates a gigantic Universal Brain, something like a computer. Imagine a computer that, given a volume of the observable universe (with a radius of about 15 billion kilometers), is filled with elements roughly 10-33 cubic meters in volume.
Such a brain filling the entire Universe is, of course, equipped with possibilities we can neither picture nor dream of.
But if you bear in mind that in reality this brain functions according to the principle not of the computer but of torsion fields, then it becomes clear that "manifestations of the Absolute of Schelling or the Sunyata, of ancient Vedic literature, are in fact a computer. Besides that, there is nothing more in the world. Everything else is one form or another of the Absolute."
Here is what scholars have said about Anastasia's long-distance Ray. In "Living Rays and the Living Field," in the May 3, 1996, issue of Miracles and Adventures, the academician Vlail Kaznacheyev, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, wrote:
Vernadsky was probably correct when he posed the question of how the ideal and the intellectual are moving the planet Earth into its new evolutionary phase. How? This cannot be explained straightforwardly merely through labor, bursts, or technogenic activities.
The facts indicate that man, the operator, can change many electronic instrument displays remotely. He seems to push down the instrument's scale, moreover from afar.
We have work under way right now in Novosibirsk on remote communication with Norilsk, Dikson, and Simferopol. Work is also under way with the Tyumen triangle and an American center in Florida, through which remote communication with a man, an instrument, and an operator is being established reliably and precisely.
We have encountered an unknown phenomenon: the interaction of living substance at tremendous distances.
Unfortunately, the scientists' articles contain many terms I don't understand and citations of works by other scientists. It's hard to read them all, let alone understand them.
Nonetheless, I did gather that science knows about man's ability to contact another person or object and to manipulate an instrument at a distance.
Science also knows about the universal data base. Anastasia probably uses this. She calls it the dimension of the forces of light, or the dimension where all the thoughts humans ever produced reside.
Modern science talks about this, too, and calls it a supercomputer.
From there I had to make sense of how I, who had never written in a literary way and who had no education for doing so, had managed to write a book that was exciting people.
When I was in the taiga, Anastasia had said, "I will make a writer of you. You will write a book, and many people will read it. It will have a beneficial effect on its readers."
Now, this book has been written, and I must assume this was all her doing. Now we must determine how she influences other people's creative abilities. So far, though, no one has been able to do that.
One could easily assume, of course, that I myself have a little talent and that once I obtained the interesting information from her, I described it. Then everything seemingly would fall into place. There were explanations for everything.
No need to spend any more time reading the scientific and religious literature or asking specialists questions. Then Anastasia revealed a new phenomenon which no one who has helped me so far has been able to explain.
If you remember, in the first book I wrote what she said two years ago: "Artists will paint pictures, poets will write poetry, and a film will be made about me. You will look at all this and think of me."
When I asked Anastasia's grandfather, "So, can she predict the future?" he replied, "Vladimir, Anastasia does not predict the future. She models it and makes it a reality."
Words—this is all just words. We say all kinds of things. I did not attach any special significance to them, considering them allegorical, because I couldn't even contemplate just how everything Anastasia said would become a precise reality. But the incredible does happen.
What Anastasia said is steadily becoming reality.
First the poems started streaming in. I published some of them in the first Russian edition of the book. Then people also began to open "Anastasia houses" in various cities. In the first of them, in Gelendzhik, paintings devoted to Anastasia and nature by Moscow artist Aleksandra Vasilievna Saenko were exhibited.
I walked into this house and took a look at a wall hung with large pictures. It was as if the space around me had metamorphosized.
Anastasia looked at me from many pictures with her good eyes. And the subjects! Some of them came from the as-yet unpublished second book. There was the shining sphere that sometimes appears next to Anastasia.
Later, I learned that this artist paints with her fingertips rather than a brush. Most of these pictures had already sold but were left at the exhibit because people kept coming to look at them.
The artist gave me one picture, which depicted Anastasia's parents. I could not tear my eyes away from her mother's face.
Offers began coming in from various studios to make a movie about Anastasia. I was already beginning to take this for granted.
Touching the pictures and pages of poetry with my hands, listening to the songs, and viewing the frames of film shot, I attempted to make some sense out of what was happening.
Here, the Moscow Research Center which studies phenomena connected with Anastasia concludes:
The greatest spiritual advisors known to humanity through their religious teachings and philosophical and scientific investigations have not affected human potential as rapidly as Anastasia has.
Their teachings produced a tangible manifestation in real life centuries and millennia after the moment they appeared.
In mere days and months, in some unknown way, bypassing moral teachings and religious treatises, Anastasia has directly affected emotions and provoked emotional outbursts, a creative surge fulfilled in real creations by all kinds of people who have been in mental contact with her. We can perceive them in the form of the works of art inspired by their impulses toward what is light and good.
How does this hermit, alone in the deep Siberian taiga, at the same time seem to hover over the real spaces of our life?
How does she materialize her creations through other people's hands? They are all about the light, the good, Russia, nature, and love.
"She will strew the world with a great poetry of love. Like a spring rain, poems and songs will wash our entire Earth of its accumulated dirt," Anastasia's grandfather said.
"How will she do this?" I asked.
"With the energy of her own aspirations, she will radiate inspiration and illumination through the force of her dream," he replied.
"What is this force hidden in her dream?"
"The force of Man the Creator."
"Man is supposed to receive reward, esteem, money, and status for his creations. Why does she give them away?"
"She is self-sufficient. Her own satisfaction and the sincere love of just one person are the highest rewards for her," Anastasia's grandfather replied.
These answers have yet to make complete sense to me. Trying to comprehend who Anastasia is and to determine my own attitude toward her, I continued to listen to various opinions about her and to read about spiritual matters.
Over the span of a year and a half, I consumed more literature than in all the previous years of my life. But what did that yield? I was able to draw only one indisputable conclusion for myself: "Many intelligent books that lay claim to historical authenticity, spirituality, and sincerity may contain false information."
I was led to this conclusion by the situation connected with Grigory Rasputin. In my first book about Anastasia, I quoted a historical novel by V. Pikul, At the Final Line.
The novel talks about the semiliterate muzhik Grigory Rasputin, who came from a remote Siberian village, an area where the Siberian cedar grows, and who traveled to the capital of the Russian Empire in 1907. He amazed the imperial family with his predictions, gained access to the family, and slept with a great many noblewomen.
When people were trying to kill him, they were amazed that after ingesting potassium cyanide that had been sprinkled into his glass he could still get up from the table and go out to the mansion's courtyard. Then Prince Yusupov fired a pistol at the fallen Rasputin at point-blank range.
Even riddled with bullets, Rasputin continued to live. They threw his wounded body off a bridge and into the water. Then they fished him out and set him on fire.
Mysterious and enigmatic Grigory Rasputin, who amazed everyone with his stamina, had grown up in cedar territory.
This is how journalists of the day evaluated his stamina: "At age fifty he could start an orgy at midday and keep up his carousing until four in the morning. He would go from debauchery and drunkenness straight to church matins, where he would stand in prayer until eight o'clock in the morning. Then, at home, after his tea, Grishka would receive visitors until two in the afternoon, as if nothing had happened. Then he would select ladies and accompany them to the bathhouse, and from the bathhouse he would drive to a restaurant in the country, where he would repeat the previous night. No ordinary person could withstand such a routine."
I, like many others, formed a dissolute image of Grigory Rasputin that corresponded to these statements. But fate offered other information for me to contemplate.
Here is what Pope John wrote about Grigory: "Today the Holy Monk's body, which was never found, is emerging from the river unharmed. And his secret sons will enter the Ark with a prayer."
What does this mean? On the one hand, they write that he is a profligate; on the other, a Holy Monk. Where is the truth? Where is the lie?
I also happened to come across the text of Grigory Rasputin's notes written during his journey to the Holy Land (they were brought to Paris by a Soviet refugee named Lobachevsky):
The sea calms you without the slightest effort. When you rise in the morning and the waves "speak," and splash, and gladden you. And the sun shines on the sea as if it were very quietly rising, and at the same time the Soul of man forgets all humanity and looks on the sun's gleam; and man's joy is ignited, and his Soul senses the book of life and the wisdom of life—indescribable beauty!
The sea arouses us from the dream of vanities and much is thought in and of itself, without the slightest effort.
The sea is space, but the mind is even more spacious. There is no end to human wisdom; it cannot be contained by all the philosophers. There is also the supreme beauty, when the sun falls past the sea and sets and its rays shine.
Who can appreciate these glowing rays? They warm and caress the Soul and console by bestowing health. Minute by minute, as the sun goes behind the mountains, man's Soul grieves a little for its marvelous rays. The light fails.
Oh, what silence! Not even the sound of a bird. Man moves from reflection to pacing the deck, recalling without trying his childhood and all his vanity, and he compares this silence of his with the world of vanities, talks to himself softly, and wishes he had someone with whom to relieve the tedium his enemies have driven upon him.
So who were you, Siberian? Grigory Rasputin the Russian? Where can I find the truth written about you and where the lie? How can I tell them apart? What should I rely on to make sense of your essence and purpose? With the help of what great works, might I sort out the Truth from the lie?
Where is the spirituality and sincerity, and where is the claim to omniscience? Perhaps I should try with my own heart. I have never written poetry, but I want to dedicate my first poem to you, Grigory Rasputin.
People are reading Anastasia, and the poems that have come out of that are sincere. I have tried my hand, too. Here is what I came up with for you. Forgive me if it doesn't always sound like poetry.

Dedicated to Grigory Rasputin
Semiliterate? Semiliterate.
From the cedar forests, and so?
Well, barefoot. Russia's Siberia
Will wear out many pairs of boots.

I'm off to see the tsar. To help
Our Little Father live a little longer.
I'm off to Russia, Mother Russia.
To have her sip from the ringing cedar!

What? Hussars? Dissolute, you daring
Lady killers and men of courage?
So look, just look, how you should
Let loose! Oh, you, wise men!

Petersburg in Paris clothes,
Don't let corsets squeeze your heart!
The gazes of society ladies trembled
When the Siberian suddenly appeared.

And when he left for matins
To pray for others' sins,
He heard Her whisper low,
She alone implored him, "Go."

Befuddled, growling like a brute,
The season of the beast swallows the flesh.
You held yourself like a Soul aflame,
And now you can't be doused. Go.

You cannot keep the beast in check
For long, but one moment, you will save.
I am Russia! Shall I regret it?
Never will you sing again.

Go back to your cedars and I'll take heart!
Whatever you may want, just ask. . . .

"If I were with you at the bathhouse,
I would flog at good-for-nothing you
With birch and needles,
Russia! I will stay with you!"

Time grumbled like a rabid dog,
Bullets lodged in Grishka's chest that day.
The darkness gnashed its teeth:
"Crawl, Siberian! Crawl away."

For half an instant you will
Hold me back, but then
You will receive such punishment
As the Earth has never known!

A hero now, a lecher you will be—
Your face on vials of poison.
And those descendants you have saved
Will spit upon your Soul, muzhik.

Crawl away. I am all-powerful now,
All-mighty! Fly up to the heavens if
You can. Just a moment. Can't you see?
Only give back my coming moment!

"Oh! for some Madeira, a bathhouse!
I would show you then.
Siberian, you say. I'm a muzhik.
Why nag me, you plaguey dunce?"

Shot and drowned, then set afire
On the outskirts, torn and gnawed.
His ashes will fly on the wind of Spring,
Over Russia, even now.

"Hey, muzhik," the darkness rasps,
"Where's your grave? Your eyes?"
You cannot get back the days of your life.
Your heirs at your images will gaze.

Show them! I give you the power!
Show them the accounts unpaid.
Perhaps you want to shed a tear?

Grishka spat lead bullets:
"Oh, he's bad, Satan—first accounts, then a tear."
So how about it, muzhiks? Time to splash?
The bathhouse's here.

Grigory Rasputin came out of the cedar forests and entered the life of prerevolutionary Russia. He tried to avert the storm of revolution, and he perished.
Anastasia lives among the cedars as well and is also trying to do good for people and to avert something. But what destiny has our society prepared for her?
My frequent thoughts about my time with Anastasia in the taiga were quite unusual. When I recalled individual episodes, my memory reproduced them in fine detail and once again showed me the expression of Anastasia's face, the intonation of her voice, and her gestures.

Книга:  Book II: The Ringing Cedars of Russia