The Russian Revolution 1917

The Meditation in Memory of my Grandmother Anna

Anna, my maternal grandmother, was a quiet and patient woman whom I did not see on earth. My mother never spoke about her, so did my mother’s siblings — my uncles and aunts who escaped from the Russian Civil War in 1918 to Estonia. They got Nansen passports and odd jobs were their only source of income. I remember noticing that they spoke often about their father Piotr, Anna’s husband, the undoubted authority in their eyes, and never mentioned their mother, as if she did not exist at all. Today I am over eighty. I live in the USA, and as a medium I hear voices of spirits and angels and I had appealed for spirits’ help to find Anna in the subtle world and introduce me to her, because I wanted to know who was my mother’s mother, and what I had inherited from her.

In short, here is Anna’s story. Her husband, my maternal grandfather served in the Caucasus, but for some reason, he replaced his military uniform with the priest’s attire. He was a loud man, who managed to secure for himself the central position in the family. But when I started asking questions how passive Anna and aggressive Piotr managed to coexist without divorcing or separating, several guardian angels offered me a special meditation to learn more about Anna. Will I recognize her in me? Do I carry some of her traits?

Meeting the spirit of Anna, my maternal grandmother

March 3, 2017

My aunt Zhenya, now also in the spirit world, brought her mother Anna to my place. As a medium, I can ask questions and receive answers from the spirits, that is, to engage in a dialogue with a chatting spirit like we converse with someone over the phone. The audibility of a spirit talk may fluctuate, sometimes spirit voices are quiet, hard to hear, but sometimes they sound as clearly, as coming from someone in flesh in my room. Usually, the longer you talk with a spirit, the better the audibility becomes. The legendary direct voice medium Leslie Flint had spoken about this condition of spirit communication – the spirit voices can be heard clearly, or vaguely depending on many conditions, like weather or the compatibility of medium’s and spirit voice’s wave frequencies.

Sometimes I see a spirit, with whom I talk, but not always. For instance, I wanted to see Anna, but she was not letting to see her, and I could sense that I was dealing with a reserved and impeccably polite person who took refuge in a protective shell. Nevertheless, Anna showed a sincere interest in meditation. As usual, I asked the Anna’s guardian angels, or her spirit helpers to come closer, join us, provide us with protection and determine the topic of meditation, from which Anna could derive some benefits.

Meditating, the first thing I saw was a bookshelf from floor to ceiling, packed with books. Did Anna see the same shelf, or did I see it because Anna chose to hint at something important about herself? Instantaneously, I recalled similar shelves in the library of my grandmother Luba, when she lived in her home in Paide, Estonia, before the arrival of the Reds. And per the same association, I asked Anna, “Do you come from the Russian nobility?” Anna confirmed. To me it seemed strange that I heard this for the first time in my eighties and already living decades in the USA. Why did none of her children, my mother included, did not talk about it? I broke off the meditation, and asked, where she met her future husband.

After some hesitation, as if getting my unspoken question, “If you are a noblewoman, how did you manage to become a widow of the priest, as people call them — papadya?” Overcoming some restrictions in her mind, she, finally spelled out the truth. “I met him on our estate. I was 17 years old. He raped me, and at that time it was unthinkable to marry someone else, I had to marry him.”

By the time of the wedding, she already knew who her future husband was. She realized that her submissiveness condemned her to life with a womanizer and a drunkard, but she had no other choice, but to suffer.

Anna’s assistant in the astral, who called herself Hildegard, expanded Anna’s story, “Her marriage to that man was a nightmare! She gave birth to eight babies, while suffering from constant domestic insults caused by his terrible jealousy.”

As I mentioned already, when my grandfather served in Caucasus alpine mountains, he earned of the reputation of a fearless warrior, but something made him switch the occupations… Once, my mama dropped a word, as if speaking more to herself than to me that it was his financial situation that made him a God’s servant. I think, his quite theatrical personality equipped with storytelling talent bolstered nicely his financial decision, but what about God, would God accept such loud servant, who in his heart would never stop longing for military uniform and his wars’ unrestricted adventurousness? Piotr’s former army buddies were frequent guests in Piotr’s home, and he believed that they made advances to her young and beautiful wife, as Anna was a real beauty. They were still splendid officers and he was only a pop! His jealousy was fed by overall low standing of the Russian Church in the Russian society.

Russian Church reformation never occurred openly, but, nevertheless, its shadow was cast by Ivan the Terrible, the contemporary of Henry VIII’s, the reformer of Church of England. Ivan the IV murdered the Moscow metropolitan, the Head of the Russian Church, the spiritual counterpart of the tsar himself, Philipp II. The Metropolitan was tsar’s childhood friend, stemming from a Moscow finest boyar’s family. His fall  happened after he refused to bless publicly Ivan’s massacre of Novgorod.

(Novgorod’s veche contemplated separation from Moscow power. Ivan’s unprecedented  massacre uprooted all seeds of any kind of free thinking, democracy, free city’s self-rule — veche. After Ivan’s massacre, the free city Novgorod would never regain its status, freedom, nor its wealth! I think, this event started Russian monarchy secret “war” against its own church to continue unofficial, secret uprooting potential nests of svobodomisliya – free thinking and spiritual education. limiting its role in society, no chances of svobodomisliya – freethinking, developing enlightenment movements or cultivate fine spirituality. This invisible, not fully recognized, not fully researched or documented pressure turned the Russian Church into “The Church of Poor and Beggars.” The priests became “pops” and their wives — “papadyas”, like “Papageno” and “Papagena” in Mozart’s “Magic Flute”.  And this was the underlying social situation that turned Father Piotr’s inborn bravery into dark Satanic anger.

A brief deviation from our story. The overall humiliation of the Russian Church had unexpected consequences. In long run, it started to bread deprivation and poverty as way of life of these whom it served – the Russian commoners. Because, since the times of execution of Philipp II, the Metropolitan of Church of Russia, who came from the the upper part of society, the tables turned, and the “ideology” of beggars, their attitude started to shape the church’s spirit. I will put here the real reason of the Russian historic alcoholism what was supported by many lesser factors, like tax politics: selling more and more cheap vodka in order to fill the Russian “federal reserve” – tsar’s kaznaa.  Later, the Soviets sold more cheap vodka to cover economic disasters, along the way dulling people, locked up behind “the grandest of all partitions,” the ill-famous “iron curtain”!

Hildegard continued her report on Anna’s life. Piotr felt that for him, there was no comparison with his former friends! They were the splendid officers and he was a provincial “pop” wearing his military medal next to cross on his priest’s garb. And he beat his beautiful wife mercilessly trying to destroy her beautiful face. He dragged her by the hair, she was bruised. Was she a beauty now? Frequent pregnancies and fear to anger his husband were aging her quickly. Discussing her future in the astral world , Anna was asking for the spinsterhood in her next incarnation! No more marriages, because enough was enough for her. Eight pregnancies, one kid died in infancy, the youngest son Ivan, her Vanechka (nickname for Ivan), was shot under their very eyes by Kronstadt sailors. (Piotr’s sons were accepted to attend exclusive military school as descendants of general Michelson). The other six kids were alienated from her. Her husband continued to beat her until the eldest son, Viktor, stood up for his mother, threatening, if his father would raise his hand again, he, the son, would avenge her with gusto! Father Piotr stopped beating Anna, but soon enough, he found another way to torture her.

In the presence of his children and Anna, Father Piotr started abusing verbally aristocrats, putting in his words all his passion, bitterness and anger. Gradually, he turned the children against their mother, and impact of his oral abuse did not stop there. The negativity of husband’s words was transforming mother’s natural love toward her children into lukewarm indifference. Piotr continued systematically curse aristocrats, as if preventing the mother’s union with her children that could any minute turn against him.

It is not difficult to guess that Anna was the real target of Piotr’s scolds of nobility , because Anna was the granddaughter of the colonel  Ivan Ivanovich Michelson, who suppressed Emelian Pugachev’s uprising, arrested Pugachev and handed him over to the authorities. The empress Ekaterina the Great awarded the colonel with the large estate in Vitebsk province and a gold sword adorned with diamonds “for the defeat of the Pugachev’s uprising.”  Regrettably, the Michelson’s son, unfit to run an estate desolated this invaluable gift.

Definitely, this desolation eased Piotr’s access to Anna, and he took full advantage of it.  Yes, he knew how to rape a 17-year-old beauty, but he was never able to suppress the subtleties in her that are transmitted genetically. Anna did not fell to the level with her husband’s world filled with vodka, rough violence and loose women. They never became equal.

Hildegard did more than revealed the sad truth about the Anna’s marriage. She proposed an interesting way, how to turn my meditation into a unique healing session, as Anna was in the serious need to be healed. I was gently reminded that Anna talked openly about her marriage to satisfy my curiosity, not for her benefit. In other words, now it was my turn to thank her!

Anna’s guides proposed to use a combination of a “flycatcher” with the burning furnace beneath it. Both, a screen and a furnace were produced by the power of imagination, as things are brought to life in astral world. These things are “real” and visible in the astral world. On earth, I cannot see them with my normal sight, but my “third eye” gets them effortlessly.

A large astral screen was suspended from the ceiling across my studio, beneath stood an astral field stove with open entrance from the top. I was told to touch gently white, slightly ribbed surface of the screen. Since I’m still in the body, I confess, having touched our imaginary screen, I did not have enough sensitivity to feel anything, which I admitted to Anna’s helpers honestly. They laughed and offered to compare this screen with a country kitchen in hot summertime when there was a lot of flies. The hostess hangs a sticky roller on the kitchen lamp shade. The other end of roller falls freely down, freeing the sticky tape in all its length. Flies rush toward honey-smelling sticky tape to be glued to it stay there for good!

Anna’s helpers explained that the screen was also covered with a special “solution” which was emanating waves of certain frequency that corresponded to the frequency of Anna husband’s shouting. It would attract like magnet the memory of the real shouts that sat in Anna’s mind like dark flies causing her constant depression, pain and sicknesses.  The problem was how to get these “flies” out of Anna’s head?

I was obligated to resolve this problem. I decided to rely on my empathy toward Anna’s situation and GOLDEN LIGHT! I asked for help praying to Mother Mary and something resonated in me. My prayer became louder, more purposeful. I continued calling in more and more light, I called light for Anna, for more and more light, I called for LIGHT! And suddenly the air was full of screams, curses and yelling. The word “aristocrat” was repeated so often that the sounds forming this word merged into a kind of continuous buzz that blocked all other sounds. The stream of verbal drunken abuse literally flied toward the screen, hitting the screen in a swing! Now the black spots were all over the screen dripping down with dirty sticky jets, and finally freezing. To me they represent the bitterness of the Russian eternal irritation, a powerful anti-constructive, ruinous force that no one can stop, or fathom its essence.

I was suggested to move the loops on which the screen was suspended, to tighten the lower edge into a “bouquet”, and lower it through the open top into the field stove’s flame and wait until fire would burn entire screen to ashes.

………………………..

Partition

The communist’s totalitarian regime, war and post-war years of hunger and destitute changed our living conditions.  Now we lived in an old two-room house with a kitchen. I remember only this kitchen. A thin partition cut from that kitchen a narrow, oblong space for my father’s mother. You met her in my previous blog “Meditation in memory of my paternal grandmother Luba”.

It could hold only granny’s chest of drawers, а small handmade table of Karelian birch, a chip of the empire, as it was called jokingly, and an old armchair by the window and a narrow bed. On the other side of this partition, in the kitchen, there was a table covered with oilcloth. It served as our dinner table and mother’s two sisters, Zhenya and Valya gathering spot. During the war, they sought refuge under my mother’s wing, and after the war ended in May, 1945 they continued their stay helping mother, now the widow, to handle the situation. My father was killed some month shy of war’s end.

The two sisters behind that oilcloth-table spoke loudly so that their words could be heard through the thin partition into the grandmother’s room. They talked hours, turning it in about 5 pm when mother was expected to return home. And they spoke only about one thing ­– the aristocrats, whom they scolded in any thinkable way. They spent their free time allotted them by our life schedule. They could do whatever they liked to do. But all they wanted was to scold the aristocrats. They wanted to annoy grandmother Luba, who stemmed from old noble family with its own coat-of-arms and history of family rise and fall. Their disparagement of aristocrats was aimed against Luba, as their father’s same line of talk was aimed to hurt his wife Anna. As I took Luba’s side, and hid in her room behind the partition I got my share of criticism as well. They were grownup people, I was ten years old who got for her birthday, her first anniversary, the very special “gift” – the government notification that my father had become war casualty. This gift was topped by loud senseless scorn what I heard on the day-by-day bases three years in a row. It built my sharp aversion to vulgarity. Ironically, later it would make me a decent film critic who recognized both opposing ends, vulgarity and talent on the screen instantaneously and solely by intuition — before public opinion, good or bad, could mar the clarity of my perception. I needed nobody’s advice or opinion to write my reviews. After seeing a film, all I had to do was find right words to express my feel about it.  The independence of the perception was quite rare thing under the communist tutelage. Of course, soon enough I started pay the price for this independence, but this was another story that did not belong here.

Finally, my aunts excommunicated me from their family as “Luba’s grandchild” and declared my little brother to be their prince and pet kid and they instilled in him his anti-aristocratic views vigorously. In other words, they created the partition between me and my brother. And it took about… 60 years to tear it down.

The senseless cursing of unfortunate aristocrats continued, but the day came when I asked, who were these so profoundly hated people? My instinct told me that deep down my aunts were terribly envious, maybe they themselves wanted to be these cursed and vilified aristocrats? So, I hoped that my grandmother would clarify the issue for me. She frowned, took her stack of warn cards, and began to lay out her favorite solitaire of a hangman, which very rarely converged and lasted for ages. The grandmother’s library was already completely ruined, and Dumas’ novels, which would quite satisfactorily explain everything, good and bad, about aristocrats were gone as well. But granny Luba managed to safe three invaluable volumes of the first editions of Pushkin’s, Lermontov’s and Gogol’ collections of works. She managed to save these three invaluable volumes through all the vicissitudes of socio-historical cataclysms. As I repeat my question what the word aristocrat means grandmother found in her drawer the Pushkin’s volume, opened it on the first page of the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” handed it to me commanding, “Read it!” and returned to her hangman’s solitaire. From the kitchen we heard the usual scolding of aristocrats.

From the hands of my grandmother I took the volume and started reading the first poem of Pushkin.  I did not realize yet that I was holding in my hand a classic book — the most powerful tool, the most effective defense against life vulgarity and seeming meaninglessness. I did not realize yet that these three volumes will guide me to another world, another height of thinking, another everything!

Sometimes, when the voices from the kitchen became particularly loud, I looked attentively at my grandmother. She was a strong woman, and never descended to the level of her opponents behind the partition. She never – not once – judged or discussed the statements that reached her ears from behind the kitchen partition — sole purpose of which was to offend and prick her! The nightmare of this one-sided duel ended quickly when one of my mother’s sisters left us finding a better place to stay.

The most ironic aspect of this story is that both my aunts were kind women. After entering the workforce, aunt Zhenya submissively gave her entire salary to our common table. All this kitchen dishonor of the nobility was an alluvial skin on the body of their spirituality. It was sewn from the vocabulary of the Russian revolutionaries, their agitation flyers, from the very spirit of the Russian rebellion that a caprice of history or the will of Almighty froze into a new form of governing called “the proletarian dictatorship”! Do not start me on that! We got the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin. An American historian, sorry I forgot his name, invented a slippery maxim: “Stalin received a country with a wooden plow, but surrendered it with an atomic bomb!” The facts are true, but the spirit of this adagio is more than questionable. It was also the truth that Russia with a wooden plow fed entire Europe, but Russia with an atomic bomb was fed by Argentina! Did Russia need that nuclear arsenal, did world need it? Are you sure, it does? Maybe the present word do not need the revolutions either, and  it is time to put the trust in evolution instead of revolutionary massacres?

 

Russia needed freedom, education, housing, hospitals, roads and rebuilding of its infrastructure. Revolution gave it Gulags and atomic bombs instead! I see Stalin as a tyrant who used partitions and hunger as a super effective and unique ruling method. The entire nation – I mean it —  the entire nation was dispersed across the cheapest of the cheap nightmarish communal apartments and Gulags. Partition system made it easy to know about everybody everything, as the Bolshevik regime needed informers and denunciations to stay! The apartments of the formal riches were divided by partitions to about 10-20-30 or more narrow rooms with one collective kitchen and one toilet to all — and every such room went for an family “apartment”. This hellish situation lasted long enough to put schizophrenia and paranoia on the list of nation’s frequently occurring illnesses.

The proletarian dictatorship killed not only the hated aristocrats and nobles, but many classless qualities of man – love, dignity, beauty, honor, spirituality, empathy, genuine education, the very development of man’s spirituality. We are not a loved nation, but we are despised not for lack of something, not for, say, Crimean affair, but for the loss of our dignity and spirituality! In the communist world, the human dignity was put behind these partitions where it wilted — perhaps for centuries, perhaps – for good!

Wikipedia about clergy destiny during the years of the Red Terror 1918-1922

Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse. According to documents cited by the late Alexander Yakovlev, then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice. An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.

 

The end of Piotr’s and Anna’s marriage is worth to be mentioned here, as it was in tune with everything that happened during that “dark night” of the Russian national soul. From the start of the revolution, communists started to eradicate clergy and close Russian orthodox churches. When Piotr’s youngest son Ivan who whispered, “Papa, papa, I am innocent, tell them, I am innocent” was murdered by Kronstadt’s sailors* under Piotr’s very eyes, Piotr decided to flee with entire family leaving his sickly wife Anna behind, because of her heart condition, or so it was said.

Anna, to be precise, her spirit told what did happen to her after her husband fled with his children crossing in that boat the lake Peipsi and landing in Estonia.

Anna’s story

“He lied to me, he said that everything will be over in three days, and they will be back. Alcohol had turned him into a coward. He fled out of fear, he took his family into nowhere, and they were humiliated and suffered in Estonia! They were mocked and robbed, but their hearts still did not soften toward me, as none of them had asked what did happen to me after they left.

 

The house was suddenly empty, and I went to visit my friend Nadia, a widow of a neighboring village priest. She greeted me, she prepared a tasty dinner, we ate, talked and she made a bed for me. And then it happened again. A gang of Kronstadt’s sailors broke into Nadya’s house as well. They turned everything upside down looking for something valuable. Finding nothing, they shot Nadia dead and as I was in the bed, at least five sailors raped me.

They tossed me into their car and reaching an open field far away from villages they threw me into a ditch alongside the road. I managed to crawl out of that ditch and they car ran me over before I stopped feeling a thing. They were on the robbing spree and did not intend leave alive witnesses behind, in case, if the war tribunal would catch up with them.

Now we were again all together in afterlife, but I am not able to forgive my husband – none of this, mostly, terrible fate of my children… Tatyana, you know it too well, what had happened to them in country of the strangers. Some of it happened to you in Estonia as well, I looked it up how you worked for them, and how you fed your nephew, a growing boy solely with the rice porridge…

Hildegard kept her word, despite Anna’s lack of English, she was invited to work and study in one of the best astral hospitals. Of course, she accepted the offer with deepest and most sincere gratitude. It happened some months ago. I was told that Anna is fine, that she is working and learning and slowly recovering and agreed to learn for the starters the skills of a midwife. She is polite to everybody, she is in contact with family, she had thanked her guides and me for the healing, saying that it made her young again!

They offered a parish to Piotr, in a place known for its spectacular views. However, this offer was accompanied by a strict condition – to be cured of alcoholism. He was spoken to by saints from Russian hierarchy. They suggested to be honest with himself, and when the day would arrive when he would see himself through the eyes of people whom he had hurt, it would be right moment seek a decent rehabilitation center. Their meeting was concluded with the following words, “You need to want passionately to be cured, otherwise no treatment will help. Priests are needed in Russia, the doors will be open to you”.

… Someone has blamed me recently for my hot temper, saying that sometimes I become loud like a wild Russian, who yell, accuse, judge, charge, call names having no reason to be… so open! Probably the person was right. I was working on it, I was learning to walk away instead of exploding, because, I started doubting that it was my mission to educate everybody regarding his or her faultiness! But how to recount this so strict accusation right now? I said, “After all, I’m the granddaughter of my grandfather!” And there he was, Piotr’s spirit appeared in my room immediately. It was not a secret that he disliked me, if I put it mildly. So, I braced myself for a sharp duel of opinions.

However, instead, he made a quite surprising statement. “So, you still recognize my blood in your blood vessels! For this, everything is forgiven to you. Take care of my girls! I will pray to reverse my courses away from you!”

These are our Russian ways. In order to survive we need the patience of our grandmothers, and in order to release our yoke of betrayals, drunkenness, plundering, reckless stealing, swagger, baseless conceit, we can use the wild power of our grandfathers as well… before we can start listing instead of our faults, our real achievements.

In one of these days, Yogananda, I mean, his spirit, dropped by. I, the sick doubter, asked him for a favor to read and check the Anna’s story about her death, if I got it right! Maybe, writing down what she told me, I added some unwillingly?  How this quiet woman got such patience and such terrible karma? Yogananda asked to show him Anna’s portrait. He sat down on the sofa to study my old family album. Such a strong energy was dispersed from his concentration that for a moment, I saw him as if he was there in flesh. Finally, he announced his verdict. “Her story is true to the last detail. When looters’ car moved her twice, she already felt nothing, she got it all later. In her marriage, she unleashed her monastic karma, which included terrible punishments of nuns for sexual crimes. She was offered to either be born as a man like Piotr, or to be born as a patient woman. She chose the path of suffering and passed her lessons with a rare dignity. Her patience will make her a good and sought after nurse. She will be financially secure person when Europe begins to recover after the upcoming defeat.

* Kronstadt sailors did more than robbed, raped and murdered, they were called stronghold of Petersburg revolutionaries. “The Kronstadt Uprising” in year 1921 demanded “the Soviets without Bolsheviks – freedom of speech, control over government actions and improvement of economic situation in the country.”
Wikipedia writes about Bolshevik’s answer to these demands : “On March 19, 1921 the Bolshevik forces took full control of the city of Kronstadt after having suffered fatalities ranging from 527 to 1,412, or higher.(…) Although there are no reliable figures for rebel battle losses, historians estimate that from 1,200–2,168 persons were executed after the revolt and a similar number were jailed. Soviet figures claim approximately 1,000 rebels were killed, 2,000 wounded and from 2,300–6,528 captured, with 6,000–8,000 defecting to Finland. (…) Their large number was causing the first big refugee problem for the newly independent state.

A note from the author:  About the main cause of the Russian revolution: I believe , this single photo of hungry children says it all! At the same time, the Russian experience teaches that a revolution sows cruelty that can exceed the cruelty of the most terrible monarchs whom revolutionaries aim to dethrone.  Study of the Russian revolution and its consequences can contribute to stopping the idealization of revolutions as the method to renovation of society, there has to be other, less destructive ways to improve life.

I started out writing a very personal story of Anna, my maternal grandmother. But to my surprise, the memory of this small, quiet and patient women asked for explanatory excursions to many forgotten corners of Russian history.  It revealed that an individual destiny’s conflict with the atrocities of monarchs or revolutionaries is inevitable, especially in times of  upheavals and uprisings and civil wars. I was not prepared to look into this, and I could write this story only with help of Wikipedia articles. The paradox is that these were the fantastic revelations that surfaced during the most occult meditations that led me to look up twists and turns and facts of history to make sense of stories of individual souls’ search for redemption, repentant and healing.

 

 

The Meditation in Memory of my Grandmother Anna

Anna, my maternal grandmother, was a quiet and patient woman whom I did not see on earth. My mother never spoke about her, so did my mother’s siblings — my uncles and aunts who escaped from the Russian Civil War in 1918 to Estonia. They got Nansen passports and odd jobs were their only source of income. I remember noticing that they spoke often about their father Piotr, Anna’s husband, the undoubted authority in their eyes, and never mentioned their mother, as if she did not exist at all. Today I am over eighty. I live in the USA, and as a medium I hear voices of spirits and angels and I had appealed for spirits’ help to find Anna in the subtle world and introduce me to her, because I wanted to know who was my mother’s mother, and what I had inherited from her.

In short, here is Anna’s story. Her husband, my maternal grandfather served in the Caucasus, but for some reason, he replaced his military uniform with the priest’s attire. He was a loud man, who managed to secure for himself the central position in the family. But when I started asking questions how passive Anna and aggressive Piotr managed to coexist without divorcing or separating, several guardian angels offered me a special meditation to learn more about Anna. Will I recognize her in me? Do I carry some of her traits?

Meeting the spirit of Anna, my maternal grandmother

March 3, 2017

My aunt Zhenya, now also in the spirit world, brought her mother Anna to my place. As a medium, I can ask questions and receive answers from the spirits, that is, to engage in a dialogue with a chatting spirit like we converse with someone over the phone. The audibility of a spirit talk may fluctuate, sometimes spirit voices are quiet, hard to hear, but sometimes they sound as clearly, as coming from someone in flesh in my room. Usually, the longer you talk with a spirit, the better the audibility becomes. The legendary direct voice medium Leslie Flint had spoken about this condition of spirit communication – the spirit voices can be heard clearly, or vaguely depending on many conditions, like weather or the compatibility of medium’s and spirit voice’s wave frequencies.

Sometimes I see a spirit, with whom I talk, but not always. For instance, I wanted to see Anna, but she was not letting to see her, and I could sense that I was dealing with a reserved and impeccably polite person who took refuge in a protective shell. Nevertheless, Anna showed a sincere interest in meditation. As usual, I asked the Anna’s guardian angels, or her spirit helpers to come closer, join us, provide us with protection and determine the topic of meditation, from which Anna could derive some benefits.

Meditating, the first thing I saw was a bookshelf from floor to ceiling, packed with books. Did Anna see the same shelf, or did I see it because Anna chose to hint at something important about herself? Instantaneously, I recalled similar shelves in the library of my grandmother Luba, when she lived in her home in Paide, Estonia, before the arrival of the Reds. And per the same association, I asked Anna, “Do you come from the Russian nobility?” Anna confirmed. To me it seemed strange that I heard this for the first time in my eighties and already living decades in the USA. Why did none of her children, my mother included, did not talk about it? I broke off the meditation, and asked, where she met her future husband.

After some hesitation, as if getting my unspoken question, “If you are a noblewoman, how did you manage to become a widow of the priest, as people call them — papadya?” Overcoming some restrictions in her mind, she, finally spelled out the truth. “I met him on our estate. I was 17 years old. He raped me, and at that time it was unthinkable to marry someone else, I had to marry him.”

By the time of the wedding, she already knew who her future husband was. She realized that her submissiveness condemned her to life with a womanizer and a drunkard, but she had no other choice, but to suffer.

Anna’s assistant in the astral, who called herself Hildegard, expanded Anna’s story, “Her marriage to that man was a nightmare! She gave birth to eight babies, while suffering from constant domestic insults caused by his terrible jealousy.”

As I mentioned already, when my grandfather served in Caucasus alpine mountains, he earned of the reputation of a fearless warrior, but something made him switch the occupations… Once, my mama dropped a word, as if speaking more to herself than to me that it was his financial situation that made him a God’s servant. I think, his quite theatrical personality equipped with storytelling talent bolstered nicely his financial decision, but what about God, would God accept such loud servant, who in his heart would never stop longing for military uniform and his wars’ unrestricted adventurousness? Piotr’s former army buddies were frequent guests in Piotr’s home, and he believed that they made advances to her young and beautiful wife, as Anna was a real beauty. They were still splendid officers and he was only a pop! His jealousy was fed by overall low standing of the Russian Church in the Russian society.

Russian Church reformation never occurred openly, but, nevertheless, its shadow was cast by Ivan the Terrible, the contemporary of Henry VIII’s, the reformer of Church of England. Ivan the IV murdered the Moscow metropolitan, the Head of the Russian Church, the spiritual counterpart of the tsar himself, Philipp II. The Metropolitan was tsar’s childhood friend, stemming from a Moscow finest boyar’s family. His fall  happened after he refused to bless publicly Ivan’s massacre of Novgorod.

(Novgorod’s veche contemplated separation from Moscow power. Ivan’s unprecedented  massacre uprooted all seeds of any kind of free thinking, democracy, free city’s self-rule — veche. After Ivan’s massacre, the free city Novgorod would never regain its status, freedom, nor its wealth! I think, this event started Russian monarchy secret “war” against its own church to continue unofficial, secret uprooting potential nests of svobodomisliya – free thinking and spiritual education. limiting its role in society, no chances of svobodomisliya – freethinking, developing enlightenment movements or cultivate fine spirituality. This invisible, not fully recognized, not fully researched or documented pressure turned the Russian Church into “The Church of Poor and Beggars.” The priests became “pops” and their wives — “papadyas”, like “Papageno” and “Papagena” in Mozart’s “Magic Flute”.  And this was the underlying social situation that turned Father Piotr’s inborn bravery into dark Satanic anger.

A brief deviation from our story. The overall humiliation of the Russian Church had unexpected consequences. In long run, it started to bread deprivation and poverty as way of life of these whom it served – the Russian commoners. Because, since the times of execution of Philipp II, the Metropolitan of Church of Russia, who came from the the upper part of society, the tables turned, and the “ideology” of beggars, their attitude started to shape the church’s spirit. I will put here the real reason of the Russian historic alcoholism what was supported by many lesser factors, like tax politics: selling more and more cheap vodka in order to fill the Russian “federal reserve” – tsar’s kaznaa.  Later, the Soviets sold more cheap vodka to cover economic disasters, along the way dulling people, locked up behind “the grandest of all partitions,” the ill-famous “iron curtain”!

Hildegard continued her report on Anna’s life. Piotr felt that for him, there was no comparison with his former friends! They were the splendid officers and he was a provincial “pop” wearing his military medal next to cross on his priest’s garb. And he beat his beautiful wife mercilessly trying to destroy her beautiful face. He dragged her by the hair, she was bruised. Was she a beauty now? Frequent pregnancies and fear to anger his husband were aging her quickly. Discussing her future in the astral world , Anna was asking for the spinsterhood in her next incarnation! No more marriages, because enough was enough for her. Eight pregnancies, one kid died in infancy, the youngest son Ivan, her Vanechka (nickname for Ivan), was shot under their very eyes by Kronstadt sailors. (Piotr’s sons were accepted to attend exclusive military school as descendants of general Michelson). The other six kids were alienated from her. Her husband continued to beat her until the eldest son, Viktor, stood up for his mother, threatening, if his father would raise his hand again, he, the son, would avenge her with gusto! Father Piotr stopped beating Anna, but soon enough, he found another way to torture her.

In the presence of his children and Anna, Father Piotr started abusing verbally aristocrats, putting in his words all his passion, bitterness and anger. Gradually, he turned the children against their mother, and impact of his oral abuse did not stop there. The negativity of husband’s words was transforming mother’s natural love toward her children into lukewarm indifference. Piotr continued systematically curse aristocrats, as if preventing the mother’s union with her children that could any minute turn against him.

It is not difficult to guess that Anna was the real target of Piotr’s scolds of nobility , because Anna was the granddaughter of the colonel  Ivan Ivanovich Michelson, who suppressed Emelian Pugachev’s uprising, arrested Pugachev and handed him over to the authorities. The empress Ekaterina the Great awarded the colonel with the large estate in Vitebsk province and a gold sword adorned with diamonds “for the defeat of the Pugachev’s uprising.”  Regrettably, the Michelson’s son, unfit to run an estate desolated this invaluable gift.

Definitely, this desolation eased Piotr’s access to Anna, and he took full advantage of it.  Yes, he knew how to rape a 17-year-old beauty, but he was never able to suppress the subtleties in her that are transmitted genetically. Anna did not fell to the level with her husband’s world filled with vodka, rough violence and loose women. They never became equal.

Hildegard did more than revealed the sad truth about the Anna’s marriage. She proposed an interesting way, how to turn my meditation into a unique healing session, as Anna was in the serious need to be healed. I was gently reminded that Anna talked openly about her marriage to satisfy my curiosity, not for her benefit. In other words, now it was my turn to thank her!

Anna’s guides proposed to use a combination of a “flycatcher” with the burning furnace beneath it. Both, a screen and a furnace were produced by the power of imagination, as things are brought to life in astral world. These things are “real” and visible in the astral world. On earth, I cannot see them with my normal sight, but my “third eye” gets them effortlessly.

A large astral screen was suspended from the ceiling across my studio, beneath stood an astral field stove with open entrance from the top. I was told to touch gently white, slightly ribbed surface of the screen. Since I’m still in the body, I confess, having touched our imaginary screen, I did not have enough sensitivity to feel anything, which I admitted to Anna’s helpers honestly. They laughed and offered to compare this screen with a country kitchen in hot summertime when there was a lot of flies. The hostess hangs a sticky roller on the kitchen lamp shade. The other end of roller falls freely down, freeing the sticky tape in all its length. Flies rush toward honey-smelling sticky tape to be glued to it stay there for good!

Anna’s helpers explained that the screen was also covered with a special “solution” which was emanating waves of certain frequency that corresponded to the frequency of Anna husband’s shouting. It would attract like magnet the memory of the real shouts that sat in Anna’s mind like dark flies causing her constant depression, pain and sicknesses.  The problem was how to get these “flies” out of Anna’s head?

I was obligated to resolve this problem. I decided to rely on my empathy toward Anna’s situation and GOLDEN LIGHT! I asked for help praying to Mother Mary and something resonated in me. My prayer became louder, more purposeful. I continued calling in more and more light, I called light for Anna, for more and more light, I called for LIGHT! And suddenly the air was full of screams, curses and yelling. The word “aristocrat” was repeated so often that the sounds forming this word merged into a kind of continuous buzz that blocked all other sounds. The stream of verbal drunken abuse literally flied toward the screen, hitting the screen in a swing! Now the black spots were all over the screen dripping down with dirty sticky jets, and finally freezing. To me they represent the bitterness of the Russian eternal irritation, a powerful anti-constructive, ruinous force that no one can stop, or fathom its essence.

I was suggested to move the loops on which the screen was suspended, to tighten the lower edge into a “bouquet”, and lower it through the open top into the field stove’s flame and wait until fire would burn entire screen to ashes.

………………………..

Partition

The communist’s totalitarian regime, war and post-war years of hunger and destitute changed our living conditions.  Now we lived in an old two-room house with a kitchen. I remember only this kitchen. A thin partition cut from that kitchen a narrow, oblong space for my father’s mother. You met her in my previous blog “Meditation in memory of my paternal grandmother Luba”.

It could hold only granny’s chest of drawers, а small handmade table of Karelian birch, a chip of the empire, as it was called jokingly, and an old armchair by the window and a narrow bed. On the other side of this partition, in the kitchen, there was a table covered with oilcloth. It served as our dinner table and mother’s two sisters, Zhenya and Valya gathering spot. During the war, they sought refuge under my mother’s wing, and after the war ended in May, 1945 they continued their stay helping mother, now the widow, to handle the situation. My father was killed some month shy of war’s end.

The two sisters behind that oilcloth-table spoke loudly so that their words could be heard through the thin partition into the grandmother’s room. They talked hours, turning it in about 5 pm when mother was expected to return home. And they spoke only about one thing ­– the aristocrats, whom they scolded in any thinkable way. They spent their free time allotted them by our life schedule. They could do whatever they liked to do. But all they wanted was to scold the aristocrats. They wanted to annoy grandmother Luba, who stemmed from old noble family with its own coat-of-arms and history of family rise and fall. Their disparagement of aristocrats was aimed against Luba, as their father’s same line of talk was aimed to hurt his wife Anna. As I took Luba’s side, and hid in her room behind the partition I got my share of criticism as well. They were grownup people, I was ten years old who got for her birthday, her first anniversary, the very special “gift” – the government notification that my father had become war casualty. This gift was topped by loud senseless scorn what I heard on the day-by-day bases three years in a row. It built my sharp aversion to vulgarity. Ironically, later it would make me a decent film critic who recognized both opposing ends, vulgarity and talent on the screen instantaneously and solely by intuition — before public opinion, good or bad, could mar the clarity of my perception. I needed nobody’s advice or opinion to write my reviews. After seeing a film, all I had to do was find right words to express my feel about it.  The independence of the perception was quite rare thing under the communist tutelage. Of course, soon enough I started pay the price for this independence, but this was another story that did not belong here.

Finally, my aunts excommunicated me from their family as “Luba’s grandchild” and declared my little brother to be their prince and pet kid and they instilled in him his anti-aristocratic views vigorously. In other words, they created the partition between me and my brother. And it took about… 60 years to tear it down.

The senseless cursing of unfortunate aristocrats continued, but the day came when I asked, who were these so profoundly hated people? My instinct told me that deep down my aunts were terribly envious, maybe they themselves wanted to be these cursed and vilified aristocrats? So, I hoped that my grandmother would clarify the issue for me. She frowned, took her stack of warn cards, and began to lay out her favorite solitaire of a hangman, which very rarely converged and lasted for ages. The grandmother’s library was already completely ruined, and Dumas’ novels, which would quite satisfactorily explain everything, good and bad, about aristocrats were gone as well. But granny Luba managed to safe three invaluable volumes of the first editions of Pushkin’s, Lermontov’s and Gogol’ collections of works. She managed to save these three invaluable volumes through all the vicissitudes of socio-historical cataclysms. As I repeat my question what the word aristocrat means grandmother found in her drawer the Pushkin’s volume, opened it on the first page of the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” handed it to me commanding, “Read it!” and returned to her hangman’s solitaire. From the kitchen we heard the usual scolding of aristocrats.

From the hands of my grandmother I took the volume and started reading the first poem of Pushkin.  I did not realize yet that I was holding in my hand a classic book — the most powerful tool, the most effective defense against life vulgarity and seeming meaninglessness. I did not realize yet that these three volumes will guide me to another world, another height of thinking, another everything!

Sometimes, when the voices from the kitchen became particularly loud, I looked attentively at my grandmother. She was a strong woman, and never descended to the level of her opponents behind the partition. She never – not once – judged or discussed the statements that reached her ears from behind the kitchen partition — sole purpose of which was to offend and prick her! The nightmare of this one-sided duel ended quickly when one of my mother’s sisters left us finding a better place to stay.

The most ironic aspect of this story is that both my aunts were kind women. After entering the workforce, aunt Zhenya submissively gave her entire salary to our common table. All this kitchen dishonor of the nobility was an alluvial skin on the body of their spirituality. It was sewn from the vocabulary of the Russian revolutionaries, their agitation flyers, from the very spirit of the Russian rebellion that a caprice of history or the will of Almighty froze into a new form of governing called “the proletarian dictatorship”! Do not start me on that! We got the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin. An American historian, sorry I forgot his name, invented a slippery maxim: “Stalin received a country with a wooden plow, but surrendered it with an atomic bomb!” The facts are true, but the spirit of this adagio is more than questionable. It was also the truth that Russia with a wooden plow fed entire Europe, but Russia with an atomic bomb was fed by Argentina! Did Russia need that nuclear arsenal, did world need it? Are you sure, it does? Maybe the present word do not need the revolutions either, and  it is time to put the trust in evolution instead of revolutionary massacres?

 

Russia needed freedom, education, housing, hospitals, roads and rebuilding of its infrastructure. Revolution gave it Gulags and atomic bombs instead! I see Stalin as a tyrant who used partitions and hunger as a super effective and unique ruling method. The entire nation – I mean it —  the entire nation was dispersed across the cheapest of the cheap nightmarish communal apartments and Gulags. Partition system made it easy to know about everybody everything, as the Bolshevik regime needed informers and denunciations to stay! The apartments of the formal riches were divided by partitions to about 10-20-30 or more narrow rooms with one collective kitchen and one toilet to all — and every such room went for an family “apartment”. This hellish situation lasted long enough to put schizophrenia and paranoia on the list of nation’s frequently occurring illnesses.

The proletarian dictatorship killed not only the hated aristocrats and nobles, but many classless qualities of man – love, dignity, beauty, honor, spirituality, empathy, genuine education, the very development of man’s spirituality. We are not a loved nation, but we are despised not for lack of something, not for, say, Crimean affair, but for the loss of our dignity and spirituality! In the communist world, the human dignity was put behind these partitions where it wilted — perhaps for centuries, perhaps – for good!

Wikipedia about clergy destiny during the years of the Red Terror 1918-1922

Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse. According to documents cited by the late Alexander Yakovlev, then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice. An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.

 

The end of Piotr’s and Anna’s marriage is worth to be mentioned here, as it was in tune with everything that happened during that “dark night” of the Russian national soul. From the start of the revolution, communists started to eradicate clergy and close Russian orthodox churches. When Piotr’s youngest son Ivan who whispered, “Papa, papa, I am innocent, tell them, I am innocent” was murdered by Kronstadt’s sailors* under Piotr’s very eyes, Piotr decided to flee with entire family leaving his sickly wife Anna behind, because of her heart condition, or so it was said.

Anna, to be precise, her spirit told what did happen to her after her husband fled with his children crossing in that boat the lake Peipsi and landing in Estonia.

Anna’s story

“He lied to me, he said that everything will be over in three days, and they will be back. Alcohol had turned him into a coward. He fled out of fear, he took his family into nowhere, and they were humiliated and suffered in Estonia! They were mocked and robbed, but their hearts still did not soften toward me, as none of them had asked what did happen to me after they left.

 

The house was suddenly empty, and I went to visit my friend Nadia, a widow of a neighboring village priest. She greeted me, she prepared a tasty dinner, we ate, talked and she made a bed for me. And then it happened again. A gang of Kronstadt’s sailors broke into Nadya’s house as well. They turned everything upside down looking for something valuable. Finding nothing, they shot Nadia dead and as I was in the bed, at least five sailors raped me.

They tossed me into their car and reaching an open field far away from villages they threw me into a ditch alongside the road. I managed to crawl out of that ditch and they car ran me over before I stopped feeling a thing. They were on the robbing spree and did not intend leave alive witnesses behind, in case, if the war tribunal would catch up with them.

Now we were again all together in afterlife, but I am not able to forgive my husband – none of this, mostly, terrible fate of my children… Tatyana, you know it too well, what had happened to them in country of the strangers. Some of it happened to you in Estonia as well, I looked it up how you worked for them, and how you fed your nephew, a growing boy solely with the rice porridge…

Hildegard kept her word, despite Anna’s lack of English, she was invited to work and study in one of the best astral hospitals. Of course, she accepted the offer with deepest and most sincere gratitude. It happened some months ago. I was told that Anna is fine, that she is working and learning and slowly recovering and agreed to learn for the starters the skills of a midwife. She is polite to everybody, she is in contact with family, she had thanked her guides and me for the healing, saying that it made her young again!

They offered a parish to Piotr, in a place known for its spectacular views. However, this offer was accompanied by a strict condition – to be cured of alcoholism. He was spoken to by saints from Russian hierarchy. They suggested to be honest with himself, and when the day would arrive when he would see himself through the eyes of people whom he had hurt, it would be right moment seek a decent rehabilitation center. Their meeting was concluded with the following words, “You need to want passionately to be cured, otherwise no treatment will help. Priests are needed in Russia, the doors will be open to you”.

… Someone has blamed me recently for my hot temper, saying that sometimes I become loud like a wild Russian, who yell, accuse, judge, charge, call names having no reason to be… so open! Probably the person was right. I was working on it, I was learning to walk away instead of exploding, because, I started doubting that it was my mission to educate everybody regarding his or her faultiness! But how to recount this so strict accusation right now? I said, “After all, I’m the granddaughter of my grandfather!” And there he was, Piotr’s spirit appeared in my room immediately. It was not a secret that he disliked me, if I put it mildly. So, I braced myself for a sharp duel of opinions.

However, instead, he made a quite surprising statement. “So, you still recognize my blood in your blood vessels! For this, everything is forgiven to you. Take care of my girls! I will pray to reverse my courses away from you!”

These are our Russian ways. In order to survive we need the patience of our grandmothers, and in order to release our yoke of betrayals, drunkenness, plundering, reckless stealing, swagger, baseless conceit, we can use the wild power of our grandfathers as well… before we can start listing instead of our faults, our real achievements.

In one of these days, Yogananda, I mean, his spirit, dropped by. I, the sick doubter, asked him for a favor to read and check the Anna’s story about her death, if I got it right! Maybe, writing down what she told me, I added some unwillingly?  How this quiet woman got such patience and such terrible karma? Yogananda asked to show him Anna’s portrait. He sat down on the sofa to study my old family album. Such a strong energy was dispersed from his concentration that for a moment, I saw him as if he was there in flesh. Finally, he announced his verdict. “Her story is true to the last detail. When looters’ car moved her twice, she already felt nothing, she got it all later. In her marriage, she unleashed her monastic karma, which included terrible punishments of nuns for sexual crimes. She was offered to either be born as a man like Piotr, or to be born as a patient woman. She chose the path of suffering and passed her lessons with a rare dignity. Her patience will make her a good and sought after nurse. She will be financially secure person when Europe begins to recover after the upcoming defeat.

* Kronstadt sailors did more than robbed, raped and murdered, they were called stronghold of Petersburg revolutionaries. “The Kronstadt Uprising” in year 1921 demanded “the Soviets without Bolsheviks – freedom of speech, control over government actions and improvement of economic situation in the country.”
Wikipedia writes about Bolshevik’s answer to these demands : “On March 19, 1921 the Bolshevik forces took full control of the city of Kronstadt after having suffered fatalities ranging from 527 to 1,412, or higher.(…) Although there are no reliable figures for rebel battle losses, historians estimate that from 1,200–2,168 persons were executed after the revolt and a similar number were jailed. Soviet figures claim approximately 1,000 rebels were killed, 2,000 wounded and from 2,300–6,528 captured, with 6,000–8,000 defecting to Finland. (…) Their large number was causing the first big refugee problem for the newly independent state.

A note from the author:  About the main cause of the Russian revolution: I believe , this single photo of hungry children says it all! At the same time, the Russian experience teaches that a revolution sows cruelty that can exceed the cruelty of the most terrible monarchs whom revolutionaries aim to dethrone.  Study of the Russian revolution and its consequences can contribute to stopping the idealization of revolutions as the method to renovation of society, there has to be other, less destructive ways to improve life.

I started out writing a very personal story of Anna, my maternal grandmother. But to my surprise, the memory of this small, quiet and patient women asked for explanatory excursions to many forgotten corners of Russian history.  It revealed that an individual destiny’s conflict with the atrocities of monarchs or revolutionaries is inevitable, especially in times of  upheavals and uprisings and civil wars. I was not prepared to look into this, and I could write this story only with help of Wikipedia articles. The paradox is that these were the fantastic revelations that surfaced during the most occult meditations that led me to look up twists and turns and facts of history to make sense of stories of individual souls’ search for redemption, repentant and healing.