A Story of Agapit Pechersky, Anastasia Novykh [best free e reader .txt] 📗

The others crowded near Sensei as if it were the safest place on the shore.
“Maybe we shouldn’t make a fire?” Nikolai Andreevich cautiously advanced his opinion. “Maybe we’d be safer in the city? There certainly is a storm front somewhere near, and we’ve seen the first gusts. It is possible that it recurs.”
Sensei answered him in good-natured manner: “Relax, doctor. We’ll make some tea and dry up a little. Then we’ll see.”
“Well, you know better,” Nikolai Andreevich said with a tinge of incredulity in his voice.
Soon our wet clothes were hanging on the strings of our hurriedly picked up tents. We put on dry clothes and sat around new place, further from the sea, warming ourselves and waiting for the water in a kettle to boil. Curiously enough, despite the circumstances my spirits were high. It felt like I got my second wind. New inspiration came upon me, owing to which it was so good and calm that my soul was singing.
As soon as the water boiled, Tatyana and I made sweet-scented marjoram and balm tea. Our doctor insisted that we take white honey out of our survival stock as a means of cold preventive measures. And we made a small dinner with this refreshment, or it is better to say a ‘night-picnic’.
When the first drops of the beneficial tea spread about our organisms with warmness, relaxed Nikolai Andreevich said: “What a hurricane! What an element! There! My, the human psychology is so curious in extreme situations. Theory is one thing, but practice is quite another, especially your own one.”
“Oh, yes,” smiled Sensei. “Reasoning is not acting.”
“And how quickly the values change,” continued psychotherapist with excitement. “Just when you see the slightest chance to save yourself and others, life becomes the only value. But in the last minutes as soon as the threat became inevitable... it’s strange, but the value of life disappears as well as the value of this body! And inside... it’s amazing... you feel clearness and absolute calmness. Some kind of extraordinary, amazing feeling of your consciousness broadening...”
Sensei smiled cheerfully and interrupted the speech of Nikolai Andreevich at the most exciting point for me. I turned out that I was not the only person to experience such, incompatible with an extreme situation, sensations.
“Leave the introspection alone, doc. Let your soul saturate with this instant ‘here and now’.”
Nikolai Andreevich took a long look at him and nodded with a smile, seeming to understand something unvoiced.
We sat in silence, prolonging our pleasure of having hot tea. I still had that unexplainable feeling of joy at silence inside me. Indeed, appreciation of that fantastic feeling of ‘heavenly’ peace comes only after spending some time in the very ‘inferno’. The interrupted discussion, as our company was returning to its usual state of consciousness, renewed.
“My aunt! Such a storm! That’s awful!” Victor couldn’t calm down, too.
At that moment Sensei, sipping his tea, said, as if by the way: “That was just a drop of water.”
These words didn’t come home to people immediately. The first ones to ‘enlighten’ were Nikolai Andreevich and Volodya, who stared at Sensei in astonishment. A bit later their meaning reached us, too.
“What do you mean... a drop?” Victor asked with a puzzled look. “Do I get it right? You mean the drop in that mug Eugene was betting?”
Sensei nodded with contented air. Meanwhile Eugene nearly choked by his tea, goggled at Sensei, at the same time trying to figure out whether he was joking or not.
“It’s a provocation! Objection!” our doubting Gagger became indignant in jest, just in case, when a good half of our company gave him by no means an ambiguous gaze. “That was a mere coincidence. The hurricane was purely accidental...”
“Accidental?” wondered Sensei with a smile, slightly raising his eyebrows. “I can repeat.”
“No, no!” Stas anticipated Eugene’s answer. “Don’t take the trouble standing up, Sensei. I’ll kill him myself.”
And with those words, he charged Eugene with all his weight, jokingly catching him by the throat, and started to shake him. Eugene floundered about comically and, having caught a white serviette lying nearby, he started to wave it as a flag in request for truce.
“OK, Ok! I surrender! I believe!..”
“You dare!” ‘threatened’ Stas, letting him go.
The company laughed, while Eugene, rubbing his neck, asked Sensei timidly: “Did it really happen because of the mug of sea water?”
“My patience is over,” Stas stood up resolutely, but before he had time to pounce on his friend the latter disappeared into thin air. Eugene jumped aside and began explaining in a hurry, sawing the air with quieting gestures.
“No, no, it’s not what I meant! I wanted to say, ‘oh, my, what a power’!”
“You’d better‘ve said it right away,” Stas murmured, returning to his place at our laugh.
When numerous jokes stopped, Sensei elucidated: “It’s not the limit for a human thought. Both destruction and creation are within its power. People just don’t possess real knowledge about that power. And this knowledge won’t be given until they change for the better. Otherwise, people will remain dependent, like any other animal, on whims of the elements. The Earth is a living creature too, you know. And it won’t endure its oversaturation with mankind having Animal nature as dominant. A manifestation of mass human negative force, for the planet, is like a gaping wound on its body. Therefore, additional forces are gathering around it, like leucocytes in blood that are able to absorb bacteria and other foreign bodies. And then a cleansing process simply occurs, and that’s all... Humanity as a whole, alike every single individual, unconsciously makes changes in the memory of water with its own thoughts. And then, pardon, we get what we’ve deserved.”
“That means water can be programmed in a certain way,” Nikolai Andreevich summarized. “And with that program it’s possible not only to destroy but also to create.”
“Absolutely right. What you’ve seen is just a trifle, really. Now, imagine what power Agapit possessed, if the Holy Spirit Himself abode in him. Gabriel, Rigden, Jabrail, name this Creature as you like, he has many names. Imagine what strength his creating thought had, that even after his death people continue recovering physically and mentally near his relics, especially during the days of the so-called superactivity of the ‘background’” Sensei looked at me with a smile, using my not quite proficient vocabulary.
“During his lifetime Agapit was visited by many different peoples, irrespective of their communion to religion at that. Beside Christians there were Buddhists, Muslims, and people of other religions. They came to him not only because he was a healer, but also because he was a Wiseman, a man who knows the true way to God. Many religious leaders had no special liking for him because of such pilgrimage, for he didn’t call upon changing people’s religion, like they did for widening their rule. He related true words of Jesus to people, that God is one, and that there are many ways to Him. I’m not very surprised at the fact that all the records about the pilgrimage to Agapit were thoroughly removed from the annals. It was because Agapit told people about the true Teaching of Jesus, which had been transformed into religion by that time. He related about freedom of choice, about soul eternal.
“Though Agapit healed people delivering them from various corporal and spiritual ailments, he also edified them: ‘It doesn't befit to disturb God about anything except for salvation of your own soul. Ask not for your body or for your health; it is not the belly of yours you should concern yourself with – all this is empty decay, insatiable in desires. For there is no petition more deserving, than a petition for salvation of your own soul’. Many people actually came to believe in God owing to Agapit, because he had always been an example of true service of God in his spiritual pureness. So powerful was he in his inner spirit, that there was nothing impossible for him. Agapit had been proving it with word and deed time and again.
“Spiritual people longed for him, while those who hungered for gold feared him. Agapit taught people to keep their thoughts pure, because any bad thought engenders doubt. And there can be no pure faith in doubt. Doubt can ruin everything. Agapit often used to say: ‘Believe, and you shall be rendered according to your faith. It is simple, but it’s difficult to comprehend. The whole difficulty is in simplicity’.
“Let me give you an example of Agapit’ spiritual power from his life. Prince Izyaslav’s warrior Ratimir was once brought into the monastic cell of Agapit. He was badly wounded, both legs being fractured. Everyone considered him to be not long for this world. However, within an hour the warrior came out of the cell accompanied by Agapit. That incident astonished many people then.”
“You’ve said the warrior had fractures!?” Victor said amazed. “How could Agapit knit the bones so quickly, if the warrior was able to walk by himself?”
“Oh, it’s very simple. Agapit gave him some decoction to drink.”
“Decoction?!” Nikolai Andreevich was amazed even more than Victor. “I’d understand if it were for anaesthesia... But he knitted the bones, didn’t he?” the doctor asked with doubt. “Sensei, excuse me, please, but no matter how good the herbs were, bones cannot be knitted so quickly.”
“Why do you think herbs have something to do with it? Herbs are herbs, and bones are bones. By the way, doctor, they consist of water too,” Sensei emphasized with a smile.
“How can they be knitted so quickly?” Nikolai Andreevich asked distrustfully.
Sensei grinned for some reason and said: “With the help of such healing power as Agapit possessed, with his knowledge about true properties of water, any bone can be knitted much faster than you think.”
“Really? How’s that?” Victor wondered in his turn.
At that moment Slava, who seemed to have decided to settle himself in a more comfortable position, broke a reed burnt at edges with a crunch. He gave no heed to it. But Sensei, having noticed that, asked him: “Let me have that broken reed.”
At first Slava didn’t understand what was required of him, so he started twisting his head looking around. Finally his eyes found the broken reed. He picked it up hurriedly and gave to Sensei.
“For example, let’s take an ordinary reed stem. It’s possible not only to knit it solid, but also to make it firmer than steel...”
Apparently, Sensei was in a good mood and disposed to conversation as well as demonstration of unusual experiments. Perhaps we had never spent so many tremendous minutes with Sensei as we had that day.
Sensei handed the mug to Eugene and said smiling: “Would you be so kind to pour some sea water into the mug.”
Everybody took alarm exchanging glances, and Eugene even recoiled from it as if from fire.
“Oh, no, Sensei, noway. I have a luckless hand,” he said hiding his arms behind his back and added hastily with a nervous smile: “I mean, both hands! And moreover, I’ve got childhood disability for all parts of body.”
“Relax, it’s a joke,” Sensei calmed him laughing softly. “Mineral water will be enough.”
We heaved a sigh of relief. Eugene also feigned ease, though he kept an eagle eye on Sensei’s hands. Sensei poured some mineral water into the mug and covered it with his palms. These movements caused everybody to became involuntarily tense, fearing even to move once again, to say nothing of remonstration. After that ‘purifying’ hurricane – for our minds in the first place – all doubts about the abilities of Sensei were gone with the wind. So, our company watched his actions with bated breath.
Meanwhile Sensei concentrated for several seconds as usual. Then he completely broke the cane into two