Just as it was then, so it was later – Gurdjieff’s level of being seemed to me to be an unattainable height. With time, however, I understood that the level of being of the mystic can be different at different moments – that is, it may change. There is a basic level of being – for example, the degree of fullness of awareness, the connection with God and the opportunity to interact with Him and a number of other “parameters,” in fact different for each mystic. And there are opportunities and super-efforts, emerging at a time when the mystic, for example, becomes a conduit for a certain Will of God, acquiring the highest level of being, unattainable for him in an ordinary state. At such moments, he can work real miracles, but later once again returns to his customary level of being, and the abilities demonstrated by him may never appear again by virtue of the lack of conditions and the need for their manifestation. Thus, for example, the base level of the being of Porfiry Ivanov enabled him to endure any cold while remaining undressed, but the opportunity to heal incurable diseases far from always occurred. Such “flights” occur with each mystic of a high level, and on their basis, people sometimes ascribe to them an entirely incredible and extreme level of personal being, but it isn’t so. Flashes of the extreme do occur, the opportunities for this also occur, in order to reveal the presence of God, but that is not what the mystic lives with constantly, although each one, of course, has in his basic level of being a number of qualities and abilities which those around him do not have.
The same was true of Gurdjieff. Interaction with students revealed before him at times the possibilities of manifesting super-abilities, and on the whole, this happens with the majority of Masters. The entire world rests on interactions, and thanks to them, sometimes short-termed opportunities arise for influence of the highest level – under the condition that a person may conduct the Will and is open for the manifestation of the Grace of God and His blessings. I will not claim with full certitude, but I believe that the Uwaisi transmission – the posthumous transmission of spiritual Knowledge – also relates to the number of super-powers that are opened up for the mystic when he has the appropriate conditions for them.
Even now, I cannot say why Gurdjieff made his transmission of Knowledge namely to me. I had, without a doubt, a high need for spiritual guidance without any opportunity to receive it under conditions of my then-existence. I very acutely sensed the need for a Teacher, but I could not find him, and did practice by books, choosing practices at random and applying them chaotically – sometimes using Orthodox prayers, sometimes yoga exercises. Such an approach could not bring tangible fruits, since there is no use from the application of practices related to various traditions and Ways; after all, each Path has its egregor and its conditions of work on it, but I had no one to learn this from then, either. The most tangible results were brought by the practice of awareness, but they all lay in a dimension of freedom from suppressions – practically in a dimension of psychotherapy, which is also, of course, important but is not very helpful in finding the path to God. Apparently, the force of my need is what created the opportunity for the reception of the transmission, which led to my becoming an Uwaisi mystic.
Various mystical traditions have their ways of transmitting spiritual Knowledge. The transmission existing in Sufism under the name of “Uwaisi” is not only a transmission of Knowledge, but a transmission of personal experience as well, and even several qualities of the base level of being of the mystic who performed it. By itself, the transmission is a mystical act of the purest form, connected to the reception of an energy impulse of great power and delayed action. A person who receives such a transmission is not in a state to assimilate it at once, because the power of a received impulse, if it were released at once, would simply kill him. Therefore, the impulse of experience and Knowledge “dissipates” slowly, giving the opportunity to the person who received it to make discoveries initiated by it gradually. Assimilation of the received Knowledge occurs in such a way that the person begins to perceive it as his own, and not as alien; after all, the growth in understanding that comes along with it in fact is his own. Approximately the same thing, in fact, occurs when the mystic receives the Divine Attributes on the stage of the Sufi Way, called the internal baqa – the stage of presence in God.
Like many other Uwaisi mystics, I received the transmission while asleep. Sleep is a form of changed state, in which a person becomes open for receiving the most diverse impulses from different levels of Reality, and for the reception of the Uwaisi transmission, such a state could not be better suited. Even so, the content of the dream was very simple. Gurdjieff stood before me, dressed in a black coat, dark trousers and black boots as well, and I bowed, or rather, fell to his feet, as is customary in the East. I didn’t see Gurdjieff’s face in that dream, but I knew for sure that it was he. In the dream, it seemed to me that I was receiving some sort of dedication or blessing; the dream was brief, and in fact, after I completed the prostration before Gurdjieff, it ended. When I awoke, I didn’t feel anything in particular and did not ascribe to this dream any serious meaning. Moreover, when I didn’t feel like sleeping the next night, and I did various creative things until morning, and went to work after that, as if nothing had happened, I also didn’t connect it with the dream that I had had the night before. I did not sleep for 36 hours, but even so, I did not feel any particular tiredness, but it never occurred to me, that such a surge of energy, not at all peculiar to me, could be initiated by a dream with the presence of Gurdjieff – who, by the way, had never come to me in a dream before that.
It must be said that for another few years, I did not understand what had happened in June 1994, when I had the dream that influenced my entire life. The first changes began two weeks later – I suddenly realized, I saw very clearly, that all my practices were not getting me anywhere. Moreover, no less clearly, my spiritual ego was revealed to me, which I had developed in myself, after having become a vegetarian and giving up smoking and alcohol. This revelation was shocking, and therefore I instantly changed my entire lifestyle, keeping the basic practice of work on self-awareness, and dropping all the rest. This was the first, but far from the last manifestation of the influence which the impulse of the Uwaisi transmission made on me, and then almost imperceptibly to myself, I began to shift in the direction of a Sufi understanding of the Way and the Work, sensing them as something quite naturally relevant to me.
Later, I thought now and then what would have happened to me if I had not received the transmission from Gurdjieff. There is no unambiguous answer to this question, but most likely, my search would have ended with nothing, and it is quite possible that the mystical part of the Way would never have been revealed to me. I would have continued to grow a spiritual ego, dabbling first in some practices, then in others, and wandering in the darkness of my own mind. And it would have been quite unlikely that I would have come to Sufism, although it is completely impossible to say this for certain.