My first guide to the transpersonal world was the legend of the Soviet esotericism, a famous translator and one of the founders of the Context club, Vitaly Mikheikin. I was 24 years old, I just graduated from PhysTech. He was a man of a very big heart and great wisdom. He was only 42 years old at the time of our acquaintance, but even then, everyone called him "grandfather." He was our elder. Vitaly looked appropriately: long hair, a grey beard a la Marx.

From him, I received the first of his translated books by Stanislav Grof "Realms of the Human Unconscious". I read it all night and the next day I was already a different person: I clearly saw what was hindering human freedom and development - without what any psychotherapy and attempts to develop would be only an imitation. It was to Vitaly Mikheykin and his wife Alena that we all came for "contexts" - that's how we called our underground meetings. It was a real transpersonal fraternity of people - artists, architects, scientists, psychologists looking for truth, knowledge, reality. Among the other founders of this club was Anatoly Arlashin, who was actively engaged in yoga, lucid dreams and Gurdjieff practices in those years (Georgy Gurdjieff - Russian mystic of the first half of the 20th century. – Editor's Note.) It was from his light hand that the first four volumes of Carlos got into the USSR Castaneda. Another patriarch of our fraternity was the writer and poet Valentin Kuklev.

Vitaly Mikheikin's apartment was in the Northern suburb of Moscow - a small one, about 40 meters.

Sometimes it was a discussion, other times it was concrete practice. Nobody paid attention to experience, age, or diplomas: if someone took the floor, we believed that the Universe was speaking to us through him at that moment. At that time, we already had the translations of the works of the German psychologist Fritz Perls, and we took from them the practice of the "hot seat". A person who wanted to sort out his problems sat down in a chair, and the host began to work with him, the rest of the group silently testified to this process. At the end of the session, we shared our feelings, but in no case, we were giving advice or evaluating what had happened. We used Gurdjieff's techniques: for example, at some point "stop" was said, and everyone froze to realize where they were, what they were thinking about.

Among us were people who were seriously engaged in mystical Christian practices. There were contacts with Sufi masters.

It was a real knight club. At that time, our career did not shine, because most of us were not in the system. We were not very worried about money, so we lived peacefully and dealt with the main thing: there was time for friendship, love, reading, for an attentive search for what was really interesting and important. We did not hurry anywhere - this was an undeniable advantage of the Brezhnev era.

I seriously got involved in Tibetan Buddhism thanks to Vitali: he began to engage me in translation activities, offering me to edit the translation of the text of the great Tibetan master of the Dzogchen tradition "How Nirvana and Samsara Arise From The Basis of Being." This book has largely determined the path of my further spiritual search for my true nature. Then, together with his wife, I translated the book by the famous Canadian Buddhistologist, Herbert Gunther, "Dawn of Tantra", which he wrote together with the Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

At times the meetings took place at the places of other "Context" participants: for example, at the place of the artist, Sergei de Rocambol. All bohemia was gathering at his place. He amazed with unpredictability, artistry, and behaved provocatively, took nothing on faith and had a tremendous sense of humour and a craving for reality. This craving for knowledge of reality, as well as friendship, united us all.

The meetings of the "Context" were truly underground: officially in the Soviet Union, esoterics was illegal. In 1982, Vitaly Mikheykin and I went to Buryatia to get acquainted with living Buddhism through the disciples of the Buryat Lama, Bidiya Dandaron. He was the first lama in the USSR who began to transfer knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism to students from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and the Baltic states, and was also involved in combining Buddhism with European philosophy and the achievements of modern science. During his career, he more than once ended up in camps, where he eventually died, and went into another dimension. His students blessed us to join the underground Buddhist circles.

A real miracle happened on this trip: I received initiation into Buddhist practices from the Dalai Lama XIV. It turned out that at this very time he came to Buryatia and gave teachings in the Ivolginsky datsan, and Vitaly and I were fortunate enough to be there. During this retreat, representatives of local special services wrote down our names, and, of course, after that I had serious problems with the KGB.

He kept his word. I then graduated from the graduate school of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, already wrote a dissertation, and according to the law, after research degree they should have hired me because I was a graduate student who entered the competition.

Despite the fact that my boss was a well-known Soviet philosopher, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Alexander Spirkin, they did not give me a bid, and I defended my dissertation 4 years later, after perestroika began. In other places, they also were refusing me for a long time: at first, they agreed to take me and then a few days later they said no. As I later found out, they all received phone calls telling them not to employ me. I was 27 years old with a young baby and six months without work.

I had a lucky escape". I know those who went to prison for several years for completely innocent things: practicing yoga, disseminating the teachings of the Roerichs, or for publishing samizdat literature.

At the same time, there were those in the Union who could afford to engage in the unknown, for example, my boss, Alexander Spirkin. Corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences were at that time free people, one might say "untouchables". Alexander Georgievich was very interested in psychics, he was the patron of psychics, and at the same time he published the "right" Soviet books. He had a laboratory where their abilities were studied, and crowds of psychics came to our sector to get into his wing. He patronized many: for example, the famous healer Juna. It is important to understand that members of the Politburo (Political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties – Translator's Note.) themselves worked with psychics, even Brezhnev used the services of Juna.

During the time of perestroika, Americans began to actively travel to the Soviet Union under the Citizen Diplomacy program, mainly representatives of various New Age trends. In 1987, a large group of "rebirthers" came to Moscow - masters of breathing psychotechnics who can relive the birth and free themselves from the trauma of birth. Many of the visitors met with the pioneer of water home birth, Igor Charkovsky, who was a friend of mine. By the way, once I even met an American neuroscientist, John Lilly, the creator of the sensory deprivation tank, a researcher of psychedelics and communication skills of dolphins.

At Charkovsky's apartment on Rustaveli Street close to the centre of Moscow, the bathroom was rebuilt into a huge aquarium - pregnant women bathed in it to give birth. When we became friends, Igor told me how the idea of water birth came to him. He was a diver, and once during a dive a white dolphin came to him and told him that there would be a great flood, and in order to be saved, people must return to the water, and that water birth opens the necessary abilities in a human. By that time, I already knew a lot about the birth trauma from the works of Stanislav Grof and I perfectly understood that soft births are very important for the formation of a healthy human psyche. I introduced Charkovsky to Grof's ideas, and this further convinced him in correctness of his approach. I have two sons - from my first and second marriage - and both of them had a water birth. Each time I attended the birth and assisted. Here my theoretical knowledge went into practice.

In 1989, I personally met with Stanislav Grof. He spoke at the Research Institute of Psychiatry. About 500 people jammed into a hall with a maximum capacity of 400 people. Grof gave a lecture on the healing potential of altered states of consciousness. They applauded him, then a huge line lined up for autographs on the self-published editions of his two books. He was very touched: by attention, and by the fact that his works were widely dispersed in samizdat. On the following days, the first ever seminar in the USSR on holotropic breathing took place at the USSR Center for Psychoimmunology. There I received Grof's invitation to come to the USA to and study with him. Education for us, pioneers, was free, it was only necessary to find money to get there.

In the West, they looked at us through pink glasses - I'm talking about ordinary Americans. It is clear that politologists well understood and performed their job perfectly: penetrating the right circles, taking over the control and destroying whatever needed to be destroyed, but mainstream perceived perestroika and Russians euphorically, since Russians and Americans went through the long years of fear of the nuclear war. Grof had friends with millionaires who created special funds to fund his programs, giving support to people who wanted to study with him, but who did not have the necessary funds. We were fed, accommodated, taken care for. Grof's workshops took place in different places - in the mountains, in the forests, in the desert, in the USA, and in Europe.

The airfare was huge compared to my salary, but I was lucky: once the flight was paid to me by the Soros Foundation, another time by Grof's friend, the monk, David Steindl-Rast. I met him at a conference in Italy in 1991. He shocked me with incredible kindness, modesty and awareness. Brother David asked me when I was going to come next time. I replied that it would not happen soon because I was short of money. And he did it, just bought me a ticket.

Later I had a few opportunities to work in Europe and the USA, but I always was cool about it. Very early I realized that it is extremely important for me to live in Russia, in the country where I grew up, where I feel, not just hear, but sense with all body vibes, the language, its intonation, energy. My parents cultivated this taste in me. My father was a good singer and loved music. Thanks to him, from an early age I listened to records of the best world voices. I have absorbed this knowledge: for me, spoken word is the ultimate expression of a person. In addition, I spent a lot of time in the countryside. From the side of my mother, I have all relatives from the village: she had seven brothers and sisters. Through this experience - folk festivals, mushrooms and berries, field work, the eclecticism of Christianity and paganism, flourishing in the villages - I got a strong connection with Russian land. I think that is why it is in Russia that I feel the most real, alive.

At the very beginning of my practice, meditation seemed like magic doors to some kind of new wonderful worlds. I learned about it in the 10th grade from the work of the psychotherapist Vladimir Levy. In 1972, his book "The Art of Being Oneself" was published. For the first time it introduced to the Soviet people a quite deep auto-training techniques and elements of meditation, which I mastered. After the institute, when I became a member of the 'Context' club, I began to practice it seriously. At that time, two bestsellers were published in Samizdat: Ram Dass's book "Be Here Now," in the title of which the key to meditation has already been laid. The second book was Osho's "Meditation. The Art of Inner Ecstasy", which describes many practices. They became my meditation reference books.

Later, I realized that it was me who transplanted myself from the cell of everyday life into the cell of meditation: "to be here and now." It took several years before I found out that the essence of meditation is not in this, but in freedom, in being real. Meditation is just a tool. The main cage for a person is his mind, his thoughts, his emotions, which form the conceptual experimental framework. Meditation helps to go beyond this framework. For what? In order to become real. What does it mean to be real? Connect with infinity. As the English poet William Blake said, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." There are many methods of meditation, but if we read about them with a limited mind, then the essence is lost - we again create our concept.

Then I realized that it's not necessary to go through meditation at all. It can be your own ecstatic experience - through nature, love, creativity, philosophy, mathematics, and a spiritual teacher. Most importantly, it should be your personal experience of experiencing infinity, personal contact.

I did not have a protracted period of naive romanticism regarding spirituality, and this helped me a lot. Any dreams, concepts take you away from reality. The main thing is not to mystify anything. All the great enlightened teachers I've been fortunate to meet are exceptionally real people. The Dalai Lama is a very earthly man. I still remember how simply and joyfully he greeted everyone at the Ivolginsky datsan when I first saw him in 1982. I stood in the distance and waved to him, he smiled and waved back. At that moment, the concept of him as someone distant, lifted up on a pedestal melted in me: he became a simple person. It was a gesture of the great enlightened master, who instantly removed obstacles to make contact.

I am sure that as long as you treat the teacher as a source of unprecedented power, you will never leave the cage of the mind. This is the essence of the great Zen koan: "If you meet Buddha, kill him." Kill your concept of Buddha, enlightenment, because this is the most important obstacle in the way. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, and then meeting in 1990 with another great spiritual master - Dzogchen teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu - forever developed my immunity to the false guru.

Unfortunately, teaching, like everyone in a market society, tends to become a subject of bargaining and achievement. There are those who shamelessly use escapist rhetoric: give up everything material, or you will not see enlightenment for a century. This works well, as it is in tune with the main principle of Christianity as a civilizational project: here on Earth we are serving a term, and there we will have eternal life and happiness. In general, in traditional religions there is asceticism, an underestimation of life, the cult of nirvana, but gradually this approach is being transformed.

During my spiritual quest, I realized that there is no Shambhala, special tradition, special teacher - we are all the same, we have one infinite nature.

Billions of people are evolutionarily moving along different cultural civilization projects, and each project has its own extremely important unique discoveries and features. World religions are a kind of laboratory of the mankind, in which they study and develop their special tasks.

On this path, there are also many spiritually insane, because an idol can be created from anything, to build golden cages in heaven.

As a kind of unsuccessful spiritual practitioner, I gave a lot of time and energy to meditation and spiritual exercises, but I received very little in comparison with expectations. Because of this, for a long time I had painful thoughts like: why haven't I ever met Western enlightened students among contemporary unconditionally enlightened masters? Why am I still not enlightened? Why are my friends not enlightened? Why do spiritual practices that worked perfectly in the time of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, do not work like this in our time? Gradually, I began to understand that the reason is that the world has changed, people have changed. Spiritual practices certainly help us transform, but the old maps of reality are already outdated.

In all traditional systems, the description of reality is three-dimensional: earth, man, heaven, or in Christianity - hell, earth, paradise, in shamanism - the lower world, the middle world, the upper world, in psychology - the subconscious, conscious, superconscious. For 50,000 years, this traditional classification scheme has worked well, but today this is no longer enough. We need new dimensions of man and new tools, because the world is becoming more and more multipolar.

For example, when I shot my third film "The Tools of Evolution", my interlocutors - the largest experts from the world of modern psychology, philosophy, art, spirituality, coaching - agreed that psychotherapy is extremely important for a modern Western seeker, without it, success is impossible on the spiritual path. Why? Because 90% of the problems that people care about are relationships. Here is a fundamental dimension that has not been pointed out in the world spiritual traditions! They speak of a personal dimension: myself and my limitations, my subconscious, my dialogue with the Higher, the unlimited space of the spirit, but almost nothing about relationships with others.

My current project is about working on my own navigation system for reality, which contains the evolutionary tools that modern man needs. What kind of evolution am I talking about? There are films about how different animals perceive the world. For example, the lions have a very good horizontal vision of the world, but they do not see the sky well. Why? Because it is in the horizontal plane that they hunt. Man perceives the world also in his own way: not so long ago we broke out of animal captivity and have to become more aware of how our own perception of reality works. This will allow us to gradually free ourselves from those cages in which we live. This will be the next evolutionary leap in our human history. And this is exactly what I am doing for my navigation system, I am putting together the basic techniques for working with consciousness that are nowadays available to people, from academic and philosophical to religious.

Finally, I realized what the meaning of twists and turns of my of fate is, what I have been doing all my life in the exact and human sciences, psychology and psychotherapy, spiritual traditions and art. This is a kind of leadership through the dream factories and over the hedge and ditch of knowledge, since we are to dig through a monstrous dump of accumulated "mental scrap" (from the word mental), produced by different generations of thinkers, philosophers, and religious figures. The number of concepts is colossal, and it is very difficult to figure out what works and what are just words all by yourself.

I am convinced: it is not enough to become real, enlightened yourself. The next step for each of us is to share our experience, our life with other people. Opening up to each other as much as possible, we help each other to grow and evolve. All that we need is to change the focus to see relationships as a tool of evolution, parenthood as a tool of evolution, cooperation as a tool of evolution, love as a tool of evolution. There is a potential for 7 billion enlightened people here on the planet Earth. Everyone live life through their own experience, and if it is not expressed, others will never become aware of it, so it is so important from early childhood to develop your inner artist in all areas of life.