This cannot be changed. The first volume’s pages are made of ashes, which we have been and which we will become. It contains a description of conditions and circumstances of the beginning of our life journey:

In which particular country and in which family we are born. With what abilities and appearances. With what health, physical as well as mental. With what propensities and perception. All these being unchangeable and predetermined.

The second volume contains a set of probabilities. Its pages are made of standard white paper. It is written there what we have come into this world for. And for each one something personal is written there.

Someone can become a doctor and devote their life to rescue people’s lives. Some can become a teacher or a police officer, or a factory worker, or can just give people good in all its manifestations.

And someone’s destiny is to become a drug addict or a criminal. Or to spend the whole life on a couch looking at the world trough a TV screen and never enjoy the taste of that special pleasure, which arises in the course of a rewarding service to people.

Each person has their own option with regards to all possible forms of manifesting creativeness and destructiveness.

In the second volume of the Book of Life everything is predetermined. All possible probabilities of emanations for our existence.

But there is a special circumstance. The truth is, that the white paper pages are inscribed with a graphite pencil. This is a rough copy. Sometimes there are mistakes in a rough copy…

This is a special style of communications between the Creator and his creatures.

If individuals just follow their fate not trying to get to the core of their lives’ script and to change it if necessary – they live according to the rough copy. And then, in the process of living their life, the vessel of their soul is filled with dirt of negative emotions. Because they are not aware of the main gift given to them for their existence.

The Supreme Being, in his own image and likeness, has put in each of us a particle of himself. There is a particle of God in each of us.

But even the brightest beam of light from the star called the Sun can not break through the darkness of night. Such is the nature of the universe.

We can exercise control over our own DNA and heal ourselves with the help of feelings and the strength of faith.

Create eternal beauty in a creative manifestation of art whatever it is.

We can safeguard peace and also can destroy every living thing around us in a matter of minutes.

We have been given great power and great responsibility. Each of us. Without exceptions.

The Supreme Being has put in our fingers the key to the house, in which the world is filled with love. He even has brought us to the appropriate door, knowing that people look but do not see. We only have to insert the key in the keyhole and turn it. How incredibly hard it is to do it sometimes…

There are some soul traumas in each individual’s life. This is a natural way of soul evolution. Living with and overcoming sufferings – this is an inherent challenge in the formation of spirituality. But we do not have a culture of going through a trauma; we reject the very possibility of such a situation.

We are the modern, developed society of human civilization. We have forgotten the culture and the traditions of our ancestors who knew how to deal with death. And knew how to deal with life. And knew how to separate one from the other.

Psychological traumas appear to be different.

For example, when confronted with the betrayal of a loved one, we start to delve into a deep disappointment, to seek for a possible reason, to be torn between resentment and guilt.

Why?

In fact, the world differs from our vision of it. And only the strength of our faith turns our vision into reality. And so it is. Subject to one small but fundamental remark.

Your life’s faith should concern yourself only.

Other people shall have the right not to participate in it.

And if you put your faith in another person and they do not meet your expectations, this error is yours. And only yours.

Or when you lose someone you love, someone who is infinitely dear to your heart. And you feel like your life has lost all its meaning.

The woe becomes unbearable.

But we come into this world alone and we die alone. This life is only yours.

All other people are just travel companions regardless of how dear they are to your heart. Who told you that you have the right to abandon your only mission – your own life?

Traumas appear to be different. You may get a diagnosis, with which you will have to die. Or to carry on somehow. In spite of. Or because of. Now this is your choice.

All that matters is the love which lives within you. Love of life. Love of God. Love of your family. Love and gratitude. For a chance given to you – to exist. Regardless of the circumstances and conditions, those are inscribed on white paper pages with a graphite pencil of fate.

Because this is a rough copy. And you can rewrite it. As did the two people who wrote this book and who were able to rewrite the rough copies of their own destinies…

…It was a wonderful autumn evening. In downtown St. Petersburg, near the building of the institute named after Bekhterev, there was a conversation between two psychologists, two scientists, two people who worked with psychological traumas. They came to an international conference on hypnosis – he arrived from Belgium, she came from Moscow. They were practitioners in the complicated science, which deals with human woe. Practitioners in the literal sense of this word.

Perhaps, this was the only thing they had in common. In all other respects they presented an example of colorfully illustrated dualism. Furthermore, when God decided to introduce them to each other he was in high spirits.

God has a sophisticated sense of humor.

Sometimes it is barely noticeable.

Belgian psychiatrist Jean Batist had arrived to Russia to exchange experience with his Russian colleagues. What features stood out absolutely about Jean Batist, were the black color of his skin and his snow-white smile. He was a strong built, silver-haired African with a keen glance and soft voice. Born in Rwanda, as the best student, he had been sent to study in Moscow, where he got medical education. While studying in Moscow Jean Batist had met his future wife, who loved him all her life as only Russian women were able to love – with passion, understanding, with unconditional love of the queen to her king as well as with great food, which even Michelin chefs would not be able to cook. Because the most delicious food for our body as well as for our soul is based on love. He was a happy man, whom his beloved woman had presented with beautiful children, who, in their turn, had already delighted Jean Batist with grandchildren.

His path of life had brought him to Belgium, where he worked as a psychiatrist in a clinic. Jean Batist worked with various patients as he believed that it was necessary to help everyone regardless of their convictions. He reasoned as a psychiatrist, as a doctor. In his work he had a lot of patients with trauma as well as with PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder. Jean Batist helped people to go through the death of loved ones and to survive when a particle of their own personality was dead.

Until death came to him.

Oncology.

For a long while death whispered in his ear the words of consolation, calling for humility and acceptance of the dogma that both life and death were God’s Providence.

And that the necessity of humility was obvious.

But Jean Batist’s hearing had always been mediocre.

And he had survived…

Anastasia, for the first time in several years after defending her thesis, was able to leave her private practice for the sake of communicating with her foreign colleagues within the frames of the international conference. The amount of work was so large, that her dream of professional self-fulfillment had become a reality long time ago. Tall, slender, with green eyes. With blond hair emphasizing her light skin, with a special gaze inconsistent with the youth of her soul. Anastasia had found herself in Moscow thanks to her aspiration for self-improvement and had gained a scientific degree at the best chair of psychology in the country. She had admirable children and a wonderful mother, and they filled each moment of her life with absolute and unconditional happiness.

Anastasia conducted a private practice of a psychologist-hypnotherapist, developed her own proprietary methods, pursued research of the effect of hypnotherapy on self-regulation of a human being.

She was guided by some special principles, not popular among her colleagues. Anastasia never worked with people whom she did not like in moral and ethic terms. But those, whom she started working with, she never left alone in any life situations. Anastasia helped people to get over a loss, to go through a betrayal, to be up and about again after a serious illness, to resolve a situation of domestic violence, to get out of an existential crisis, to stop on the edge of an abyss.

Because she had stood on the edge of an abyss herself.

And not just once.

And she knew that if you tried to look into the abyss – the abyss might look into you so as to drink the last drops of your mind in the very bottom depths of your unconsciousness.

And Anastasia knew this look well.

But the abyss could not find her bottom.

And she had survived…

…In St. Petersburg they agreed that they would definitely meet in Brussels. And would jointly carry out a supervision of the cases from their practices of dealing with traumas. And would write a book about it. For all those people who had survived some trauma. And for all the rest who had not faced it yet, but who would definitely have to face it in future.

So that this book could become knowledge for different people of how to go through a woe and a loss, medical disorder and fear of death, violence and loss of life fundamentals, which in many cases were composed of other people, whom we entrusted with our own lives.

How to learn to live after a childhood psychological trauma. How to adapt to devastating realities of an adult life, when people lose their health, business, lose themselves. And what the life could be after a psychological trauma.

At that time nobody could assume that in the process of working on this book, based on the stories of their clients, they would decide to tell about their own traumas which they had got over. To tell the whole truth.

He – as a Belgian.

As a psychiatrist.

As a man.

She – as a Russian.

As a psychologist.

As a woman.

And they had met. And the book about life’s psychological traumas, co-authored by those who worked with such traumas and who had got over them, was written. In an unusual format of artistic narration in third and in first person. Because when we stand in front of a mirror we can only see as much as the amalgam allows us to see. And it does not matter where this mirror is located – in a bathroom or in the depths of our souls.

Chapter 1. Descendants of Mediums

African Poacher’s Son

Little Jean Batist was running so fast that the wind, swelling the lungs as a sail, interrupted his breathing.

He was 7 years old. He ran with his head down watching each step carefully, viewing the splitting jungle wilderness on the run. Jean Batist was in a hurry to get back before the sunset.

The sunset on the equator was early – it was already dark at 6 pm. And then wild animals went out for hunting. He had to run to make it home in time. But yesterday while running his 11 kilometers home from school he did not meet the snake. That was not good. It meant that they might meet today. And he would lose precious time.

Rwanda or as they also call it “Land of a thousand hills” is covered with subtropical forest. Lake Kivu being the most beautiful of the African Great Lakes, the waters of which are free from crocodiles that live in all the other bodies of water, and the banks of which are inhabited by 2 million people, amazes with its authentic beauty.

In the period of Jean Batist’s childhood the Rwandese Republic, located between Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire, was different. Only 4 million people lived there. But until now, after civilization has come to this African country and its population has increased to 11 million people in just some 50 years, Rwanda is still considered to be a paradise on Earth. During the year the air temperature remains around 25 degrees Celsius. The harvest which is reaped several times a year has an excellent taste.

Local residents are engaged in agriculture and hunting. Nobody rushes to the palaces of education. Because intermittent wars and life on land do not assume that children would leave their families for a long road of education. But half a century ago, when two tribes of Tutsi and Hutu had already been at war with each other, creating a semblance of a relative peace, Jean Batist’s parents had made a decision that all five of their children should go to school, though only Jean proved to be able to study.

It was not easy.

At that time there were only 15 hospitals for the whole country and 95 percent of the population was illiterate. Jean Batist’s parents could not write or read as well as actually everyone else in the area – there was no need for that. Other values made these people’s lives replete and happy:

– To get up at dawn with the first lights of equatorial sun.

– To reap a harvest working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

– To go hunting successfully trying to avoid to be killed by wild animals.

– To cook and eat fresh food as the food can only be freshly cooked – there is no place to store it.

– To relax in the evening with dances and freshly brewed banana beer by the fire, in a big friendly company.

– To sing a lullaby to a baby.

– To listen to a medium, the tribe’s voodoo, who was Jean Batist’s grandfather and who revealed to people amazing mysteries of predictions.

– To kill a snake.

Among the country’s population of 4 million people only very few kids could become elementary school pupils. After 7 years of elementary school, even less kids used to progress to the secondary school which lasted for 6 years.

There was no need for that. It was much more important to continue carrying out their father’s work: to work on land, raise cattle or to learn the trade of hunting.

Jean Batist’s age mates who were 7 years old got up at dawn to clean the barn from cows’ and goats’ dung and then went to help at the banana plantations. For the sake of attending school Jean Batist’s father relieved him of other work. So in the morning the boy just cleaned the barn and then ran to school.

This was difficult but his father could afford it. He was a poacher from Hutu tribe, and at his banana plantation worked the Rwandans from Tutsi and Hutu tribes, who needed money and who could dig the ground. Jean Batist’s father could not. He was a mine worker. And after work at the mine he hunted wild animals and buffaloes.

When Jean reached the age of 7, he was sent to school. The only one of all the families who lived in the area. It was 11 kilometers to his school. Every day little Jean Batist ran the distance of 22 kilometers.

He ran only because if he walked he would not make it to school on time in the morning, by the time the classes began. As well as he would not manage to be back in the evening before the sunset, before the moment when wild animals went out for hunting. By running he saved time to study and managed to survive. But he had one problem – not to miss a snake.

The parents told their children since childhood:

– If you see a snake – you should kill it. If you do not kill it – the snake will kill you. Or somebody else. A snake has to be killed.

That is why when he saw a snake he stopped. He knew that a deadly black mamba bite was too fast. And he had to react in time.

Black mamba, reaching a length of 4 meters, is notable for the speed of its movement. It can move with a speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Jean Batist was a child of an elementary school age, his speed could not exceed 10 kilometers per hour, and so he could just watch how a black snake dissolves and disappears in the jungle. I such a case he did not even slow down the speed of his running. As this made no sense.

He was strictly prohibited to go inside the jungle by his father, who used to say that the jungle fed the first and killed the second to feed the first. And children had nothing to do there.

And so Jean Batist kept on running. He was a skilful long-distance runner and preferred not to stop without an urgent need, but only to change the intensity of his run.

So he ran without stopping. Until he met a black ribbon on the road. Then he had to act to the most of his abilities as a child.

But Jean Batist was a son of a hunter, of a poacher. His ancestors’ blood was in his genes. The blood of those who had survived because they were faster than death. And he used to grab its tail with a proven movement, to lift it up with a sharp jerk and to hit its head on the ground at full force. Then he hit it again and again. Until the intense and solid flesh of a deadly reptile turned into just limp remains of a legless animal, with a thin, largely stretched body, without movable eyelids.

Many years later, when the tribes of Tutsi and Hutu started to fight for power and the war broke out with Tutsi genocide, in which about a million people were killed, Jean Batist would see how this method of killing poisonous reptiles worked for his own countrymen.

Warriors from the tribe of Hutu annihilated Tutsi with extreme cruelty, sparing nobody. Tutsi soldiers from the patriotic front, who attacked Rwanda, also annihilated every Hutu they met on their way.

They killed children like snakes.

They killed infants in an absolutely terrifying way. They took kids by a leg and hit hard against the ground or a solid object. They hit them until the brains started to flow from a small skull. After that they threw the babies together with their parents in the waters of the Nile to be eaten by huge – five meter long, with the weight of six or seven hundred kilograms – crocodiles-cannibals, which destroyed the bodies in a matter of minutes.

War is always devastatingly disgusting.

But one still had to survive until a war.

It was like that during all seven years of the elementary school. Until Jean Batist had advanced to a secondary school. The education was stationary and the parents had sent their son for another six years to live in a relative analogue of a college. It was when Jean Batist had already turned 13 years of age, that they have bought him the first pair of shoes in his life.

He tried to do his best. Realizing how many hopes his parents associated with his education, Jean Batist, having a natural curiosity and an inquiring mind, demonstrated remarkable achievements in his studies.

The experience gained from the men of his family – his grandfather-medium and his father-poacher – and piled in a neat sandwich with new sciences, had produced a striking contrast.

Jean Batist knew no fear.

To be more exact, he demonstrated some special state, which could be characterized as a rejection of fear. This helped in everyday life as well as in socialization with his peers. From his grandfather-medium he had got a developed intuition as well as an insight. He always felt what the other person had in mind. And as the years went by it became more and more interesting for him to learn the mechanism of functioning of this strange system called the brain. He kept remembering the incident, which occurred to him when he still was at the elementary school and which affected his whole life, becoming probably his determining factor in choosing a profession.

It was the second year of his running to school. Once, when he ran in being a little late after killing another snake, Jean Batist was surprised to find out that there were no classes. All the children had been gathered in a big classroom where there were unknown people in white coats. The children were vaccinated. Jean Batist had never been vaccinated before. But he already knew that a doctor was a being close to God. The most kind, the most compassionate being in the world. This was what his parents always said. This was what everybody around said. And he lived in an absolute awareness of this truth.

When a doctor in a white coat came to him, he started to watch happily and curiously how he would be vaccinated for the first time in his life. The doctor came closer and roughly grabbed Jean Batist’s forearm to turn his back. Before he could resent in surprise, Jean Batist felt the syringe needle entered his shoulder blade and the fire broke out in his body. It happened so quickly that the next moment he was screaming something through tears to the back of the retreating doctor in a white coat. Severe pain entered his shoulder blade as a burning flow, and the worst of all was that this pain started to increase. Lurching from a sudden coming fatigue, he felt the trembling in his weakened legs and wanted to lie down right on the classroom floor.

But the fire greedily devouring the little body was so unbearable that in his last effort, lurching, he got out and ran.

He wanted to cool his body and he ran faster and faster so that the wind blowing from the run could bring some relief.

Thus, not seeing anything around from the pain, he ran until he got home.

Catching the sight of his home he started to slow down and then, already losing his consciousness, slowly sat down in the shade of a tree behind the house. Leaning back against the familiar trunk of the oil palm tree he sat there till dark, wiping away bitter tears of resentment and broken illusions.

This old oil palm tree was his secret friend. He used to come to it sometimes just to worry about something, turning over in his hands the dry leaves, which covered the ground around. Or dreamed about something, slowly touching the amazing bark of this tree. The tree, which had so much changed the life of the whole mankind.

Many years later, already pursuing science, Jean Batist would find out what a catastrophe had struck the whole planet in connection with this ordinary tree, from which the palm oil was produced.

The thing was that for getting this highly profitable product large areas of tropical forest were cut down every day.

The areas of the size of 300 football fields.

Per day.

Every day.

Until no more forests were left in several countries as well as the animals that once inhabited them. And the zone with the “greenhouse effect” had appeared over the territories of Indonesia and Malaysia, killing our planet.

He would find out that probably this particular product had played its role in a very short life span of his countrymen. Men seldom survived the upper limit of 65 years. And, as it had been proven, the amount of saturated fats of palm oil used in foods directly led to death, caused by a cardiovascular disease and a coronary heart disease.

And he would give up everything, which comprised palm oil, for the sake of his children’s lives and for the sake of saving the planet. And he would often think that if people realized the full horror of the disaster, which they brought closer with their own hands with every purchased product, food or perfume, drink or detergent – they would certainly give it up.

Forever.

When there is no demand, supply disappears.

And it would become possible to save this planet, which had been dying for a long time because of the devil of avarice of those, who believed that there were some pockets in the personal coffins for them and their children.

When his tears dried, Jean Batist who had already gone through a whole kaleidoscope of emotions, made up his mind. He would never forgive this person in a white coat.

Never.

For the pain.

For his rudeness.

For turning his back in response to the cry for help.

For the cruelty, which could not be natural for the one who knew the mystique of life and death.

For all the disappointment.

And he also made a decision that by all means he would become a doctor. In order to never cause pain to anybody. To become a real doctor and to help people with an open heart, looking into their eyes.

The time had passed. The results of Jean Batist’s education pleased his parents as well as his teachers. He drew the attention of his physics teacher – a monk from the congregation of catholic monks. They became friends. Monks with the mission of education or just with a kind human attitude had accompanied Jean Batist his entire life.

When the time came to go to university, the congregation of catholic monks helped Jean Batist, as one of the best students, to join the education program in Russia. Thus he got to Moscow, to the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba. He came to Russia with a distinctive objective of getting a high quality medical education and to come back to his homeland, to Africa, to serve people. To become a monk and to dedicate his life to medicine.

But often love of God cannot withstand a competition from the love of a woman.

– Damn it! – it was long since this had become Jean Batist’s favorite expression in Russian. – I don’t know what to do. Deeply confused he was sitting in from of a monk, in front of his former physics teacher, in front of his friend.

– All these years I wanted to become a monk so much that I did not look at any woman at all. Until she appeared. I don’t know what I should do! And I ask you, my teacher, to help me. I will do as you say.

The monk kept silence for a long while. Then he slowly began to explain in detail the things that at first glance were very obvious truths. But, as it turned out, only at first glance. This was a very long conversation. But Jean Batist had remembered its main and fundamental essence for his whole life.

We are all people made of flesh and blood. And it does not matter if we are monks or ordinary people living worldly lives.

It does not matter what we believe in.

And if we believe at all.

We are animals. This is our biological nature. And as any living organism we do react. We have feelings and emotions. We experience them in a natural way and cannot have a full control over them. The strongest feelings are Faith and Hate. Having the absolute faith a person is capable of almost anything. Even of giving their own lives. Having the absolute hate a person can take lives of others.

And when a human being meets a person, to whom he or she develops biological attraction and emotional attachment, we call it love.

Love of a person – is the highest emotion which is called a feeling and is peculiar to human beings only. As all the other highest emotions, love is a specific psychological state, which shows itself in a long-term and stable worrying about the object of love.

The feeling of love can be different depending on the object of love. Love of parents, love of children, love of a man or a woman, of work or pets, of reading or traveling – all of these are different manifestations of this highest emotion. That is why feelings are often classified according to subject areas. The last being divided into moral and ethical as well as intellectual, practical. This is very simple, as simple as an alphabet.

Love of God is not an emotion. And even not a feeling. It is called a true love because it cannot be demonstrated in the morning or in the evening. It does not depend on a season or a life situation. This unconditional love is a part of activities of a human being.

Love of God is a state. As breathing, for example. Breathing may become uneven when we worry. Or quiet and deep when we sleep. It may be different. Furthermore. Particularly the sound of our breathing is the main sound indicating that we are alive. Love of God is like this.

And it does not matter if you are a monk or a worldly person. The main thing is that you breathe.

Jean Batist had cherished forever the memories of that sleepless night, which he spent thinking after his conversation with the monk. Soon he married the woman he loved, and he spent the rest of his life in a close cooperation with monks who revealed for him this amazing insight into life.

After graduation from the university Jean Batist came back to Rwanda with his Russian wife. They built a beautiful house. His wife was surprised by a mild sub-equatorial climate, without heat or cold. They reaped harvest in their garden several times a year. There were no mosquitoes on the shore of a boundless scenic lake Kivu, where they used to come for vacation. Sunsets and sunrises boggled the imagination with their unusual splendor peculiar only to the equator.

There is almost no twilight at the equator. An absolute day starts to be filled with red, lilac, pink colors, the solar disk dives beyond the skyline and an absolute night falls. All of a sudden. As if somebody turns off the day light and turns on a night light of an endless starry sky. This world resembled a piece of paradise created for a family’s well-being. Nature generously rewarded every day of the year with the wealth of all the benefits, which it was able to give.

Together with his wife, a nurse, Jean Batist served the patients in the clinic and worked on his thesis. The time when we are absolutely happy is like a wave of eyelashes. We do not notice it. Soon their life got filled with children’s voices, their family happiness obtained the perfection of great creation of a great artist, and a war came to Rwanda.

12 Weiter

Fire Smoldering Under Water

Prologue

In Third and First Person

Chapter 1. Descendants of Mediums

African Poacher’s Son

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