Sensei of Shambala. Book III. Anastasia Novykh

like a disturbed beehive. Here and there were heard conversations and discussions of what was seen and heard from Sensei last night. And since, when cleaning up the camp, I happened to be now at one group of guys, now at another, I was able to hear their impressions.

      “My, can you believe what power a thought possesses!” Kostya reasoned while cleaning along with us a part of the beach littered by the gale.

      “Yeah, Sensei did some top-class performance yesterday!” Andrew responded.

      “You bet!” Ruslan nodded. “How did he... There we sat, then bang, and such a storm! I thought it was the end of the world! Soaked to skin.”

      Andrew smiled.

      “You’re such an egoist. As if you are the only one who got soaked, and all the rest chanced to be dry.”

      “Um, that I meant generally speaking,” Ruslan hastened to put himself right.

      “Ah, what of our wet clothes compared to such, to such...” Yura tried inspiredly to express his feelings, but was loss for words.

      Kostya, tidying up his parcel, picked up a dry twig and tasted it. But immediately pulled a face and spat it.

      “Ugh, how disgusting!” he threw it to the pile of litter and wrinkling his nose pronounced: “How only was Sensei able to make bitter wormwood sweet?”

      Noticing his mimic, Andrew laughed and said merrily: “You should’ve tasted it when you were given it, instead of putting on an act.”

      Kostya ignored the friend’s banter and in perplexity tried to come down to brass tacks.

      “I don’t get it. May be it seemed to me that it was sweet?”

      “Why, yeah!” Andrew voiced with irony. “And it seemed to me as well as it seemed to other guys. I’m sorry, but I’m yet able to tell pepper from sugar.”

      “Yes, but how did he do that?!” Kostya could not calm down, evidently being in two minds between his disbelief and what he personally saw and even tasted.

      “How, how?” Andrew mimicked his intonation. “What do you eat me for? There’s Sensei, go ask him.”

      Andrew put another pile of litter away into the reed. When he returned, Kostya presented him with a new ‘genius conjecture.’

      “May be it was a mass hypnosis?”

      “Well, I reckon we could be hypnotized. But the sea? It doesn't care a spit, it’s sea, you know!” Andrew shattered his theory off-hand.

      “Yeah, the sea can spit alright,” seeming to have heard only the last words, Ruslan echoed, while dragging the litter for the common heap.

      The guys smiled, and Andrew cheerfully produced: “Come to think of it, we’re all very lucky to have met Sensei. Only one night, and we could see and get to know so many things, as we wouldn’t have been able see in our entire lives!”

      “Well, suppose, we learnt not so much as we saw,” parried Kostya. “Personally, I still don’t get it, how he did that.”

      “Well, a Philosopher, indeed! Your head is useful only for crushing the philosopher's stone,” Andrew chaffed him. “It’s all right, grow up, and you’ll get it.”

      “It’s like you understood something,” Kostya made caustic remark in return.

      “In theory – yes. I just need to master it in practice,” Andrew laughed.

      “No way, practice cannot be trusted to Andrew yet,” Ruslan announced merrily. “He’s such a fella: let him start, and no one will get to stop 'em then.”

      The guys burst into laughter. After finishing my work, I went to lend Tatyana a hand. She was busying herself with cleaning the garbage near the tents, that the elder guys, Eugene and Stas, were securing. As it turned out, conversation of the elder guys was in the same spirit. The difference was they talked quietly so as not to attract attention.

      “... And don’t say, as soon as I recall that storm, it still gives me the creeps,” Eugene shared with Stas in embarrassment, drawing another cord of a tent. “How long did Sensei hold the cup with sea water in his hands? Only a minute?! And such a storm rose after! Honestly, I thought it will wash us all away. Even said goodbye mentally to my people.”

      “You weren’t the only one to say goodbye,” Stas noticed.

      “This is getting beyond the joke. It’s a serious power... You know, only now I’ve realized how serious is everything Sensei tells us about and tries to teach us. Do you imagine what responsibility it is to possess such knowledge?”

      “Don’t say. If it falls into bad hands...”

      “Hands are ok, anything but heads,” Eugene pronounced. “Head is the cause of all troubles. So, we ought to work with our own heads more seriously to clean the garbage out of it. Now a dirty thought would still get in once in a while.”

      “Yes indeed, no matter how careful you are, sometimes it sneaks in, good-for-nothing.”

      “That means we’ve got to go into it more thoroughly. Spiritual work is far more important than all our small-minded life.”

      Eugene fell silent, driving a tent peg into sand. Then he looked at the sea and pronounced pensively: “I didn’t sleep today. That wave was before my eyes all the time. Man, if Sensei hadn’t stopped the sea at that time, nothing of this would have been here, can you imagine?”

      “Exactly,” Stas nodded sadly. “This understanding just gives me creeps.”

      “Haw,” Eugene gave a deep sigh and headed for another tent with Stas.

      Carried away with cleaning, Tatyana and I unwittingly approached the cars where Sensei, Nicolai Andreevich, Volodya, and Victor were. All four were trying to bring Nicolai Andreevich’s Volga into a proper condition, tinkering with its motor.

      “Andreich, I can't put my finger on how did you contrive to start it up last night?” Volodya said laughing.

      To that Nicolai Andreevich answered: “If you want to survive you’d start up something else.”

      Men laughed. When the laughter faded, Volodya uttered: “Well, we sure had a memorable night yesterday.”

      “And above all, so many impressions!” Nicolai Andreevich agreed to him.

      Sensei lit a cigarette. Meanwhile Victor, taking advantage of everyone’s moment of respite, hastened to open his mind to Sensei.

      “I haven’t been able to sleep till morning. I wondered. How could that ever be possible that people, being near the Saint, at Agapitus himself, exchanged his Teaching so rashly for this everyday life,” Victor looked around contemptuously and pronounced with emotion: “for this clutter?! This is all temporary! It’s instants! It’s as good as changing a momentary satiety for an eternal hunger. No, this I don’t understand... How on earth could people come down to such a baseness, to change the world of God for this illusion of existence?”

      “Well, what would you want,” Sensei said with a shadow of a sad smile. “People are people. They question even the very existence of God, and you talk about Eternity. That’s why they choose what they see, and not what they feel in their soul. They are people... At times they change their mind three times a day. And you talk about some global choice of theirs. The life of the masses is similar to a stream: wherever it flows, there they are carried away with the current...”

      Suddenly loud shouts were heard on the beach. There, to common laughter of the guys, Eugene was being chased by Stas holding that particular Eugene’s cup in his hand, which the guy had used to bring seawater the other day. The lad, pursuing his friend cried with laughter: “It’s you favorite cup!”

      To that, adroitly dodging him, Eugene yelled: “Take it away from me! I have an allergy to this cup. Away with it I said! Or I’ll shove it into one place of yours and break the handle!”

      Sensei smiled looking at this scene, put out the unfinished cigarette and got under the bonnet to sort out the motor. Other