According to Munchausen, the fox he caught managed to jump out of its own skin. Let's leave this hunting story on the conscience of the baron. But with inventive tasks something like this is happening! So the hunt for an answer has begun, a technical contradiction has been caught, and, it would seem, the answer is already in hand... But then the answer unexpectedly eludes.

Even if you firmly grasp a technical contradiction, you cannot be sure that you have caught the answer. The same technical contradiction can, in principle, be overcome by many different techniques.

Technical contradictions are caused by one or another physical reasons: hidden in the depths of a technical contradiction is a physical contradiction. It looks like this: “This part of the technical system must have property A in order to perform one action, and must have opposite property anti-A to perform another action." Please note: a technical contradiction applies to the entire system or several parts of it, while a physical contradiction refers to only one part. This greatly simplifies the path to the answer.

Let's take, for example, task 5 - about removing sand from parts. The physical contradiction in this problem is: "The grains of sand must be hard to clean the parts, and the grains of sand must be non-solid (liquid or gas) so that they can be easily removed from the cleaned part." As soon as such a contradiction is formulated, the answer becomes obvious: the technique “to change the state of aggregation” is needed, precisely this technique, and no other! Let the “grains of sand” be made of dry ice: solid when cleaning the parts, these “grains of sand” will then themselves turn into gas.

In Problem 6 (about holes in a rubber tube), the physical contradiction is almost the same: “The tube must be hard so that it is easy to drill holes in it, and the tube must be soft so that it remains elastic.” The technique is the same: freeze the tube (or, filling it with water, freeze the water), and after the holes are made, heat it up.

There are special rules that allow, when analyzing a problem, to move step by step from a technical contradiction to a physical one. But often a physical contradiction can be formulated immediately, directly from the conditions of the problem.

Problem 12. DROPS ON THE SCREEN

The electric welding process was studied in the laboratory. Scientists were interested in how a metal rod inserted into an arc melts, and how the arc itself changes. They turned on the arc, made a movie, and watched it. And then it turned out that only the arc was visible on the screen. It is brighter than drops of metal, so they are not visible. We decided to repeat the experiment. They turned on a second arc, a brighter one, directed its light onto drops of metal and shot the film again. Now only drops of metal were visible (they were highlighted by the bright second arc), and the first arc, less bright, was not on the screen. The researchers wondered: what to do?..

And then the inventor appeared.

Typical physical contradiction, he said. - The fact is that...

So what is the physical contradiction here? And how to overcome it?

After carefully reading the conditions, you can easily formulate a physical contradiction. There must be a second arc, otherwise drops of metal are not visible, and there must not be a second arc, otherwise we will not see the first arc.

A technical contradiction is usually formulated mildly, for example like this: in order to increase the speed of a truck, it is necessary to reduce the weight of the cargo being transported. Speed ​​conflicts with carrying capacity, but it is possible that some kind of compromise is possible. In physical contradiction, the conflict is extremely aggravated. However, the world of invention has its own laws: the more acutely the conflict is formulated, the easier it is to overcome it... An arc illuminating drops of metal cannot simultaneously exist and not exist. This means that it must either be or not be - flare up and go out. Then on some frames of the film there will be only drops of metal, and on others - only an arc. When the film is shown, both “plots” are combined: we will see both the arc and the drops.

Conflicting demands are separated here in time. You can also separate them in space. Let us recall the solution to the pipe problem: the steel sheet is partially cut, that is, in some places there is a cut, but in others there is not. There is also a more cunning way of combining incompatible things: let’s give the object one property, and its parts another, opposite one. At first glance, this seems incredible - how to build a white pyramid from black cubes?! But here’s a bicycle chain: each link is rigid and inflexible, but the chain as a whole is flexible... In a word, physical contradictions, requiring the combination of incompatible things, do not lead to a dead end, but make the path to solving the problem easier.

For example, problem 10 - “softening” water - is difficult to solve. It’s not even clear what to cling to. Let us formulate a physical contradiction. The pool must be filled with water and must be filled with something softer so that the athlete does not get injured if he jumps poorly. What softer than water? Gas, air. Conclusion: you need to fill the pool... with air.

It may seem that we have reached a dead end. The water holds the swimmer, but it is "hard" upon impact. The gas is “soft”, but you cannot jump into a gas-filled (that is, empty) pool. Having identified a contradiction, we sharpened the problem, but, oddly enough, a spark of an answer flashed in the distance. Well, let it be both at the same time! Let the athlete jump into a “mixture” of water and air, into “carbonated” water. This is exactly how the Soviet inventors solved the problem, receiving copyright certificate No. 1127604, according to which the water under the tower - before the jump - is “carbonated” by passing air bubbles. The contradiction has been eliminated: “carbonated” water remains water, but the impact on it is almost imperceptible.

Notice the zigzag we had to make on the way to the solution.

In the conditions of the problem, “water” is given - and the answer is not clear. We switched to “anti-water”, that is, to gas and air. The task seemed to have become even more difficult. The next mental move: we need to combine “water” and “ant and water.” Only here did the idea of ​​a solution begin to emerge.

Problem 13. THIN AND THICK

The plant received an order to produce a large batch of oval glass plates 1 millimeter thick. We cut the rectangular blanks, all that remained was to smooth out their edges to form ovals. But when processed on a grinding machine, thin plates often broke.

“We need to make the plate thicker,” the worker complained to the foreman.

“No way,” answered the master. - They ordered us thin plates...

And then the inventor appeared.

Physical contradiction! - he exclaimed. - The blanks must be thick and thin. This contradiction can be divided in time: the workpieces will become thicker during processing...

Task 14. HOW TO GET OUT OF THE DEADLOCK?

The plant began producing a new mechanism - and immediately unexpected difficulties arose. One part of the mechanism was made of a steel plate. A current was passed through the workpiece, heating the metal to 1200 degrees. The hot plate was pressed, giving it the desired shape. And it turned out that at temperatures above 800 degrees, the surface of the workpiece quickly deteriorates: air has a harmful effect on the metal. The shop manager urgently called a meeting.

The situation is like in a fairy tale,” he said. - If you go to the left, it will be bad, if you go to the right, it will be even worse...

The workpiece must be heated to 1200 degrees, otherwise it will not be processed. And you can’t heat it above 800 degrees, otherwise you’ll ruin the metal surface.

Everything is very simple! - exclaimed the youngest engineer. - It must be heated to 1000 degrees. Up to medium temperature.

It won’t work,” objected the old master. - And we will spoil the plates - the heating is still higher than permissible, and we will not be able to carry out processing - the temperature is low.

“It’s a tricky task,” the shop manager sighed. - And it needs to be solved quickly, right now.

And then the inventor appeared.

There is a solution, he said.

What do you think: what did the inventor propose?

Problem 15. STRAIGHT SPRING

Imagine that you need to compress a spiral spring (its length is 10 centimeters, its diameter is 2 centimeters), place it flat between the pages of a book and close the book so that the spring does not relax.

You can compress the spring with two fingers. But then you have to unclench your fingers, otherwise you won’t close the book. And the spring will unclench... Engineers encountered this situation when assembling one device. It was necessary to compress the spring, lay it down and close it with a lid. How to do this so that the spring does not relax?

To tie? - said one engineer. - Otherwise you won’t be able to re-strengthen this spring.

“You can’t,” the other objected. - The spring inside the device must be free.

And then the inventor appeared.

Wonderful! - he exclaimed. - The spring must be free and not free, compressed and uncompressed. Since there is a contradiction, it means that we are faced with an inventive task.

COMBINE INCOMPATIBLE...

Train has already left. All the trains have already left. I had a choice - either wait two days, or try to fly somewhere in the morning. Of course, I chose the second one.

For five thousand, a private owner took me to a one-story shack at the local airport, the half-glass doors of which, oddly enough, were still open, despite the fact that the planes operating all the flights that day had long since landed at their destination airports.

There was no one inside the room. I threw the backpack on one of the four hard chairs opposite the dark holey window of the ticket office with a padlocked box for the mutually safe exchange of money and tickets between the cashier and passengers, I sank down on the cold slippery plastic of the next chair, put my head on the backpack and began to fall asleep to the ear-splitting buzzer. a single oblong luminescent cluster burning in the far corner.

With a squeak of the door, a policeman with a rumpled face and no cap stumbled towards my steps from somewhere on the side. His gaze sleepily slid over the empty space of the office space and lingered briefly on me, reluctantly acquiring the expression of awakening vigilance... Once again the door squeaked, the half-fallen lock clanged with its drooping handles, the spring sang briefly and falsely on the other side, and a deathly atmosphere once again settled in the room. buzzing luminescent silence... I fell asleep.

In my sleep I heard a car pull up and the cashier clicking her heels on the tiled floor. At six o'clock in the morning, with a rattle of a box, the cash register opened. I woke up and admired out loud the punctuality of the girl who, with a smile, interrupted her thermos of coffee and sold me a ticket for an eleven o’clock flight to Rostov-on-Don. From there I hoped to get to Dnepropetrovsk or Zaporozhye without any difficulties, and from there it’s just a stone’s throw to Kyiv.

Then the sun rose. I went outside. The sky was surprisingly clear, as if the north wind and yesterday’s rain existed in some other space-time continuum, and here the possibility of only impeccably clear sunrises was initially laid down. Around the airport lay a steppe shrouded in low fog.

Having broken through the veil of fog, a service bus fell out of nowhere. The pilots, several airport workers and airfield technicians emerged from it. A flock of flight attendants fluttered out.

About twenty minutes later, some movement arose in the fog again, shaking was heard, and soon a regular bus rolled out of the creeping white veil with a dull creak. He stopped, grunted with a pneumatic gun and strained to tear open the stuck doors, spitting out several passengers of the first flight, who, fussily tangled in bags, suitcases and sacks, scurried past my bench and disappeared without a trace into the infinity of the flight space that opened up behind the half-glass curtain of the airport entrance doors. In the second half there was plywood instead of glass.

Half an hour later, something buzzed on the airfield, took off from the ground and dissolved in the silence of the whitish sky, along which in some places sparse, very low and dense bright white flat clouds with lilac bellies crawled.

The sun was rising higher. The clouds have disappeared. The fog disappeared without a trace. The steppe around the airport was filled with heat and the sound of grasshoppers. I sat on the bench and silently thought about nothing...

Thus the circle closes... When suddenly, in a long confusion of dreams, a day full of silence with a white shining ball in a cloudless sky above an empty airport, filled with amber of silence, somewhere in a strange outback, suddenly appears in a long confusion of dreams...

Then the Force came again.

But now She fell from somewhere above. Having descended as a transparent stream from the infinity of the Universe, the Force stealthily filled my head and suddenly manifested itself in it, creating such pressure inside the skull that it seemed to me that my head was about to burst, scattering into small pieces and spattering everything around with a greasy aerosol mixture of blood and brain.

I was overcome with horror. Meanwhile, the force became more and more uncontrollable. Concentrated at the bottom of my head, She pressed down into my neck, making it impossible for me to breathe. It was reminiscent of the lump in my throat that I had fought two years ago, but it was directed towards the opposite side. After some time, due to a lack of oxygen, the eyes became dark, and suddenly something opened, and the Force freely rushed down into the body, passed through it and fell into the ground, and then further - through the body of the planet into the infinity of space. It became very easy for me. The body turned into a hollow pipe, inside of which, rhythmically replacing each other, ascending and descending streams of Power rolled in waves, through the point of concentration of awareness, impulses flowing from one end of infinity to the other and back. Feeling the presence of this new manifestation of the Force in my body changed something in my consciousness. I couldn’t formulate exactly what it was, but it seemed to me that somewhere an understanding of something most important was about to arise, and the moment this happened, something would end once and for all... And something... then maybe it will start...

Then I realized that the point and infinity in me could not come into agreement with each other. In order to get up and register, I needed to turn off the perception of the flow of the Force. Otherwise, I could not move a single part of the body, since the body - the point - seemed to have no meaning, all perception, all attention and all the power of making decisions and taking actions turned out to be distributed in the infinity of the pulsating Force.

After some time, I achieved success - the flows of Power disappeared from the field of my perception, I again became a human being of flesh and blood, who, glancing at the clock, rushed headlong to the reception desk...

I'm lucky. From Rostov-on-Don I took a direct flight to Kyiv with almost no delays. The transfer took only an hour, and early in the evening I was already leaving the Boryspil airport building.

I was also lucky with the bus...

There was very little left: fifteen minutes by tram, and I was home. With a backpack on my back, I walked briskly across the square towards the fantastic blazing sunset, with wide eyes looking straight at the red-golden glow of the sun's disk. There was complete silence inside me...

When I realized that I had made a fatal mistake, it was already too late. I should not have looked at the shining sun while walking rhythmically and carrying silence within me. After all, all the way, both on the planes and on the bus, I felt that by turning off the perception of the Force, I had only temporarily postponed what I had to face and cope with one way or another. Or die... Now, having let the radiance of solar fire into the space of inner silence, I myself provoked THIS. Like a cork from a bottle of warm, shaken champagne, I was instantly knocked out of this world and thrown into the perception of those spheres of existence in which my self-awareness was identical to the self-awareness of the Universe.

The power gripped me again, piercing me through with a feeling of infinity inside. I turned into a grandiose conical flow of outer space, in which a majestic vortex in a fantastic dance folded metagalaxies and galaxies into dense fiery streams of white-violet stellar matter, flowing in a converging spiral into the middle of my head - the very center of perception and self-awareness.

Once again, I almost completely lost the feeling of my body, petrified in a deep trance, but then, with some edge of consciousness, I remembered that IT had taken me by surprise in the very middle of the road that I was crossing at that moment, and that before falling into the sensation feeling like cosmic infinity, I managed to notice out of the corner of my eye about ten meters to my right a large yellow bus.

Gathering all my will, I tried to regain control by shifting my attention back to the world of normal human perception. I partially succeeded, although for some reason it did not want to shift, but instead simply stretched out, remaining in infinity, but at the same time capturing a fair part of the normal human world. This action took me so much energy that I felt something painfully contract inside the abdomen of my physical body, and a sensation appeared in my solar plexus, which is usually described as “sucked in the pit of my stomach.” I realized that to some extent I felt my physical body, but I was still unable to control it.

All this happened in a fraction of an instant, I was just taking a step, I didn’t even have time to freeze. Or rather, I did, but for an outside observer I still remained a self-confident pedestrian taking a normal step, who carelessly crosses the street in front of a fast-moving heavy bus... I knew that without changing the state of my consciousness and perception, I would never be able to put my foot down, as it was and I will remain standing on the roadway in the middle of the square, frozen in the petrification of the fiery fullness of the body until I manage to cope with this trance and eliminate the self-sufficient Force from the sphere of my perception.

The moments stretched into slow, viscous rubber. The bus crawled inexorably. He had already approached a full meter, and his driver, of course, could not even imagine that I would remain standing in the middle of the road with my leg raised - in half a second, a second, and, if nothing changes, then in eternity.

I couldn’t turn my head, and only out of the corner of my eye watched how the bus was devouring meter by meter, how the driver’s face stretched out, how death, chuckling maliciously, leaned in from behind, preparing to deliver its first and last decisive blow - the one that would split the fragile round the box in which the point of concentration of self-awareness is hidden, and the chaos of inanimate space, captivated by the orderliness of life, will be released.

Four meters... The driver is terrified, he starts to press the brakes, but clearly doesn’t have time to do anything. The leg hanging mid-step refuses to obey. Perception has returned to this world by no more than half, there is almost no energy left to stretch my attention even further, and I can’t turn it all back either, because the Force has very firmly fixed my perception somewhere in the subtlest layers of infinity.

Well, to hell with him, with attention... And with the body... I give up... Because it is impossible to combine the incompatible and embrace the immensity... Prutkov also wrote... “Ma-a-am, dad is coming back!” Through the crackling of the telephone and the silence of impending death, I heard my daughter’s voice... Well, yes, they will be waiting... Ah-ah, don’t care... And then I suddenly realized that no, don’t give a damn... And the words of Master Chu that love is the anchor that helps us stretch our perception to the infinity of the Universe and embrace the immensity, rushed through my mind like a whirlwind... And I exhaled somewhere down, with my last effort driving the streams of will into my legs... And legs go!!! But what did it cost me... Like a giant magnet, I was irresistibly pulled upward, into the vast distances of cold indifferent infinity, away from the point, away from the thin layer of somehow thinking mold covering this planet... I felt that by allowing the spring to compress and take me away from here, I will lose all possibility of returning here again by myself...

Three meters!.. I had to take this step, I knew that if I didn’t take it now, I would never take it again...

And I took this damned step!.. And again, and again, and again...

The bus roared from behind, hitting me in the back with relief with a dense stream of heavy wind and dousing me with clouds of diesel soot that trailed behind it in a trail.

I walked, and my legs obeyed me, but, God, how hard it was!.. I fixed my body in the center of infinity and carefully moved my legs one by one, but it turned out that I was not moving the tiny physical body of a human being in isolation across the surface of the planet beings, and I rotate the entire planet with my feet, pushing its surface under me with every step in the silent stillness of space.

With each passing moment, I felt how my energy was leaving, how I was weakening, how sweat was flowing through my body, soaking my clothes, accumulating in my sneakers and squelching into them when I took a step.

With a desperate effort, from somewhere far above, I dragged the body onto the tram. The door closed, the tram moved, but could not pick up speed. There was a smell of burning rubber, and the driver, whispering hysterically, asked everyone to leave the car. And I realized that no one and nothing would help me do last steps on the way home. I have to get there myself.

I was walking, someone asked something, I answered that everything was fine, they looked after me, and I walked, and walked, and walked, without turning around and completely concentrating on only one thing. Come back home...

I realized that the whole trick is to combine the incompatible and reconcile the point with infinity, then the entire Power of infinity will become subject to the will of the point... But how to do this? I felt that I could only find the answer once I was home.

I think I groaned as I walked up to the fourth floor.

I unlocked the door and entered the apartment... Almost losing consciousness, I automatically slammed the door with my foot, crawled along the wall into my room, and threw my backpack on the floor. It became a little easier, but there was a catastrophic lack of air.

I was breathing faster and faster. Finally the moment came when I realized that I could no longer control the actions of my body. Having made a desperate effort not to fall on my back, I carefully lay down on the floor, stretched out to my full height and fell into something altogether, where there was nothing but nothing. Empty infinity pulled me into an insane distance and almost tore my perception away from my body. My last sensation was an explosion of unprecedented force in my head, the slowly fading echo of which, swaying, continued to sound until I came to my senses. And by some inspiration, I managed to use this echo in order to stay, tying a thin tail of attention to it, which was already completely ready to break away and fall apart as unnecessary...

...AND STILL BE YOURSELF

It was evening. I opened my eyes and listened. Children were screaming in the courtyard, football players were hitting the ball on the playground under the windows, men were drunkenly swearing and beating a goat, grandmothers were gossiping, and someone drunk was yelling something from Sofia Rotaru’s old repertoire, and from the window of the house opposite, over the Sunday twilight bustle of the evening courtyard Viktor Tsoi’s voice rhythmically and detachedly encoded the truth in the living space of unsuspecting civilians:

Show me people who are confident in the future. Draw me portraits of those who died along this path. Show me the one who survived alone from the regiment... But someone must become the door, and someone must become the castle, and someone must become the key to the castle... Earth... Sky... Between earth and sky - war... And wherever you are, no matter what you do, there is war between earth and sky...

I got up from the floor, went to the bathroom and, putting my head under the cold water, stood for a long time, bent over the sink, and through the flickering streams I watched the white liquid flicker and swirl clockwise, being drawn into the drain hole.

During my absence, point and infinity were apparently found mutual language because I was calm. But not as calm as I was before. My current calm differed from the previous one by some completely new quality. I felt like infinity, and at the same time remained an ordinary person in an ordinary body, familiar from childhood and limited in many respects. A point at infinity. Or infinity, inside of which someone placed a tiny dot. There was no difference now. Except, perhaps, the direction of view. I felt that this was normal and quite natural. There was a boundary between the body and the infinity in which I felt myself, and in which children squealed, grandmothers gossiped, guys kicked a ball, and men slaughtered a goat, and someone drunk shouted something from Sofia Rotaru’s old repertoire, but it was perceived as a certain conditional facet that exists more in my imagination than in the reality of manifested existence. It was transparent and through it, like the surf rolling through a beach mesh fence, Viktor Tsoi’s voice penetrated in waves:

...And two thousand years - war, war without special reasons, war is the work of the young, a cure for wrinkles...

No one turned on the light anywhere, and I realized that there was no one in the apartment except me. They probably stayed overnight at the dacha, because they decided that, as usual, I was traveling by rail with transfers in Astrakhan, Torzhok and Novoalekseevka, and therefore would not be home earlier than in four days.

The refrigerator was empty, which I think I was even happy about, since I didn’t want to eat and looked in there only because upon returning from a trip it’s customary to look into the refrigerator, take something out of it and automatically eat it cold, skimming the headlines in a two-week-old newspaper, pulled out from under the cans that someone once left to dry on the floor under the table. Unless, of course, no one is waiting... When they are waiting, you must first go into the shower and tell something from there, shouting over the hiss of the jets, and then sit down at the table and eat thoroughly, carefully pretending that you are listening to a child’s excitement about the most important events of the past month, which happened every day and always several times in a row.

I was lazy and didn’t want anything. I returned to the room, sat down on the floor next to my backpack and, folding my legs into a full lotus, with my eyes closed, began to silently look inside. I still faintly hoped to see there the familiar emptiness of the original place, which - and this I knew with all certainty - was no longer there. Instead, a whirlwind immediately appeared in my perception, it pulled me into itself and spun me clockwise and carried me through the unimaginable distances of the unknown spaces that I was now.

I opened my eyes. Everything remained in its place - my body in the lotus position, the dimly lit room, the backpack on the floor next to me and Viktor Tsoi’s voice over the white noise in the yard:

...Do you want to change this world? Can you accept it as it is? Stand up and go out of the ordinary? Sit on the electric chair or throne? Again, it’s daylight outside the windows, the day challenges me to battle, I feel, closing my eyes, that the whole world is going to war against me...

Everything was in place... And at the same time, I felt like silver clouds of stars and cold galactic dust were rushing past this planet inside me in a crazy rotation. Closing my eyes, I again plunged into the feeling of flight - it was screwed into space and torn apart in a centrifugal gust, stretching faster and faster in invisible distances into shreds of tight spirals of cosmic wind. I sat in the lotus position on the floor of my room, and I was a whirlwind of Power in the infinity of unknown spaces, and the place where my physical body was located was the point into which the grandiose self-awareness of this majestic in its incomprehensibility phenomenon was projected and concentrated. .

This went on for quite some time. Then the radio behind my neighbor’s wall said it was already midnight, and then I got tired of it all. The rotation instantly stopped, and where the whirlwind flowed, a golden light was revealed. He filled my entire heart, in which there was no more emptiness. I didn’t know what this meant, and I didn’t care about it, I just decided out of habit that I needed to draw in the tongue of descending light from somewhere above and hook it to the light in my heart. As soon as I tried to do this, I realized that I was mistaken. There was no descending light, instead there was just light, it was all around, and it was the same light that I saw inside. It became silvery-white, and then lost all color, going somewhere beyond what is at least somewhat describable. I no longer saw him, I was myself again, but only now - consisting of the invisible subtlest light of the Primordial Force, which is EVERYTHING and which is EVERYWHERE. And I realized with piercing clarity that there is no difference between this light and space in general, between space in general and me, between me and this light, that it is all One. Same...

Everything is the same.

And I rejoiced... I thought... No, I didn’t think - I felt unformulably:

Well, now I am!.. Now I am!.. Now that I am such a Power, when I am omnipotent, now I am...

Actually, I didn’t know what would happen now, what exactly “here I am now...”, but the very feeling of identity with the Force gave me a feeling of such... Such... Such... Such a buzz!.. ..

Most likely, nothing would have happened... No “here I am now”... Because the one who is truly omnipotent does not need anything, because he does not need confirmation... And the one who actively uses the art of controlling the Force, usually simply seeks to convince himself that he is something exceptional... And this is precisely what prevents him from actually being so. The awareness of the person seeking confirmation cannot develop, because he is completely deprived of freedom, he is a slave to his confidence in his own exclusivity, a confidence that every second requires that it be fed with new and new confirmations... And thereby devours the entire supply of free energy.. But I realized this a little later... And at that moment of comprehensive, all-consuming identification with the Force...

And suddenly I heard a voice inside me. Intrusive as the night squeak of a mosquito, he was saying something in a language of which I did not know a word... However, I realized that the voice was scolding me. He doesn’t even scold, but simply methodically reprimands, like a naughty schoolboy... I didn’t understand anything... The voice spoke monotonously... But I still didn’t understand anything... The voice continued to speak patiently, rustling like an electric spark at the point where silvery rays intersected, entering the body from infinity above, below, in front - through the interbrow - and behind - through the cerebellum...

He spoke for at least twenty minutes. I didn’t understand anything, only a more and more noticeable unpleasant aftertaste of guilt appeared in my consciousness. I felt like a kind of kitten who accidentally knocked over something... And the reason for this was - I knew this from somewhere without a shadow of a doubt - my “here I am now!” However, what exactly the mysterious - although, no, not at all mysterious, but quite familiar - voice was trying to explain to me, I was never able to make out...

And then, apparently losing patience and realizing that at the moment I was hopeless, the voice switched to Russian. And it didn’t just move, but, gaining strength and becoming low and inhumanly deep, it rumbled with thundering uterine-spatial peals, which shook the entire infinity of the Universe and Its center in my intestines to the core, causing a sensation familiar from the dream about the Fish Dharma - it made me straighten my stiff legs with lightning speed and, without reviving them, rush straight into the closet on all fours:

BUT NO ONE - TOOK - ALL - WHAT - WAS OWED - TO HIM!!!

Already running out of the room into the corridor, through the rumble of my knees and the slapping of bare palms on the parquet floor, I heard a strange sound behind me - a ringing hiss that appears in my ears in absolute silence or after a thorough slap. Taking a quick glance over my shoulder, I saw that there was something left in the place where I was sitting a second ago in the lotus position. It continued to sit motionless, without changing the position of its legs, torso and head even a millimeter, and it looked like a transparent smoky gray cast of my body. I didn’t look at him, but rushed forward, because all my will was concentrated in a single impulse to realize the unbending intention of getting to the toilet before something irreparable happened...

But, galloping headlong along the corridor, I suddenly remembered another moment from the dream about the Dharma Fish and realized that in order to redirect upward the seemingly indomitable movement of the downward flow of apana that had gone out of control, I could use water. Gritting my teeth and using mula bandha to perform heartbreaking violence on my rectum, I rushed past the closet door, jumped into the bathtub and opened the shower. Barely cold water touched the body, as the feeling of fatal inevitability in the rectal area instantly disappeared without a trace. But, unlike what happened in that strange dream, nothing else happened. No flows in the body, no curls protruding from the stomach, nothing at all. I adjusted the water temperature, making it what smart books say is “comfortable”, washed thoroughly with soap and Lander’s Two - in - One washed his hair.

During the entire time I was in the bathroom, it seemed to me that with some sixth sense I felt how the foggy cast of me, left in the room and deprived of its foundation, was irreversibly dissipating and disintegrating forever. It was as if some kind of rod had been pulled out from inside it, on which what this cast consisted of was still strung. And together with my gray cast, my entire previous life dissolved and turned into nothing... No, ALL MY PREVIOUS LIVES, for in every moment of this life THEIR trace was clearly visible!.. Everything, everything, everything that dissolved and melted away without a trace there were all the events, all the actions, achievements and villainy, all people and all beings, including even Master Chu, his teaching, the Golden Warrior, everything that I learned, understood, remembered, in general - EVERYTHING...

I felt a little uneasy, it even seemed that now I would not be able to remember anything from the huge amount of information that, as it seemed to me, I possessed just a few minutes ago... But on the other hand, something very powerful and dense, something crystal clear, swift, sharply fluid, tough, flexible and invincible. This something was akin to a clear feeling of freedom - complete and unconditional freedom from the past, from the me that I had been until now, and which with a long and heavy transparent cloudy tail stretched after my awareness for thousands of years, inexorably and uncontrollably spreading me and my power across the vast expanses of space and time. I was collected in the instantaneous now and here, neither the past nor the future had any meaning, nothing mattered at all, even that crystal-faceted clarity compressed into the tight spring of the moment that I now was, and which incomprehensibly combined in itself an unimaginably dense cruelty with absolute fluidity. The power of this new state was truly limitless, and It was entirely in my hands.

I tried to remember something from childhood, some episode from those that had an impact on my entire development in this life, with painful needles of misunderstanding of the origins of banal human cruelty ingrained in my memory, but in my mind only sluggish nothing arose meaningful images and, most importantly, I did not experience any emotions. The tragedies and sufferings of the past were exhausted once and for all, and the traces they left in the memory of my personality dissolved without a trace in the evenly distributed Force that filled my entire being.

In the same way, I was unable to recall vivid memories of past joys and delights.

All this was somewhere quite within reach, I knew that I could get there without much difficulty, having rummaged a little in the general dump of used and unnecessary rubbish. But there was simply no point in doing this. The working volume of my own memory was now completely free.

I tried to remember some of what Master Chu had taught me. It could be done, but it required some effort. It turned out to be much easier to evoke in consciousness an image, a thought form, or simply a formulation of anything - any phenomenon, abstract concept, technical technique or specific object - and this image immediately extracted from nowhere an accurate, convex and extremely clear knowledge of the fundamental principle and the deepest essence what he was referring to.

While standing in the bathtub, I tried a few of the same movements I used during training. It turned out that the body does not remember exact trajectories and sequences. In order to restore them, it was necessary to specifically remember something. The automaticity of learned movements disappeared. But it was replaced by a new feeling, which I could characterize as an instant knowledge of the forceful essence of the body's actions. Every slightest movement, and even just an impulse to it, entailed a whole cascade of muscle contractions flowing into each other, which forced parts of the body to move along complex trajectories, performing supposedly spontaneous actions, perceived as the only ones possible at the moment and most accurately corresponding to this particular instantaneous state of body and consciousness. At the same time, every millimeter of every movement was filled to capacity with Power, unimaginably huge and powerful, and I felt how even the slightest movement of my little finger was rolling with its powerful impulse throughout the entire infinity of the Universe. Controlling consciousness, the Force seemed to guide the body in its movements, and at the same time It was absolutely controlled by my will, I could control It freely, as if somewhere there, at the very top, She and I existed as ONE WHOLE... However , that's how it was...

I didn't know what to do with myself, but it didn't matter.

I dried myself off, pulled on my sweatpants, and headed to the kids’ room, where there was Grandma’s old closet with a heavy, full-length mirror. Walking past the open door of my room, I looked into it and noted to myself that there was nothing else sitting there in the lotus position.

I turned on the light and went to the closet.

I liked what I saw in the mirror - a direct and open piercing look, hard muscles that looked like tight long strands of steel cables, rolling with elastic fluidity under smooth shiny bronze-dark skin, and - nothing superfluous, no radiance, no glow, as well as nothing that I would not like to see there... Everything is extremely simple, clear and precise, everything is functional and tightly assembled in the instantaneous balance of the endless now and here.

The lock clicked and, jingling the Valdai bell that I once hung over it, the front door swung open. Seeing the light in the room, they walked along the corridor with exclamations of “Dad is back!!!” the children rushed by, ran into the room and joyfully hung in my arms. Toma came in and stood in the doorway, smiling. It turns out that they didn’t stay overnight at the dacha, and it was so cool that I laughed...

And suddenly a simple thing became clear to me: all the collisions of all our lives, all the joys and sorrows, all the pleasures and sufferings, all the obsessions and passions, all the victories and all the defeats, all the stages and levels of training, all our war, everything with which we collide in boundlessness now and here, pursues one single goal - to teach each of us not to turn away from ourselves. The way he is, with everything that was, is, will be and can be in him... The one WHO he is - an initially self-sufficient omnipotent and infinite being... He who has mastered this art inevitably realizes that there is only ONE endless reality, and understands why in the Gospel “love your neighbor as yourself” there is no place for a comma...

AFTERWORD

As I unpacked my backpack the next morning, I discovered a thick notebook in one of its many pockets. Apparently, Master Chu secretly put it there when he was packing his backpack before leaving. As soon as I opened the notebook and skimmed through a few pages, I realized that I was holding in my hands a completely unique document. It turns out that Master Chu took practical notes for many years, sketched diagrams of training complexes, built multi-level diagrams of energy states and wrote down in a very concise form the principles, the implementation of which turns a set of disparate blocks of physical education and psychotechnical practice into a coherent technology of integral training. And all this was contained in a notebook that I was holding in my hands! Individual blocks of information were encrypted, but the ancient magic cipher used by Master Chu was very simple, and I was confident that I could easily figure out the columns of icons that looked like runic symbols.

I immediately had the thought of what would happen if one of the experts involved in the relevant areas of special training for employees of certain structures found out what kind of information I possess... And people from magical clans, not really, let’s say , friendly to our line, in all likelihood, will also not mind taking possession of it. True, so far I have only encountered them face to face during my travels across the American continent, but this does not mean at all that they will not get here if necessary. Sooner or later they would somehow get wind of the information treasure in my hands - I had no doubt about that. And then... Of course, I could immediately destroy the notebook, but, firstly, I need it myself, because I immediately determined that I was not entirely familiar with much of what it contained, and, secondly, if they come and ask, and I say that I destroyed everything, then who will believe me?.. These thoughts made me feel somewhat uneasy.

However, after carefully understanding the contents of Master Chu’s notes, I gradually calmed down. In order to fully take advantage of this information, you need, so to speak, “power keys,” but they are not and cannot be in the abstract, since they represent phenomena that belong to completely different layers of reality. Only now it became fully clear to me why Master Chu so persistently introduced me into altered states of consciousness: he simply gave the keys, without which all the information he provided me with, and which was presented in a compressed form in his notes, according to its value did not significantly exceed the information presented in good modern textbooks on practical yoga, qigong, parapsychology and applied psychotechnics.

However, I thought that not every one of those who might be interested in Master Chu’s notes would be able to correctly assess the situation, and when it finally dawns on him that without me he is not able to understand the most important thing that turns the training -Master Chu's technology into what it really is may already be too late. Therefore, I consider the only way to protect yourself and gain time to publish Master Chu’s notes with detailed illustrations and comments. When this information ceases to be a secret, there will be no point in fighting for it, stealing it and keeping it in the strictest confidence. And most likely no one will touch me. Unless they contact us for consultations...

Let's just say: the wondrous creation that this work is would never have been written if... If it weren't for my mom and dad, thanks to whom I was born... If it weren't for my wife Tamara with her tendency to criticize cruelly and uncompromisingly any of my creations, thereby stimulating in me the desire to surpass myself every time, and with her enviable patience, which allowed her to persistently go to work every day and selflessly earn a living for all of us, while I sat at the computer for six months for days and brought almost a penny into the house...

If it weren’t for my children - Lenochka and Antoshka - for whose sake, most likely, all this was started...

And, of course, if it weren’t for my friends, of whom there are many, and among whom there are both world-famous masters and the most unremarkable ordinary wonderful people.

If not for all of them, the wondrous creation that is this work would never have been completed.

For the first lines of this book were written about twelve years ago, and our entire apartment is littered with piles of papers, pieces of paper and pieces of paper with notes recorded on them.<удивительными откровениями>, and it’s hard to even imagine how tired I am of all this rubbish...

Thanks everyone.

A.S.

THIRD DISCOVERY OF POWER

Master Chu with firm confidence that the omnipotent

We'll meet someday.

In the previous article, we discussed mainly how to use reflection theory in practice, how our internal imbalance manifests itself in external reality and what needs to be done to eliminate it.

I described the concept of internal balance/imbalance in the relationship between high and low, male and female. And now I would like to dwell in more detail on two more energies that should be brought and maintained in a state of balance.

We all have the ability to contact both matter and spirit. Because we are spirit and matter at the same time: an individual soul embodied in a material form, an eternal spirit in a mortal body. By body we mean not only what is visible in the mirror, but also our mental and emotional shells. It is obvious that for harmony in this world we need to harmonize, unite into a single whole all the levels on which we exist: spiritual, emotional, mental and physical. Then we can rightly be called balanced and integral individuals.

By spirit we mean our Higher Self, which is no different in its qualities from God. What are these qualities, you ask? Love, compassion, bliss, eternity, knowledge, purity and other qualities of character that are fully manifested by God and to one degree or another by each of us depending on how much we are under the influence of spiritual energy, in other words, how much we close to God. A holy man or a man in God will inevitably and naturally exhibit these qualities. And, of course, they are the true criterion of holiness. It is always easy to judge a person’s spirituality by the qualities that he displays in Everyday life.

Spiritual qualities are a certain energy: the energy of the spirit, the energy of the Divine, the energy of our eternal Higher Self, the energy that connects all living things into one energetic whole.

The material world is a world of forms, a world of physical bodies, a world in which we identify ourselves with our emotions, mind and physical shell.

It is interesting that the division of energies into spiritual and material is quite arbitrary. For a holy person such division does not exist. She, even being and actively acting in the material world, actually perceives it as spiritual, since its consciousness is spiritual.

Separation was created by the Creator so that we have the opportunity to enjoy awakening, deliverance from illusion, enlightenment, and awareness of the Divine. For this we need its opposite - material. “And in the darkness the light shines...” Or: “Only in the darkness is there light, only in silence is the word,” as Boris Grebenshchikov sings. So the material world is a kind of game, a joke, a reason for laughter.

Laughter, by the way, is also one of the spiritual qualities. One day we will begin to perceive any events in our lives, good or bad (as we are accustomed to classify them in the world of relativity), as a wonderful reason to laugh. But until this bright day we will be under the influence of material energy, in illusion or in a dream. Choose any term you like. Personally, I prefer the latter.

It reminds me of Calderon's wonderful play Life is a Dream. The main character, as you remember, was convinced several times that everything that happened to him until the last moment was a dream. From a king he turned into a prisoner, and they convinced him that he reigned only in a dream. And when from a prisoner he again turned into a king, he was convinced that imprisonment in prison was a dream. Such dizzying changes help expand consciousness, even if you are just a reader of this play. But sooner or later we all recognize ourselves as its participants. I heard a story about a fairly enlightened man. He was always cheerful; none of his friends ever saw him sad. And then one day several acquaintances came to visit him in the morning and found him in complete despondency, the reason for which he told himself. “Last night I had a dream that I was a midge.” “And what is this a reason for sadness?” - the friends were perplexed. “Of course, if I can have a dream that I am a midge, where is the guarantee that what is happening to me now is not the dream of a midge that dreams that it is a person?”

IN scriptures Ancient India, in particular, in the “Great Purana”, where the concept of the origin of matter is described in detail, everything that happened, is happening and will happen here to us is explained as Maha Vishnu Nidra - dream of the Supreme Lord. When He exhales, myriads of universes come out of the pores of His skin, and when He inhales, they return back. It's easy to imagine that we are now somewhere in one of these universes. Let's take a closer look and find out what we are doing here.

So, we live in a world of energy, consisting of tiny oscillating particles. They form larger oscillating particles, and those, in turn, even larger ones, etc. Now we have reached the atoms that make up “solid” physical matter. Let's continue moving a little more towards compaction and here, finally, is our physical body. It needs food, sleep, rest, clothing, work (to provide all of the above), sex, communication and much more. It worries, rejoices, grieves and hopes - in general, it lives. This body contains all of our life experience; while in it, each of us is guided and implements our ideas about how to live.

Our ideas can change: old ones are replaced by new ones. Or they change for a while. For example, sometimes we perceive everything in a rosy light. Pink color– the color of love, and it’s beautiful. But periodically the lenses on our glasses change, because life is diverse. Imagine, say, being overwhelmed by a wave of red color. You are overwhelmed with the desire to live in this material world, your will to live is incredibly great. You are purposeful, and sometimes, if obstacles arise on the way to your goal, you can be aggressive. But on the other hand a wave rolls in orange color: You meet the woman or man of your dreams. The attraction to them overwhelms you, and the desire to enjoy close relationships corresponds to your capabilities: supply sexual energy seems inexhaustible... Following this, a wave may roll yellow color. And your professional life, and precisely this aspect of the relationship, will be very relevant for you. And then you will feel true love. With all my heart. And now you are washed by a stream of green color. The green wave is followed by a blue wave, your belonging to a certain social environment is updated. Social life activates and you feel satisfied with the communication. Then the color of the wave turns blue. You are thinking about new concepts, thinking about plans for implementing new ideas, materializing new ideas about reality. But there may come a moment when a purple wave washes over you, and you break out of the hustle and bustle of worldly reality, feel infinity, and connect with your spiritual beginning.

All these color periods are possible in the life of any person. It is possible to mix them, the appearance of shades of different colors - beautiful varied life! “And what, is all this an illusion, a dream?!” - you ask.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Everything depends on us. The unification of the physical and spiritual means existence in the material world. In this case, it is no longer material, it is spiritualized by the philosophical stone of our Higher Self. Any metal, even a piece of rusty iron, in contact with the philosophical stone, turns into gold - an incomprehensible, mystical reaction. Life in any color can be spiritual if we are aware of our spiritual nature. Life in the material world without awareness of one’s nature is a dream.

Esoteric traditions tell us about two energy flows that every person needs: the lower flow - the flow of earthly energy and the upper flow - the flow of heavenly, spiritual energy. In different people these flows are developed to varying degrees. According to the observations of one of my female healer friends, most people these days have a fairly developed lower flow and a hypothetical upper flow (of course, everyone has it, but it is often like a thin thread). Sometimes the other extreme occurs: a highly developed upper flow and a curving lower flow. Representatives of the first type are immersed in material worries and joys, the struggle for existence and enjoying the fruits of their labors. Anyone who has enjoyed these fruits to the fullest is familiar with the subtle desire for something more, coming from somewhere deep down - hence the race for new fruits and new disappointments. Without a doubt, these fruits have their own taste (and quite sweet), but anyone who has seen them understands what I am talking about.

Representatives of the second type became disillusioned with earthly joys, became fed up and, carried away by the search for something more, undertook a pilgrimage to the beyond. They seriously renounced and completely devoted themselves to any of the spiritual practices. Even if representatives of the second type continue to lead a normal lifestyle, they have no taste for it, realizing its illusory nature. Their eyes don't light up when they see beautiful woman or a gourmet meal. It is obvious that complete depletion of the lower flow leads to the cessation of earthly life, while partial depletion leads to illness. After all, it is he who provides us with a comfortable existence in the material world and material body.

There is a funny anecdote about two hunters, one of whom told the other the following story: “I was walking through the jungle one day, and a lion jumped out of the thicket. I shoot from one barrel, from the second, and miss both times. The lion pounces on me and eats me!” The interlocutor is surprised: “How does he eat? You’re sitting here very much alive!” - “Ha! And you call this life?!”

For people of a spiritual nature, earthly life is not life. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy talks in his autobiographical work “Confession” about how at one time he had to hide a hunting rifle away from himself and even walk without laces so as not to hang himself. The temptation to do this was sometimes so strong because of the awareness of the meaninglessness of life... Well, we briefly talked about each of the two types of inharmonious people (from the point of view of spiritual and material). Most often, the second type follows the first: having become disillusioned with the material world, people renounce it. However, a relapse of material illness also occurs, when a person is no longer able to suppress his material desires (often they become even stronger when trying to suppress them), and receives a “second birth” in the material world.

Now let's talk about the good and the most interesting: the harmony of the spiritual and material. This is also possible and occurs on sinful earth. Imagine a person who has developed both flows: the upper and the lower. Both in the world below and in the world above, such a person is productive and successful. All levels of his existence (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) are balanced. And he himself bathes in waves shining with all the colors of the rainbow at the same time. This is material and spiritual prosperity. What is his secret? Of course, the balance of earthly and heavenly is an individual concept. Each person decides for himself how to create harmony between the upper and lower flows. Someone will simply divide all their time into two halves...

In general, material life concerns some kind of activity, spiritual life concerns existence. Being in spiritual consciousness, in connection with oneself and with God, by and large does not depend on anything. To be means simply to be, and what you do at the same time is not important. In the end, life often, against our will, offers its own scenario for the development of events; at some point, we ourselves, without wanting it, will be limited in earthly joys. I remembered an anecdote about a man who underwent major surgery. In the morning, the nurse told him in detail about the lifestyle that he now needs to adhere to. And he was amazed: “What?!” Are you saying that my breakfast, lunch and dinner will be limited to one tablespoon of sweet cream?”, but there was nothing to do. For breakfast, although without much enthusiasm, he ate his spoonful of cream. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and rang the bell. A nurse appeared. “Dear, please bring me a postage stamp: I want to read a little...”

On the other hand, in addition, everyone has generally different ideas about what it means to enjoy life.

The most incredible thing is that a harmonious person, no matter what he does, is always aware of himself as a soul, aware of his connection with God and with everything that exists. And one more thing: he is not attached to material things. Although he has or can have everything in this world. He may have preferences, but no desires (material desires, of course). For him, life is an exciting movie, a game, an amazing entertainment, which he is absorbed in with all the passion of an earthly man and from which he is detached at the same time. He is open to life, ready for any, the most unexpected turns of fate, and always, in any situation, no matter what he does, shows the most sublime qualities of the soul (which we talked about). Such a person, whether he enjoys or suffers on the material platform, will always experience spiritual bliss. If his pleasures are limited, he will not worry about it. But you won’t neglect the joys of life when they are possible either.

We describe. As you understand, the ideal option. So let's give a perfect example. I heard a story about one saint who wandered around the country with his disciples and, no matter what happened to him, thanked God for everything. One day, late in the evening, he was not allowed into one village (for religious reasons). He found himself in the steppe, under the open sky, and every opportunity to be eaten opened up before him. wild animals. In addition, it began to rain heavily. This man sat down and began to pray to God.

God! – he said, “thank you for everything, thank you...

One of his students could not stand it and interrupted the teacher:

For what?! What are you thanking him for? This is insincere! You sit in a puddle, hungry and cold, and say “thank you”?! I do not believe you!"

To which the master calmly replied:

God knows best what I needed to have tonight. I trust him.

“Why is it that sometimes you get what you strive for, sometimes you don’t?” - you ask. Good question. But the sage in any case receives what he strives for - the Grace of God. Because he perceives everything that happens to him as His mercy.

Probably all people in this world sometimes have something, sometimes they don’t. But harmonious people always remain calm. They always rejoice, always in contact with the spiritual and never stop fulfilling their material duty or their duties, in general, they never stop their material activities. Although history knows exceptions, we are talking about today.

Another amazing quality of harmonious people: they are here and now. They are immersed in this moment, for them there is no past and future. Only the present. The spirit is eternal, and eternity is in the present. Therefore, they do not have principles, ready-made answers to all questions, built on previous experience. Their previous experience suggests that the perfect solution in any situation is suggested by the situation itself. No two situations are the same, everything changes. The only constant is change.

I'll tell you real story. Real, like everything in the material world, no more, no less. But it is inspired by the consciousness of the main character - an Indian saint named Shivapuri Baba. He traveled a lot and met people, despite his advanced age - approximately 130 years. One day a rich gentleman gave him a lot of money. He silently approached and handed over a whole box of 1000 rupees notes. Baba accepted the donation with gratitude. I got on the train and went to another city. The carriage was first class. Besides him, the only person in the compartment was a young Englishwoman. Taking advantage of the moment, Shivapuri decided to count the money, he didn’t even know how much there was... When the young lady saw a whole box of money in the old man’s hands, she said in a firm voice: “Give me half the money. Otherwise I’ll pull the chain and say you tried to rape me.”

Shivapuri looked at her and made a gesture with his hands, meaning “I can’t hear anything, I have problems with my hearing.” I gave her a piece of paper so that she could write what she wanted to say. She took the scrap and wrote: “If you don’t give me half the money, I will yank the chain and tell them you tried to rape me.” Shivapuri Baba took a piece of paper, put it neatly in his pocket and said to the English woman: “Now pull the chain.”

Hardly every day he was given boxes of money and blackmailed by young English women. The solution to the problem came spontaneously. This always happens to people who live here and now. They trust life and boldly cooperate with it. They are not zombies or dolls, they are play partners and never tire of surprising each other. Having fun. Let's say, that saint who spent the night in the steppe in the rain was probably grateful not only for the conditions for the night, but for the opportunity to reflect on why this happened. And, ultimately, thanked for the lesson. Perhaps the residents of the Muslim village, who did not allow him to spend the night, did so because he himself still had some kind of religious prejudices, and they reflected his own attitude towards representatives of other faiths.

Perhaps there was another reason. That's not the point of salt. The point is that a harmonious person acts. On the one hand, he acts as best he can. On the other hand, he is in contact with God and is ready to draw conclusions, becoming even wiser. There are no limits for improvement! A flow has such a concept as width. It can be as big as a tree, or it can be several kilometers (as they say it was with Buddha). The main thing in this matter is the harmony of the top and bottom, and then they can gradually be expanded. No depression or suicide. Being happy man. The main thing is to be here and now. Life will always tell us which direction to move. And he will send instructors if necessary. In general, relying on others and imitating others is dangerous. It is better to perform one's duty imperfectly than to perform someone else's duty perfectly.

One incredibly enlightened sailor said: “The sea is the place where you learn to rely only on yourself and depend on God.” But St. Augustine formulated it differently: “When I act, I do it as if everything depended only on me. And when I pray, I do it as if everything depends only on God.” Activity with prayer is the connection of two streams. Swans are said to have the ability to separate milk from water when necessary. But they don’t neglect water either.

Let’s say saints don’t have material desires, and some don’t even have preferences. But you don’t become saints in one day, and some, perhaps, don’t intend to do this at all. However, you have to start somewhere. They start with honesty. Be honest with yourself - The best way speed up your development. Although we are not immune from curiosity in this case.

The head of one large company was very concerned that people were not working as well as they could, to their full potential. He turned to a psychologist. The psychologist advised hanging a lot of slogans in the office like: “Do it today, tomorrow will never come!”, “Live your today like it’s your last!”

The next time they met with the psychologist, the head of the company cried: “You have upset all my affairs! The typist ran away with the doorman. The cashier stole all the money and the delivery boy tried to kill me.”

Even then, honesty is better than hypocrisy. And, of course, it would be great to live every day as if it were your last. This is what harmonious people do. Let's assume that in addition to spiritual desires, we also have material ones. Why not satisfy them? Or at least not try. And why not take it lightly, realizing that this is just a game called “life on Earth.” And if, in addition to material desires, we also have spiritual ones, all the more we should not neglect them, even if everyone around us is doing differently. The highest spiritual desire is to love with unconditional love, expecting nothing in return. The highest material thing is to share your feeling with everyone around you with all your might, with all your energy and earthly passion.

There is one ancient parable about a man who was tired of his enemies and found himself over a cliff, under which hungry lions were roaring. The tree branch he was clinging to was being chewed by two mice, one black and one white. And honey flowed down the branch and straight into his mouth. Inevitable death on all sides. The only question is when this will happen. The mice symbolize day and night: how long we are destined to live through them, hovering over a cliff, only God knows. Of course, in this situation it will be difficult to enjoy honey. And many even believe that this is pointless: does it make sense that it will soon stop anyway, it’s better to think about how to avoid death!

A harmonious person will be calm, clearly realizing that the soul is eternal: we close our eyes in one place and open them in another - what is there to be afraid of? Therefore, he will calmly enjoy the taste of honey, which is truly sweet, and thank Fate. Truly sweet honey, in my understanding, is an opportunity to share your spiritual treasures with all people here on Earth, in the material world. It doesn't get any sweeter than this.

And now - an exercise. Relax as you always did before doing exercises. Stand up, close your eyes, place your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. And imagine how a stream of warm energy enters your body directly from the earth. Inhale this energy and move the flow up through your body. Let it come out through the top of your head and pour down on you from above. Now imagine how a stream of cool cosmic energy pours down on you from heaven, enters your body through your head, goes down and exits through your perineum. Breathe it in. Now take these two flows and connect them in the solar plexus area. Mix them there and fill your entire aura with this mixed energy. Do it simply with the power of your thoughts. And may your life become more and more harmonious.

The buyer is interested in seeing how the thing he would like to buy is made.
Photo by Grigory Tambulov (NG photo)

Organizing tourist excursions to existing production facilities can be an unexpected help in the development of Russian cities and companies. This is an excellent territory marketing tool: everyone wins, except the competitors.

We are finally starting to get tired of the word “crisis”. This is good fatigue, which forces us to look for new, non-standard technologies for survival in the economy - the same innovations that we talked about so much and selflessly before the crisis. The most interesting solutions, as a rule, are located between disciplines, between traditional niches of activity and at first glance seem ridiculous. It is believed that, for example, a city cannot equally develop industry and tourism. These are incompatible spheres that interfere with each other. But the unpredictable development of a rapidly changing world proves that breakthroughs in development must be sought precisely in the combination of incompatible things. One of the clearest proofs is the boom of industrial tourism in Western Europe that began 15 years ago.

Industrial tourism is the organization of regular tourist tours to existing (or once operating) industrial enterprises. Since industrial tourism is an interdisciplinary phenomenon, there are almost no studies devoted to it. All there is is a huge number of examples of cities that successfully exploit tourists in their enterprises. In France alone, by 2007, 1,700 companies hosted tourists at their production sites. The leader here is the Rance tidal power plant, which welcomes 300,000 tourists annually. And in England, 400,000 people visit the Cadberry chocolate factory. In Spain commonplace There are wine tours, in France - cheese tours, in the Netherlands - flower tours...

However, the pioneers in industrial tourism were American companies. A precedent occurred when the Jack Daniel's factory opened its doors to tourists in 1866, when it opened itself. Today there are very few businesses left in the United States that do not accept tourists. For every serious company - be it a car assembly plant, a sawmill or an airport - it is considered bad manners not to invite tourists, this is a threat to the company's reputation. The Americans can be understood: in the absence of a deep historical heritage, the Present must be made into a spectacular and educational “heritage”. In Germany, on the contrary, the emphasis is on the post-industrial motif: for example, abandoned coal and salt mines in the Ruhr, shipyards from the Second World War. Although, of course, many existing enterprises are open. The leader in attendance is the BMW plant in Wolfsburg, Bavaria (260 thousand tourists per year).

Not only the production of goods, but also the production of services can be turned into a show without compromising the production process. You just need to want it - and foresee the direct benefits of it.

Why is this interesting for tourists? Modern tourists are “place collectors”. They, victims of global acceleration, are no longer fully satisfied with the standard tourist assortment - sea beaches and art galleries. They are increasingly striving for complex experiences - combining relaxation with educational purposes, improving their health with excursions, attending a business conference with sports activity and sightseeing. A tour of the enterprise is just what you need. A familiar city reveals itself from an unusual side. Products that are produced, as they say, online, you can immediately touch (and in some cases make yourself), try, try on, buy. Industrial tourism is especially in demand among those traveling with children. They wonder what happened to the ice cream and chocolate before they got to the supermarket.

Why do manufacturers need this? Letting consumers into your production is a very nice advertising move. Several hours of sophisticated advertising, which the tourist consumes willingly (!), and sometimes also pays for it. In addition, opening up to the consumer is a demonstration of honesty and transparency of management, impeccable technologies, and confidence in one’s prospects in the face (sometimes literally) of competitors.

I suspect there is another important one by-effect. Transforming production into a tourist attraction stimulates the company to improve the corporate climate and labor relations. Cleaning in workshops, clean work uniforms, presentable appearance of equipment, and much more that the average Russian director didn't see the point before. And workers’ motivation changes when they are looked at as if they were a museum treasure. So, the company receives consumer loyalty and effective brand support. And the turnover of souvenir shops located at points where excursions end is 30% higher than in other points with similar products.

Finally, it goes without saying how the city budget benefits from stimulating sales of city goods and services. But, in addition, cities acquire new brands, new unexpected and attractive elements of the image, as well as larger number tourists – this “walking money” of our time. Only in cities there is infrastructure for industrial tourism - transport, communications, trade, hotels, cafes. In addition, excursions to operating enterprises are, as a rule, an additional “load” to other tourist magnets, which are again concentrated in cities. Moreover, the most popular among tourists are objects that are brands of specific cities. For example, the port complex in Rotterdam or the Rolex factory in Zurich. The city itself ensures the popularity of the brand.

In Russia, excursions to Moscow confectionery factories have been famous since Soviet times. Other, new examples are emerging. However, these are rather exceptions to the rule. Moreover, all this is done clearly without passion, as a tribute to fashion and without taking into account the multilateral benefits that are listed above. Firstly, it is very difficult to get on such excursions. Most often they are available only to special guests, sometimes to school groups. Registration for a visit to the Rot Front factory is held for two days in mid-August for a year in advance. One can note the Baltika concern, which conducts excursions at its factories in St. Petersburg, Tula and Chelyabinsk, as well as the Mikoyanovsky plant and the Kristall plant in Moscow.

Of the cities, Chelyabinsk has a real chance of soon becoming the capital of industrial tourism. And for how many cities this sphere could become a saving grace! There are dozens of depressing ghost towns in Russia, which will soon have little left but the majestic ruins of the Soviet economy. Asbest, Kizel, Chapaevsk, Karabash, Shchuchye, Baikalsk, Kopeisk, Krasnouralsk, Tyrnyauz, Ozerny and dozens of other cities - taiga, northern, mining, single-industry, rotational, military. For such cities, industrial tourism is almost the only chance to remain on the map of their homeland. Here we are talking, of course, not about visiting existing production facilities, but about turning into unique museums objects that, at their end, were a nightmare for the territory. After all, if the process cannot be stopped, then it must be led. This principle has long been used by many successful politicians, businessmen and even entire nations.

What is needed to organize industrial tourism? As the practice of other countries shows, the financial costs of organizing tourist routes for existing enterprises are relatively small. Another thing is working with old, abandoned sites. Here you need a special investment project to transform them into spectacular national heritage. But in both cases we need a resource, which we still have in great short supply. This is the ability of very different interests to cooperate in one project. The first step in industrial tourism is cooperation between urban and regional authorities, local business elite, local experts and travel companies. Here it is, an ideal field for public-private partnership, which we also tend to talk a lot about.

Industrial tourism is a real tool for marketing a territory, systematic work local communities to promote its interests to attract investors, tourists or potential residents. After all, marketing is a philosophy of local development that best helps where there is economic depression and there are no standard ways out of the situation.