Three Days of Love

by Galina Lukyanova

The word "opening" has two meanings. The first and the most common is discovery of something new. The second - verbal - is breaking locks, opening valves, in other words - elimination of closing. The first doesn't occur without the second. You can, of course, come across a purse lying on the road, but this pleasant windfall is not a discovery. To make a discovery in a scientific experiment, in social or private life - you should get rid of these locks, valves… If we are sure of a scientific paradigm verity, then we shall sooner ignore the experimental data which contradict it. While we piously believe in justice of the present social order, we shall not see repressions around. If we think at heart that our husband is a boring and unlucky person, then we shall be sincerely surprised that somebody considers him a genius.

I thought in such a way after "Discovery".¹ I was drawn to this training by curiosity, caused partly by Olga Kostyleva's story, which was published in the last issue of the "Woman Plus…".² I didn't count much on that I would make discoveries like those ones Olga had confessed. Theoretically I had a better grounding - had read Saptrem, de Chardin, Bach, Grof and a lot of other things - and I doubted a lot that I could pick up any new ideas. Alas to those who conceitedly think that if they think therefore they are!

No, my mind after "Discovery" didn't "turn over" as Olga's had done. I had another feeling, a feeling like that Konyok gorbunok's friend - Ivan the Fool (a hero of a Russian fairy tale) had after swimming in boiling milk. Renewal, purifying of the soul… There is only one substance which is capable of purifying the soul - LOVE! "Discovery" is three days of LOVE, three very short days, put together from extremely long instants, and in each instant a godlike nature of the man is being revealed. Since the godlike substance, which we have, is not defined by our ability to think (to those who disagree I advise to re-read Vonnegut), but by our ability to love. Each of us comes to being with this ability. It is an integral part of a human being, as well as the ability to speak, think, perceive ourselves. But see - how long we learn to speak, to perfect our thinking, to strengthen our will… And only the ability to love - the only divine gift, which can make a man happy, - is not called for, not developed, not opened… As a good friend of mine used to say "the function trains the organ". The function of the soul is to love, and how much suffering we could avoid if we trained this important, unfixed by devices, most important organ. But how should it be done? HOW?!

Once, when living in a communal flat, I decided to come to love my neighbor. She was a woman of an unpleasant appearance and even more unpleasant character - stupid, canny, suspicious and ignorant. But I had to co-exist with her somehow, and I tried to make myself love her. How hard I tired! But alas, my efforts were in vain: every effort of autosuggestion ended in an image of a huge, fat, persisting fly. I wonder if I can come to love her now? Not for something, not contrary to something, but just because she is a human being? As I managed to do it in the training, where quite a mixed audience had gathered: mature women, weary of life, young girls, searching for a husband, timid young men, presumptuous "new Russians", people of an attractive and ugly appearance, of different experience, ages, education, incomes, jobs… If they came across each other under other circumstances, their reaction to each other would be distrust, dislike, aggression. And here - LOVE. Not personified, addressed to nobody special, but to an every creature, which is near or at some distance at the moment, to trees, birds, stars.

Just imagine, suddenly the unfixed device that is called the soul starts working in almost forty people. One-two - in full power, as the lungs start working after a successful artificial respiration. As simple methods of artificial respiration revive a miracle of life, and just as well after some simple exercises in the training the valve blocking the soul "opens". As simple as everything genius. The unfixed organ starts fulfilling its function and a thickened atmosphere is generated, atmosphere, which is saturated with love as the air is saturated with electricity before a thunderstorm. But unlike a thunderstorm, in this atmosphere in spite of its density you don't feel suffocated but feel your implication to a mystery that is similar to the act of creation. And you realize that the world was created by love and by nothing else. And suddenly the words "GOD is LOVE" become clear.

I was afraid to return from the training. I wasn't afraid that the "opening" of the soul would make me unprotected but that it would be difficult to breathe in that rarefied air where there is so little love. I shouldn't have been afraid! My unfixed organ fulfilled its function perfectly, and the emanations, produced by it, affected the surrounding noosphere. On my way to work I felt such an energy charge that I could jump in three steps but I walk slowly, looking attentively at passing people and sending them the mental signal: "I love you!" And the returned looks were surprisingly tender. I began to reacted more calmly to inevitable routine problems that usually irritated me and spoiled my life. During a short period I received so many unexpected declarations of love from men who had been dear for me at different stages of my life, that I can't remember since my youth. Faces from the past and absolutely new ones started to appear, all this proves my strange feeling that some centripetal forces concentrated in the air, surrounding me. And I was more often asked a question: "Why are your eyes so shining?"