The Anastasia Centres

 

“In cities in Russia and even abroad,” I told Anastasia, “people have already started organising centres named after you. Let me read you just one example of the many letters my daughter Polina has been receiving. She herself has answered a number of them, and sent others to me, but I can’t possibly reply to them all, and there are some letters I’m not completely sure how to respond to. After all, there are people out there who think these centres represent some kind of sect. Just listen to this letter from one of the centres — how would you respond?”

I took one of the letters Polina had forwarded to me and read it to Anastasia in full. Here it is:

Hello, Polina!

I am a member of our school’s Anastasia Ecological Creativity Centre, Valery Anatolievich Karasiov.

Our Centre is still quite young it was set up on 4 December 195)7 and is now in the process of getting established. Its genesis was facilitated by your father’s book, for which we are all very grateful to him.

Anastasia, like a ray of Light in a dark realm, is now bringing together the creative forces of us adults and children who have not lost our creative capacities, with the aim of standing up for our honour and dignity. Such people as we aspire to bright ideals and believe that the happiness of Russia, our native land, is in our hands and our thoughts.

We realise how right now the forces of darkness are pressing down upon her, and we are trying to help her as much as we are able.

Teachers, schoolchildren and their parents are all working together at our Centre.

At the present time we are introducing Anastasia and her ideas to kids and their parents with the help of classes and seminars, making use of your father’s books and distributing them along with magazine aiticles.

We are also trying to put together a collection of scientific accounts explaining Anastasia’s abilities.

We are aware of the challenges involved in the task of awakening Man’s conscious awareness, in overcoming the inenia of human thinking and so we are going about our activities with calmness and confidence. And we have already made some interesting discoveries.

Some people we have been in touch with look upon Anastasia as a beautiful fairy-tale, while others tune in to our work right from, their very first reading of the book. There are also a few who are starting to spread rumours that Anastasia is just another sect, which makes us smile.

But as it has been said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

The main thing is, we are so happy that Anastasia has brought us together in this rural region with its dying agricultural industries and its decaying state-run farm-, whose managers have completely forgotten about people’s needs — especially young people’s needs. And this has all happened on the very spot where Mikhail Kalinin3 was

born and the hugely successful Verkhnyaya Troitsa  state-run farm once flourished.

Here at the Anastasia Centre located at the M. I. Kalinin rural school, our Raduga programme was initiated. It is designed to work out and put into practice creative solutions for the development of our native land, work education and the moral upbringing of the rising generation, to set up a basis for the manufacturing of ecologically clean agricidturalproducts.

Raduga also aims to set up a young people’s cultural and ecological manufacturing co-operative under the name Rus, which will include the Slavic cultural centre known as Lada and an ecological manufacturing complex called Rod.

This is the kind of programme Anastasia helped us set up.

Let unbelievers believe in their unbelief but we shall work on bringing our programme to fruition, no matter how unrealisable it may appear to some people.

Our goal is to allow our young people to feel the practical results of their creative forces.

One aspect of the Raduga programme involves getting to know our own country better — studying our native land’s ancient history and the life and culture of our Slavic forebears.

A long time ago, right near Verkhnyaya Troitsa, the town of Medved was built, but hardly anything is known about it — it has literally been wiped off the face of the Earth. Along the banks of the Medveditsa1 River may be found old Slavic burial mounds. We are wondering whether some of these have a similar significance to that of the dolmens8 in Gelendzhik, since that was where the local Medved militia did battle with the Tatars and their Golden Horde.9 We need this information, as we don’t want to be neglectfid of our past. We shall take steps to preserve whatever we can, and do at least a partial restoration. That is our request, Polina, to Anastasia.

In the spring we shall start setting up a nursery to cultivate cedar seedlings — this will be possible thanks to one of our local residents, a forest warden by the name of Georgi Shaposhnikov, who gave us this amazing gift.

Our childrens theatre, headed by Tatiana Yakovlevna Zaonegina, who comes from Siberia, will be putting on a play based on the Anastasia book. The kids are really fired up with the project.

We woidd very much like other centres and organisations Anastasia helped come into being to get in touch with us. May her Divine lines of Light join all our centres together throughout Russia.

Mutual communication, even if just through letters, will increase our strength and enable us to find answers more quickly.

Our postal address is as follows:

Anastasia Ecological Creativity Centre

M.I. Kalinin School "Medved, Medveditsa (pronounced something like mid-VEYTCH, mid-VET dit-sd) — these names both signify bear (the animal), male and female, respectively

8dolmens — See Chapter 4: “Score for the Universe”.

9Tatars (= Tartars), Golden Horde — a reference to the Mongol invasion of Russia under Batu Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan) in the 13th century; the Tatar domination of Russia lasted almost two hundred years.

Verkhnyaya Troitsa, Kalinin District,

Tver Oblast 171622

The following is a gift from our school to all for whom Anastasia exists.

HEAR YOUR ORDERS,

DEAR BROTHERS!

To help with Anastasia’s World-happifying ideas,

To head off disaster for good And never repeat it, we should Awaken at six in the morning So as not to find anything boring And with smiles and sincere open hearts We shall stretch out our arms to the stars And draw ourselves close to her side —

To our mother dear, as to our bride:

“Here I am, your own blood to embraced And a sly smile creeps over our face...

In an instant, not a moment beyond,

We see Mother’s own face respond.

“To you, Mother Nature, good morn!

Who with God the Father  have borne Strong warriors — where would one find In the Universe any more kind?

Oh Sister, of Slavic blood true,

So long we have waited for yon.

We all have been touched by your Ray:

Tour orders we now will obey. ”

Dear brothers, your orders now hear!

At six, like the book says, dark fear Will flee from, our forthright attack —

Fifteen minutes it takes, there and back?1 So that no threat will vex our dear sister,

We must give this child our assistance.

We answer to them, after all.

Then how can we not heed their call?

We are quite used to lending our aid To break through the dark foe’s blockade?2

Valery, a Russian naval officer

I wish you success and all the best, Polina. We at the Centre shall be happy to receive any information you can give us about Anastasia. Please give our very best wishes to your father.

Happy New Tear!

11 fifteen minutes — This whole poem is a reference to Anastasia’s ‘orders’ (an urgent request, at least) to “wake up in the morning at a set time — six o’clock, say — and think about something good. ... They can think about their children, about their loved ones, about how to make everyone happy. If they could only think fifteen minutes like that.” See Book 2, Chapter 8: “The answer”. The word orders harks back to the observation by the ‘colonel’ in Book 2 (Chapter 20: “The Ringing Cedars of Russia”) that Vladimir was “not good at following orders properly”.

12blockade — a reference to the 900-day Nazi blockade of Leningrad (starting in September 1941), which was broken by the will of the Russian people — first, during the winter months with the ‘Road of life’ across frozen Lake Ladoga east of the city, and then for good, finally ending in January 1944. During all this time the city never surrendered and was never taken by the enemy.

“Well, Anastasia, what do you have to say about this letter?”

“I can say that it shows marvellous aspirations of the human soul. But neither you nor I can take credit for that. It is beauty and the strength of their soul that alone are responsible. Their names would make an even worthier choice for naming the centre. I grew up in the cradle of the Creator, while their soul has strived to brave the tortures of hell and has survived.

“For years a string of hardships, deprivations, temptations and commotions have tried as hard as they could to distort their realisation of good. Their souls have been able to overcome it all. They are stronger than those who have cut themselves off from the world behind a stone wall. They are in the world and have enriched the world with their presence. They should be remembered in the centre’s name. If people plan to name all the centres after me, it will result in the formation of a cult, and that must not be. A personality or image cult always distracts Man from the essential thing, from himself.”

“Then what will be the result?” I queried. “There’s Solntsev’s centre in Moscow and Larionova’s in Gelendzhik, and already I’ve heard people speak of an Anastasia division at the International Academy of Spiritual Development. How will people be able to find out with precision what these centres are all about?”

“Intuition is a quality given the same to all, Vladimir, and a centre’s real essence and attraction is determined not by the name: it is the soul that should be able to feel one’s actions.”

“Now that’s an interesting turn of things, now I’ll have to do some more thinking. You are a quite unconventional woman, Anastasia, and conversing with you makes thinking work not just for me but for many others around too, and when is there time to relax? There is one more concrete question they ask of you: what kind of burial mounds are located there on the river, on the Medveditsa?”

“There is no need to excavate the mounds. They have fulfilled their task, and people were born there who were the first to ask the most important question.”

“What question?”

“Think about it yourself, Vladimir, please. But I shall tell you this for now: you go show people like these the ways to make better contact with each other. You can do your part by noting their addresses in your book. Let all the letters, like bright rays, help them warm each other’s hearts. The St. Petersburg poet Korotynsky13 gave you a hint a long time ago when he wrote:

This ray of Love from heart to heart With thread Divine will gleam and glisten,

Make every soul from dust depart And thirsting minds with heaven freshen. ”

“Okay, I’ve got it,” I said. “I myself was going to publish both the letters and the poems readers have sent in. I wanted to keep them and release them in a volume of their own. I myself felt there was something deeper than usual in them. And I can make their addresses known through the Moscow centre, so that people may end up helping each other. My daughter Polina can also participate — she has been very good about taking care of the letters to date.

“You know, Anastasia, it might not be a bad idea if people from all over the world could carry on communication with each other. They will find people of like spirit and like mind,

Ij'Alexander Korotynsky — a St. Petersburg scientist and poet. See Book 2, Chapter 25: “The Space of Love”.

they can marry or at least become friends, they can start new common trends or spend their vacation together. Right, that’s it! That’s great! I’ll get a selection of letters together and put them out as a collection.  You know how our newspapers now offer a dating service — people place advertisements, let’s say they’re looking to meet a potential marriage partner, and they give their height, their age and the colour of their eyes, as though they were selecting a prize cow for breeding. But here, I wager, it will be much better, when people meet in spirit and start helping each other.”

“Of course a union in spirit is better, more solid indeed.” “Yes... But there’s just one problem...” problem? What is it?”