I was raised by mathematically-minded atheists in the Soviet Union, the seat of communism. For a long time I was the most anti-Christian person you'd know. I constantly talked about the evils of
Christianity, their repressions, their hypocrisy, their injustice.
When my first long-term girlfriend, Layo, did an astrology chart for me, I thought she was joking. Then I looked at her work and found it to be astonishingly accurate. When I drove cross-country to pick her up, on the way back the car went into a spin at 75 MPH and stopped inches away from going completely into a ditch.
We lived for a while in a cross-shaped apartment building across the street from Addams House and few blocks away from the Arlington
Cemetery. We had a supernatural romance, and we had sex five times a day. Then we moved to Baltimore, and our friend there, David Perry (who goes on the Internet as David O'Bedlam) once stood in the middle of the apartment and blew smoke into four corners. At the same time that we had a falling out, her cousin's body was found in Grand
Canyon. Layo went into a suicidal depression and did not come out until we moved away from Baltimore.
Once I woke up at 4 am, the presence of my ex-girlfriend named Kay burning around me. I went to a computer and saw an attack she posted on me, after having been away from the Internet for a year. I kept feeling her presence and had delusions that she would send men after me, until Layo did an invocation of Tzadgiel, the angel of truth, and
Kay collapsed upon herself.
We then studied metaphysics under an instructor, who taught us several techniques of protecting ourselves spiritually. The more I did it however the more it turned into a paranoia, with me constantly drawing in energy that was bad rather than good and that left me worse off.
Layo kept attracting men from the Internet who were sorcerers and who kept invading our psychic space, whether by coming in psychic form and sexually attacking her or contaminating us with toxicity.
We stayed with the instructor for a month. After an argument with Layo the instructor turned on us and put us under a hex, and I started feeling her presence attacking me in my head all the time. I also started being involuntarily moved to look at the clock while it was saying such numbers as 3:33 or 11:11. Meanwhile the sorcerers were in our heads, with every thought we had running into their manipulations.
We went to a psychic and paid a huge sum of money to get them off of us. She said that they had interpenetrated us. When this was done, while we were vacationing in Burningman, Layo met another man who was a magickian and stayed behind with him in California, while I went back to Virginia to finish the contract on which I was working. The psychic told me to go to the source of light in Jesus, and she gave me a Mother Mary amulet and a cross that said Jesus is Lord. When I came back to pick Layo up, I felt her under a heavy dark cloud, no longer sparkly like she used to be, while the man was sending cutting energy my way.
A heliocentric astrologer who had once used astrology to repair a company and earn $450000 in stock as it went up foretold a shift in international mood from Virgo to Libra, to last for 12 years starting in 1999. He said that Libra age was going to be about romance, about arts, about principles and about confrontation. So I was preparing myself for being on the right side of the age of Libra, writing psychedelic prose and practicing meditation.
I went to New York and spent three months in the home of a Jewish doctor who, as a child, had been contacted by Jesus Christ, and who invented a method of treatment called carbon dioxide therapy that helped cure addictions but, because of his zany personality, was never implemented on a large scale. He had in his house the photos he made of Jesus Christ and demons. I meditated a lot and wrote there, putting my work on the Internet. I was seeing a lady who was very spiritually developed - very naturally wise and talented. I did a mindmeld with her using astrology magick (aligning my planets with hers based on the trines in our shared chart and keeping them up through an effort of will), and from this poured forth creative energy. I used it to analyze the psychoanalytic tradition in Western thought and write pieces such as these:
http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket/minute.htm.
I attracted lots of attention for my writing. A woman who was a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, and who had had lots of supernatural things happen to her, started corresponding with me, and we communicated our insights to each other. She wrote a song that hit
#2 on MP3 charts. I was watching fireworks in New York, and I felt her presence next to the fireworks - a huge pyramidal golden spirit; a beautiful and strong spirit - and she later confirmed that she did see fireworks with the eye of the mind and a boy watching. When I talked to her on the phone I walked outside, and I saw above me in the blue sky white dots - many, many little white dots - and at the top of them, hovering in perfect stillness and soft energy, two radiant white dots next to each other and saying to me hello. I saw with the eye of the mind a beautiful blonde woman walking on a beach, feeling magnetic pull from the ocean - the mermaid coming back for her severed tail - the expression of love, the landed intelligence of mermaid that went on land to marry the prince, coming back to the ocean for the marine intelligence, the dolphin, the severed tail, to come back and make her complete. I saw this as woman being the bridge between the Appolonian and the Dionysian, who needed both to complete the world and be a unified entity.
I talked on the phone with a friend in Tucson, and I saw clouds overhead making faces. We talked about fire, and she said that next morning there were fires in the mountains. I went on a bus trip, first saw the descendant of Queen Mary for a day and had an incredible time at the riverside (while honoring her marital wows), then I went to
Tucson, was mugged and became homeless.
Throughout this time I was feeling a part of a global stream of consciousness, that was seeking to reconcile everybody on a psychic level, across all religions and nationalities, and create a union that is divine and enlightened.. a union animated by higher consciousness, with people using Reiki energy to heal political and social situations and bring everyone toward working for global harmony and global peace.. an order where the transcultural lovers, who through their love for each other and understanding of the psychological and cultural forces that run through them, under their will, integrate and reconcile their respective civilizations and make the nation-state and the religious establishment less relevant. I saw a lot of happy international couples then. I also saw in my meditations the
confirming my intuitions.
I had motifs from literature and mythology appear in my head. First and foremost among these were Anna Karenina, the mermaid and
Persephone. I went into an art gallery in Tucson and saw there a bust of a raver with letters written in Russian, "Anna Arkadievna Karenina:
I delight in her." I saw statues of Mermaids in various forms and heard people repeatedly refer to women as mermaids. I ran into a band named Persephone's Bees, led by a Russian singer who wrote romantic tunes.
Another feature of that time was me picking up on what was in people's mind field and then relating it to literature. I spent some time in a house in which lived a young woman whom I called a stork because she had had her leg taken off by a train, and she had a tattoo of a bird on half of her body, and an Indian girl whom I called a dragon because of her hairstyle. I said that they were there to give fire and air - to take the merger of marine and land intelligence, the Dionysian and the Appolonian, the man and the dolphin, and teach them to fly. I called the stork Dido, for her lover had left her precipitating her accident, and I ran into several people who were Persephone figures, spending part time in the upper world, part time in the underworld, bringing light into the dark parts of the world while bringing into the upper parts of the world the insight, if injurious, of the underworld.
I figured that, in order to heal the Western civilization, one had to overcome what I called the Elizabethan script. Queen Elizabeth, when she became Queen, was betrayed by her lover and since then became completely cold. The Western civilization as we now know it was founded by Queen Elizabeth, who took the world out of feudalism and created a magnificent global civilization. However, her civilization was tragic, for love had to be sacrificed that it be built.
I was seeing the English and the American literary solutions to the problem of clan vs. love... with the English solution, Romeo and
Juliet were sacrificed so that the clans could end their feud and work together on building a civilization; with the American solution, found in Mark Twain, lovers swim the river while the clans kill each other off. I figured that neither of these solutions were complete - that for a happy, integrated society to take effect, lovers had to be together and bring their families together... and I embarked upon the project of redifining cultural mythos in order that people would have such a possibility in their consciousness.
SO here I was, seeing things happen around the world and affecting them, until I came across Israel. And Jewish people, seeing me as one of their own who had gone astray, would have nothing to do with me.
seduced by a Palestinian girl over the Internet and then murdered by
Palestinians - a bad twist on Romeo and Juliet; a case of love usurped by the clan for the purpose of tribal hatred. Then fighting broke out between Israel and the Palestine. Gore's numbers went down. I saw an international couple break up right in front of me, with the woman crying. I felt a spiritual force come at me that I could not resolve.
I woke up the next day in San Francisco and found everyone hateful or suffering or crying or glaring at me. My friend in Tucson thought of me and then heard someone say in a restaurant, "Oh, I guess he drowned. I guess he hadn't learned to swim."
I got an invitation to an interview in New York and asked my parents for money to get back to the East Coast. The interview never materialized, but over the next several months I translated books by
Mandelshtam, Akhmatova and Tsvetayeva - three great Russian poets - and put them up on the Internet (http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat). I was moved to do this because Persephone's Bees were inspired by Mandelshtam, and once I read Mandelshtam I fell in love with his poetry.
I started reading the Bible. I was alternating the nights between praying for a long time to God - never for myself, I figured I had no stake with him, rather for other people and nations, while thanking him for the gifts he gave me - and doing Buddhist meditation or Falun
Gong exercises. Once, when people were attacking me psychologically, I felt the presence of Jesus around me, soothing me and keeping them away. I felt its beauty and peace and said I would follow Him.
Then I felt the voice of my psychic instructor telling me that I could pick one out of many women. Applying my spiritual lessons (go only for someone who is all light; do not fixate) I finally said, One who is the best artist. Within a week I met the most magnificent woman artist who lives in the world today, and we fell in love under miraculous circumstances, as she was just getting a divorce, about the only time that a woman as beautiful as is she would ever be single. She loved my poetry, and I wrote her 50 poems, some of which are on the net (http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/poems.htm) and others, including these, are in a self-published book of poetry which I would send anyone who asks.
This woman - I'll call her Jessica, that's not her real name - was a devout Christian. She said that when she was my age she had practiced meditation and yoga and mysticism, but that she always returned to
Jesus. She said that her life had been saved miraculously under several circumstances, including swinging from a vine in the mountains, the vine breaking and her falling into a pile of leaves, and being thrown by a horse across a field at full gallop. She told me that there were bad spirits that came to people, especially talented ones, and lead them astray by their desires then took away everything they loved. She said that spirits other than Holy SPirit promised illusory freedom then made one a robot for them, but the Holy Spirit was the true friend that offered real liberty. She said that God gave me my abilities so that I would serve Him and not so that I would serve other spirits. Then she put this question to me. "You are studying all these other religions. Why not study the religion that claims to be the true one?"
Pretty miraculous things happened while we were together. We would wake up together in the middle of the night, thoughts occurring in my mind involuntarily that were unfriendly toward her, and her reading those thoughts until I forcefully willed my mind against these thoughts. Her dog jumping off from a wall, startled by a spirit whose presence she too could feel. She hearing me say things to her spiritually and then me telling her these things in person. She hearing her ex-husband, who had been anti-spiritual before meeting her, talk to her in spirit, saying in her mind, "OK [Tom], if you are talking to me call me" and hearing him call in 30 seconds and confirm that he had been talking to her spiritually. We both saw master numbers, and she said that every time I saw a master number I should make a wish. I made wishes for her and for the world.
Throughout this time I kept getting wishes to see this whole psychic-religious thing as simply a horrible nightmare that would some day pass away, leaving me back to the comforting mathematical worldview that I had been taught. I read an essay titled "Archeology refutes Bible's claim to history" and felt a relief, but another part of my mind said that the essay was wrong and - what's more - that feeling this relief was morally wrong. It was right. It turned out, after I did more research, that most of the Bible (except of course the Creation story), including such unlikely stories as Jews exiting from Egypt and the fall of Jericho around the time of Joshua's invasion and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cultural practices of the pre-flood times, has been archeologically validated, refuting the skeptical attacks on the Bible. The Creation story, I was told, can be seen as a metaphor ("You are a poet. You use metaphors in your work all the time. Why can't God?"
Then I was confronted with the story of Jesus, including all the precise references to Him in the Tanach, including such things as His manner of death and the events leading up to His birth - things that
He could not have possibly controlled. The choice was as follows:
Either the Old Testament was all wrong (which it clearly wasn't), or
Jesus was who He said He was. The other possibility - that Jesus was meant to be the Messiah but said things that were untrue but useful, in a way that say Eastern masters, believing that truth is relative, say things that are objectively untrue in order to guide people toward where they think they should be in spiritual development - assumed that lying was a valid basis for building a civilization; something that Plato implied in the Republic but that was entirely inconsistent with Biblical morals.
[Jessica's] older brother was a priest, and he talked to me. I told him that at age 10 I had felt a presence around me that called itself
God, and that said it was going to give me lots of power; and that within a year I was writing nd reciting bombastic poetry-philosophy and getting recognized for what a great genius I was. He said that that spirit was most likely not God, but that the things I sought were available in God as well. THen he prayed for "Satan" to leave me, after which [Jessica] hugged me and said, "You're free baby, you're free!"
The thing is, the sermons at the church we went to - the huge mega-church run by a Jew for Jesus named Lon Solomon - made sense.
These people had dealt with what we had dealt with, and they came out with spiritual lessons, with real knowledge based in experience and examination. These people preached about using one's talents to the utmost, about being forgiving, about extending kindness to outcasts, about being honorable and upright - all things that were good and real, and that were bolstered with real examples from real lives. I figured that the condemnation against organized religion that is so fashionable among liberal people is actually weakening, for it isolates one from lots of great spiritual thought that gets refined over time in institutions dedicated to it. So I started going to that church and listening to their sermons.
[Jessica] told me that I was rebellious and that I needed to refine my soul through overcoming physical challenges. So one day, in the snow,
I went into a forest and sat meditating on the Holy SPirit, dressed quite lightly, for 23 hours and walked barefoot in the snow. I heard animals howl; I wasn't afraid. A couple weeks later I went to a river and swam in the ice-cold water, protected by Holy Spirit as she was sending it to me, and then I stood naked for 30 minutes on the banks of the river, in the snow, with my arms raised, saying, "I love the
Holy Spirit." I did not get sick. Was that the Holy Spirit? I said it could have been her spirit, which to me was the same difference because her spirit of pink orchids and flowers was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I wanted to spend an eternity where she was going.
I noticed a stange thing happening. Whenever I had Jesus around me - whenever I allowed him into my heart - I was able to do things better, with more skill and more joy and more power and more ultimate success, than I did when I did not have Him around me. This led to a battle within my soul, between what I had learned from other religions about reincarnation and from education about evolution, and the very real fact that Jesus's presence could be connected to improvements in my life. How is that possible, if He was a liar and a lunatic, for Him to still be around and effect such dramatic changes in the mind of the person who connected to Him? The only explanation I could come up with was that Jesus Christ was real, and other forces were not of the light.
Then I got what I had been looking for. Lon said that Christian life is a life that is supernatural - where Holy Spirit elevates one out of one's personality and gives tremendous resources of kindness and mercy and strength that one does not naturally have. I have trouble getting along with people and have a tendency toward wasting myself in retributions and vengeance. This was all I needed: Grace. To elevate me out of these cycles and focus on serving God.
Regarding grace, he said the following. "Guilt paralyzes; grace motivates." He used the example of Paul when confronted by Jesus: "If he had been in guilt, he would have been paralyzed with self-loathing for having killed all these Christians. But grace motivated him into action, and he was chosen to write a third of the New Testament." This was a useful perspective.
A couple at the church guided me through a conversion process. "Do you admit that you are a sinner?" "Yes, most certainly." "Do you recognize that Jesus Christ died for your sins?" This led to a long discussion, in which I said things like "I'll die for my sins if anyone does" (notable discussion on the Usenet: "Jesus died for your sins" - "I did not ask him to"
and they talked about the lake of fire awaiting anyone whose name is not in the Book of Life, and by then I knew to not scoff at what's written in the Bible so I eventually accepted. "DO you give your life to the service of Jesus Christ?" - if He saved me from lake of fire I would have to, now wouldn't I?
I had excruciating chest pains one day and felt like I was going to die. I experienced extreme clarity of mind, and a queasy feeling that
I was not going to go to the right place. I prayed Lord's prayer; that only made matters worse. Then I looked at the message of my philosophy
- that heart and mind ought to work together in a synthesis; a merger of romanticism and rationalism - and realized that both heart and mind in themselves lack a conscience, and all action by both mind and heart had to be done within the framework of godliness. After I had that thought the chest pains went away. "Better be good, I'll check up on you," said God.
So now it's the daily battle within my soul, between good and evil.
The God I talk to is very understanding, but also demanding and does not tolerate things that are biblically wrong. I do things for Him, and sometimes He takes my advice on things that He had not previously thought of. And Jesus is there to instruct me in His ways.
