PART ONE. MAN IN SPACE, AS THE MASTER
DFS? WHAT IS IT?
The Instrumental approach
Dialogue. The ability to reach agreement
Resonance. What is there behind the words?
The Alphabet of rhythms. How do you sound?
Rhythm B
Rhythm C
Rhythm D
Rhythm A
The practice of rhythms. Tuning the violin
Where does energy come from? Let’s check the levels
PART TWO. DOLLS DOn’t live in Space
AN IMMIGRANT’s STORY
ENERGY OF THE WHITE FIRE
“Fiery Flower” — A functional system
Instructions for use
Base exercises of the DFS method
Contemplation
The flight of the white bird — training controlled imagination.
The movies
Zero concentration
Cheat notes for those who have already tried
The set of base exercises from the point of view of MQS
A NEW STAGE. DFS AS A WHOLE
DFS — A TECHNOLOGY for ACTION
THE LANGUAGE OF STATES of being
Leitmotif and a voyage through rhythms
1A
1B
1C
1D
2A
2B
2C
2D
3A
3B
3C
3D
“4” — Harmony as the base state of a person’s new quality
IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION. WHY people DON’T live by THEIR SOUL?
APPENDIX. General Principles of self-regulation
PRINCIPLES OF THE DFS METHOD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE. MAN IN SPACE, AS THE MASTER
Sometime, a very long time ago, people were sure that the Word was flat, and that it had an edge, and were therefore careful not to go over this edge. Naturally! If something has an edge, then you can undoubtedly fall off it. There were all kind of different legends about the edge of the flat Earth, but they all agree on one thing: something scary and unknown was awaiting man there.
There were heroes, both real and make-believe, who from time to time had the courage to make excursions to these unknown and dangerous lands. And the make-believe heroes had all kinds of really dangerous adventures there, while the real people most often didn’t come back at all. And this only confirmed people’s fear. This is how the rule of the “happy life” was born: if you want to live comfortably, don’t go to the edge, don’t go beyond the borders, don’t step across the line. Everything beyond the edge, the border and the line is scary, dangerous, and most often doesn’t bring anything good to curious people.
But this is exactly what humanity is famous for: there will always be crazy, restless people, and curious, disobedient people. The world has changed. Passing through fear, condemnation, bewilderment and distrust, sacrificing their lives and well-being, these crazy, bold people learned one truth among many others: that the Earth is round, that it hangs in space, and that it revolves, along with other planets, around the Sun. Furthermore, these people learned that there isn’t just one sun, but many of them. They learned that there are many worlds and planets, and galaxies, and that there is no end to them. And all of this eternal existence lives, revolves, dies down and flares up in space, which has been given the name “cosmos.”
And who are people? How is a person to be who knows that he has a beginning and end, that he has a limited amount of time on earth, that his opportunities are limited by his body, knowledge, talent, and upbringing, and that he is limited by written and unwritten laws and rules? What relation does he have to the boundless world in which he was placed without anyone asking whether he wants to be there or not?
So, people… Man is great in everything. He is great in his ability to discover the unknown, and in his ability to adapt to any changes.
People lived on Earth, using their new knowledge, adapting great discoveries to their everyday needs, crossing seas and oceans, and filling in empty spaces. Every little piece that people won back from eternity was quickly barricaded with wall and fences, cutting out limited, but comprehensible and safe pieces. Maybe it was out of habit, or maybe out of the rules of calm life, turning the enormous, round World, which revolves in eternal space, into a lived-in, flat territory. Man limited himself, forging himself in the armor of invariability and constancy, blocking his own way to live communication with the surrounding world and with himself.
Not knowing anything, full of the primitive fear of a smaaaal person in the face of the enormous world, we restrict ourselves in all sorts of ways. We do because we want life to be less scary for us, so as to know for sure: this is me, and I know for sure where I start and where I end. I look at myself in the mirror each day and always know who I am.
And what pleasure we get from meeting our old friends after not seeing each other for many years! “I recognized you right away. You haven’t changed a bit.”
― Yes, that’s happiness, that’s joy. I haven’t changed, it’s easy to recognize me.
— Did you ever think what it is that we are so happy about?
— What do you mean? Invariability and constancy are the base of stability and safety. And that’s very good! Risk and uncertainty are attractive things, but only in movies, in books, and in other people’s stories. You take the risk, and we’ll see what happens. And then, if it works, then, maybe, we’ll take advantage of it for our own benefit.
May things be the way they are for all time, man decides involuntarily. May the world too be recognizable, may it change little. In that case everything is safe and reliable.
So many people are ready to live however life tells them to, to be unhappy objects of life, to complain, to be depressed, to be aggressive, to go to the psychiatrist or the nearest liquor store… and to do everything possible not to change. These people don’t to notice that the world itself is changing, very quickly, and practically entirely independently of us. “Please stop this moment — it’s so beautiful!” And really, it makes no difference if it’s beautiful or horrible. The important thing is to just stop! May everything stay the same, since everything is good as it is.
But, alas, no contrivances help to keep the world as it is. The surrounding world changes not only over the course of our life, but each year, each minute. And this isn’t just the new house which rose up all of a sudden outside your window, and it’s not just new car brands, and it’s not even the new goods in the store or the new television in your apartment. It’s a new pace of life and a different climate. It’s new knowledge. It’s children who know and can do more than their parents, who deal with the new, changing world better than their parents, because they were born in this world, and haven’t learned how to take offense or be frightened by it yet.
Something new has appeared already today, already now, which we didn’t have yesterday. These are new relations between people. These relations are based on new laws and rules, this is the opening of new frontiers, from which comes an absolutely different and new understanding of what is good and what is bad… The value of human life is totally different. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, and more accessible, and you know there’s nowhere to hide from the fact that the world is round and is galloping off in the eternal Universe together with other worlds. But where is it galloping off to? Nobody knows.
Only the paintings in museums remain the same. But even here things have changed noticeably. After all, even the concept of beauty isn’t constant…
The fearful person spends more and more energy on trying to protect himself from all that scares him in the new world. He spends more and more energy on keeping his walls and fences, but the world is flying, and the wind of change is ripping the tiles off the roof, rattling the fences, and howling outside the sealed windows.
What is this all about? It’s about the fact that the world of things, the world of stability and constancy, where generations died together and began together in the same bed, where great-granddaughters were dressed in their great-grandmothers’ wedding dresses and grandsons were given their grandfather’ swords when fighting for the fixedness of their world, has disappeared long ago. There has been a quiet, almost unnoticeable, but irreversible revolution in a large part of the world in which we live: the world of things has given up its place to the world of processes.
The static, well-known, guaranteed, lifeless world has turned into an increasingly quickening stream — inconstant and unpredictable. This stream didn’t form by itself, but rather as a result of man’s actions. Alas, without the consent of each individual person.
Thus a legitimate question arises: who is a person? The crown of nature! What is he to do in this situation? Looking for an answer among that which he already knows, he is faced with a choice:
TO LIVE OR TO SURVIVE? TO CREATE OR TO ADAPT?
The path of survival and adaptation isn’t new. It’s the trodden, well-known path.
Man has been an extremely good specialist at building his own separate world for a long time. The limits of this world are determined by the area of interest and the circle of well-known territories, from which he rarely peeks out. And even the notorious “window to the world” under the name of “television” is not a window at all.
Not long ago, in one cozy family television show, a rather old actress made a very typical acknowledgement: “I just can’t go into stores. I get lost in the great number of goods and don’t know what to choose… I can’t find any goods that I’m familiar with, and I can’t understand what to buy. I have fewer and fewer old friends, and I don’t know what to talk about with my new, young friends. I don’t know what to talk about. I don’t know when they are being serious and when they are joking, and I don’t know what’s really important to them.” This is a bitter and courageous acknowledgement. Man has frozen in his habitual world, but the world is changing, and moving, and is going further and further.
You don’t agree? Then I propose reading the following short text for internal use.
You live in a large, or perhaps a small city.
Count the number of people with whom you speak regularly.
Count the number of routes on which you walk and drive, and the number of exhibits, museums, and new performances that you go to see.
What is the world in which your neighbors live made up of? How about the people you work with? And your children?
How do world events, cataclysms, catastrophes, achievements, discoveries, or political battles influence your own concrete life situation? And that which is shown on television?
What do you think about when you try to understand why one thing or another happened to you?
Does it occur to you that these events, which you think happen only to you, are connected with world processes, with general tendencies in changes of the system of relations in human society, with new approaches to family life, to the relations between parents and their children, to changes in moral norms and priorities?
And how is your life affected by the fact that you live not only on planet Earth, but rather in the cosmos, and that from this point of view you aren’t very different from those who live there, in outer space, and who revolve around the earth in space shuttles?
What you choose – flatness or space, life or survival, creation or adaptation, limitations or a dialogue – will depend, in essence, on your answers to these questions.
But are there really choices? Yes, there are, if you aren’t inspired and motivated to constantly build fortifications around your private territory, if you want to live in the world, instead of on one territory. There are if you really want to wipe the sweat away from your face with satisfaction, flexing your happily aching muscles. There are if you don’t hold back your pleasure from seeing the well-done work which you call “my life.” There are if you offer this work with pleasure to the world. In that case an inescapable thought will arise: “If I’m willing to admit that the world isn‘t a collection of more or less coincidental, and, for the most part, unneeded things, meetings, connections, relations, knowledge, and information (which are constantly a part of me, even though I don’t know why), and I myself am no grain of sand flying in an eternal, fearfully unknown Universe, but rather something which resembles the wreath of creation, then isn’t time to get down to the business of implementing and fulfilling this creation, this wreath and this greatness?”
Let’s go even further in this insight and assume that you understand perfectly well that in order to fulfill these wishes you will have to start working, and that there won’t be any magic lamp other than the one that you buy yourself on the money you’ve earned. So, you’ve imagined such a thing. Now a simple, clear, and sobering question arises: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?
What do you mean, “what”? Begin by moving. By moving from your usual, fenced off territory into Space — the natural living place of live man, who flows and resonates with the world.
WHAT SHOULD WE BEGIN WITH? Naturally, with the most important thing: changing our attitude to the surrounding world. We have to try and see it not as being flat, incomplete and coincidental, but rather as being whole, three-dimensional, and interconnected. In other words, we have to see the world as being Space. To see the World as being one space, but one space filled by many.
It’s important both that there is “one” space, and that this space is “filled by many”.
“One” means that nothing exists by itself. Whether we know about this or not, whether we follow this or not, everything around us lives in constant interaction: informational, physical or energy.
“Filled by many” means that these interactions include all the various forms of living and non-living, visible and invisible, and known and unknown things.
And if that’s the case, then what efficiency can we speak of in our existence on earth if, being protected by walls and fences, we not only don’t know how to react to or understand that which happens around us, but also don’t even know that it is possible for us to do so in principle?
And what if we agree that that’s the way things are, and try to see ourselves not as a splinter which is involuntarily squandered in the flows of life which come and go who knows where, but rather to see ourselves as a process in this Space? As a three-dimensional and many-sided process, thereby giving us the opportunity to interact with this Space, or, as it is commonly phrased today, to begin partnership relations. In that case there is one other important question:
— Ok, fine, you have agreed to this attitude. The World — space and man ― a process. The World tells, hints, and offers you information. And a person who lives his life as a process, who lives under the principle “space in space,” is ready to take on these very partnership relations, to enter a Dialogue with the World. Ok, that’s it, there’s me – man, and there’s you – the world.
HOW WILL WE DO THAT? How can we hear, and, more importantly, correctly interpret everything that the world says, and identify what’s important? Where is the path to living communication rather than conventional communication, to communication which isn’t structured as per previously ordained rules?
Our answers to these questions became the method of DFS: Differentiated Functional States of Being.
DFS? WHAT IS IT?
— Diligence and Fantastic Success?
— Deprivation and Fastidious Spontaneity?
— Development of a Formula of Self-Satisfaction?
— Yes, all of that, and not only…
DFS is a technique of Domination of Filigree Sympathy and an according Dynamic Functional Structure. It is a concrete practice for those who are attracted not only to word plays, but also real Deeds, Facts, and Senses…Developing a Free Soul.
Expressing ourselves Dutifully, Formally, and Seriously, DFS is a set of methods and technologies which make it possible to shift from unmanaged emotion to complete feeling.
— So, this is all very well, but a little bit scary too. People have been living quietly, in a civilized way. Not in the wild forest, but on fenced-in land plots. People know all stones, and have explored all corners of the earth. People know all their neighbors. Everything is customary, safe, guaranteed.
— But isn’t it boring? Do your shoulders hurt? Isn’t a kingdom not so much? If you’re not bored, if you don’t feel pain, and you have enough out of life, then you don’t have to read further. This isn’t your adventure.
The technique that you are hereby being offered has many definitions. These definitions will appear on our journey like road signs in due course. And a journey always starts from a first step, and you and I will start from several practical steps that we absolutely must master in order to learn the art of LIVING, the art of living in space, in three dimensions, the art of being alive. These are several foundations upon which the house of knowledge of the DFS method stands. The method of differentiated functional states. Feel them!
Differentiated — various, distinguishable, able to be defined, described, and learned.
Functional — specific, applicable in action, describing action, effective.
States — feelings, moods, sounds.
No longer will you have to fear your long-awaited holiday being ruined by a bad mood coming right out of the blue. You won’t have to drag yourself to work any more when you all of a sudden you’re not in a working mood. No longer will you suffer, understanding that you have to rush even though you want to lie on the couch. You’ll simply be in the right mood, and you’ll always have enough energy to do what you have planned to do.
The Instrumental approach
Attention please, we’re starting our passage from territory to Space.
Just like when moving from one house to another, we’ll start by figuring out what things we have to do to move.
What do we have? Do we need these things for our new life? Should we throw them out or take them with us?
Do you have to spend a lot of money to refurbish and renew those things that you already have?
And what completely new things do you need to buy?
When solving these problems, I propose looking at one’s self as the owner of three instruments given to man at birth. These tools are very practical and necessary, but are often used extremely ineffectively. We offer you the instrumental element of the I-conception or the instrumental conception of one’s self.
WHERE DO THESE INSTRUMENTS COME FROM?
Don’t be afraid, we have these instruments from birth. We simply haven’t learned to look at our selves from such a point of view. Our view of our self becomes murkier as the years of our life go by. You live in a house, you live without really paying specific attention to anything, but then someone comes to visit you and says: “Wow, what an unusual cabinet! And what a beautiful vase! What a watch! Where did you buy all this stuff? And why did you put them in such an unnoticeable corner? What beauty! What a piece of art! All these things are just priceless!” And the amazed owner looks around perplexedly, understanding all of a sudden what treasures he owns. We have about the same reaction upon understanding what nature has given to us at birth.
The instrumental I-conception proposes identifying three instruments:
— body,
— consciousness,
— mental energy.
In order to see whether you can really name these things that were given to you at birth, your tools, at least to some degree, then determine for yourself:
WHAT DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO WITH THESE TOOLS?
Body. It’s easiest of all, of course, with your body. Right from birth your body is constantly turned into a tool for solving a great number of tasks which life gives us. Our bodies are taught to walk, sit, run, jump, swim, climb, hold a fork and knife, use a pen, play the piano, walk straight, and even walk on high heels. Each person can continue this list based on his or her own life story and experience.
We understand our body’s possibilities and determine its limits as an instrument from our first awkward baby steps all the way to the perfection demonstrated by sportsmen or dancers. But keep in mind that skills that we once had but which he have since lost don’t count. You used to be able to do the splits and ice skate, and now it’s hard for you just to bend over to tie your shoes? The diagnosis is sad — your tool is rusty and has lost all of its prior qualities. If you want to renew your body, then set your goals and start training.
Consciousness. Here too we have lots of experience at transforming our naturally given traits into an instrument. Our consciousness teaches us to talk, to speak in various languages, to develop our memory, to think and to think in various ways. We train our consciousness to understand, to read, to think, to think about the given topic, and to not think about things which we don’t need to think about at the present time. Consciousness learns problem-solving technique, and learns poems, dates, and recipes by heart. You can remember these things. But do you forget them too? Can you train your consciousness to remember those things which you want to know?
The limits of our consciousness as an instrument are determined by the same principles: what can our consciousness do, or not do, based on our request. Can you not think about a white monkey?
Mental energy. This is the sphere of emotion, moods, and feelings. We have perhaps the most questions about mental energy. Nobody doubts that each person has some kind of mental energy. Feelings, emotions, moods… Sometimes our mental energy is just gushing, while at other times we simply don’t have enough of it. And most often we feel that we depend on some kinds of power which we know almost nothing about, and which we therefore can do almost nothing. We feel very well when our mood changes, and our attitude to the surrounding people and situations changes depending on our mood as well. We definitely know that there are such things as music, people, and places which influence our state of being for either better or worse… We are dependent people. And we want so much to free ourselves from this carousel, we dream of self-dependency and emotional independence. We dream of no longer feeling like a fly trapped in a spider’s web, or a puppet on a string.
I was in an excellent mood. Then I took a trip on the subway and I lost my good mood completely.
Whose mood was this? Was it yours? Then who is that spiteful enemy who purposely ruined your mood? If it’s so easy to just take your good mood away then is it really yours?
I was walking down the street, satisfied, confident, and I knew where I was going and what for. But then I walked into the supermarket, and there was such a crowd there, so much bustle, that I lost my train of thought, and couldn’t remember what I had come to buy.
Clearly, you do poorly at looking after yourself. And this is why you get scared all the time: oh no, I’m being influenced, oh no, I’m being programmed, oh no, I’m being manipulated. But it’s all so simple: anything can happen to a thing which isn’t looked after. Coincidental conditions can ruin it, irritate it, or break it.
We probably have the least skills at managing our mental energy.
BUT HOW CAN WE MANAGE OUR STATE OF BEING?
Digging in our memories, we most often find instructions on how to manage our mental energy which are quite strict and which don’t explain much to us. And yet our mental energy is such a suspicious, disturbing element. “Calm down, get a hold of your self, behave decently.” “Don’t shout, don’t laugh so loud, don’t get angry or nervous.” It’s easy to say! And who wouldn’t like to be able to do so? But in this way instead of learning, opening, and developing our opportunities, we gain only several skills to tame and subdue ourselves.
Love and tenderness well up from inside us, from the depths of our soul, but the only things that come out of us are several faceless, banal, hollow words. Anger and resentment boil in our soul, but the only things that come out of us, depending on our upbringing, are swear words, a shameful squeal, or tears from our inability to express what we feel. Only those whose fate is linked with creative professions, such as actors and musicians, acquire the skill of managing and using that skill which from this day we are going to call the mental energy instrument, an instrument which is meant for understanding the world of feelings.
The psychological technique of DFS is aimed at developing precisely this instrument, and at gaining skills for managing this instrument.
There is one more necessary step in the moving process. Having decided to move from the world “in flat” to the world “in space”, we must keep in mind that life in the new world requires being able to communicate. And we need to know a language in order to be able to communicate. We will have to learn the language of space, and this will be one of the most important elements in learning the art of living in space. But before beginning practical study of this language, let’s first learn a little about the theory of communication.
Dialogue. The ability to reach agreement
DIALOGUE (from the Greek dialogos — discussion): informative and existential interaction between two sides who communicate with each other, thereby resulting in understanding.
(from the New Philosophical Dictionary)
Dialogue is a notion which is well-known and well-spread in our time. Who doesn’t strive to have a dialogue, who doesn’t try to communicate? Nations, governments, cultures, and political parties and religious confessions all try to form a dialogue. It’s clear right away that this is a necessary, positive, and effective means of communication.
But what do we, real people, do when we talk, converse, or discuss?
WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE TALK TOGETHER?
Why is it that communication sometimes makes us happy, or gives us energy, or gives the feeling that something very important and significant for us has happened? While at other times there is nothing else but spiritual bankruptcy, a feeling that all our energy has been spent meaninglessly, and that everything happening is pointless? This can happen as a result of communication with one and the same person. What do we most often do when we pretend to be talking, or pretend to try and help people to understand us?
A young mother complains that her son doesn’t tell her anything, while the nurse knows everything about him.
― Well, do you ever talk to him?
― Well, I run home from work and ask him what’s up? What happened in kindergarten? And he simply says “everything’s fine.” And that’s all.
― And what next?
― Nothing else. It’s time for him to sleep, and I have a ton of things left to do.
***
― My husband has stopped talking to me altogether. I ask him “How are things going at work?” And he just replies: “Everything’s alright.”
― And you?
― Well, I still have lots of things to do in the house, and I have to take care of myself. I feel that it would be good to sit down together, to have a long talk. But there’s just no time. At all.
***
― You know what, my daughter has become completely distant. I explained to her for a whole hour yesterday how my wife and I aren’t satisfied with her studies, and what will happen to her if she doesn’t start thinking about her future.
― And so?
― Nothing. She just remains silent, or mumbles something. She can talk with her girlfriend for hours, but we can’t get a word out of her.
***
― You know, we used to walk a lot before we got married, we went out of the city, went out at night, and we always had a lot to talk about. We told each other about our plans, shared our thoughts and feelings, and entrusted the most important things to one another. We could speak about things that we never told anybody else. Now we live together. But we hardly talk about anything at all.
— How are you?
— Fine.
— How are things?
― Good.
We went to the movies together and once again we have nothing to talk about.
Do these stories remind you of anything?
It’s an almost comical situation.
You’re running down the street, and an old friend is coming towards you.
— Hi, I’m so happy to see you! How are you doing? — you say with a fake smile, instantly ready to run further on your way.
And here your friend stops, and, happily smiling to you in response, and starts talking to you, slowly, with meaning, with feeling… telling you how he’s really doing, how he’ been over the three year since you last saw him.
How terrible!
So what do we really miss?
WHAT ARE WE MISSING?
On the one hand, we constantly complain about constant conversations, about how the telephone doesn’t stop ringing, about text messages, and the Internet, and e-mail, and ICQ. We get words, questions, and messages from everywhere. On the other hand, we claim that we have no one to talk to.
The answer is quite simple. In reality we all know it, in one way or another. We don’t have enough lively, free, unpredictable communication. We don’t have a Dialogue: communication that leads to understanding. Mutual understanding, mutual feeling, communication which goes beyond an automatic exchange of information, which will hit narrow strings, and will open the soul, will open that which is unexpected. It’s not to the psychotherapist that we want to go, after all.
Let’s try to understand why we can’t name every type of communication a Dialogue. Let’s determine what a Dialogue is. And once we’ve done so, we’ll take the following independent step offered to us by DFS when moving to life in Space, rather than in territory.
The first essential, but incomplete condition, that we must have for our conversation, our discussion, or meeting to go from being a more or less useful exchange of information into a Dialogue is equal rights for all participants. Nobody gives orders and nobody is submissive, nobody sits in a pose, heeding instructions. Two equal people, speaking and listening, in the process of communication with freely changing roles.
The second is no less important. In order for predictable contact to turn into unpredictable contact, into a live dialogue, you must look for something mutual. This mutuality is very important — something equally meaningful, something equally objective to both parties. And only under the shade of this mutuality, under this common umbrella, can a really live, open, free discussion take place. The breadth of topics and questions which can be covered in such a discussion depends only on the size of the “umbrella”, in other words on the size, volume, or mutuality of the field which you found, or gradually built, from your mutual understanding of good or bad weather all the way to mutual political views or religious beliefs.
One has to admit that such a way of communicating is rather risky. First of all, you never know if it will take place or not. Secondly, your previous experience doesn’t guarantee you anything: each time is like the first. You can’t relax and just speak automatically. Thirdly, there are tree unknowns: you don’t know who you are today, you don’t know who you’re talking to, and nobody knows what you’ll find that is mutual.
Why and who needs this joy? Those who like risk and who want to make new discoveries.
You have the possibility to learn something that you didn’t know at all earlier, and to learn something that you never had to go through earlier. And the most amazing thing is that the source of this new knowledge and new feeling may be both the person you’re talking with, or you yourself, to an equal degree.
Jut speaking can lead to such an unusual adventure.
And another important preparatory step.
Resonance. What is there behind the words?
Communication with people, and, in particular, attempting to have a dialogue, leads us to feel that words, of course, are extremely important, but not necessarily the only significant part of communication. There is something else which is hard to explain, sometimes almost imperceptible, but which exists. And this SOMETHING often decides a lot when talking with other people, and in communication with nature, the situation, art, and everything else.
You’ve stopped in front of a picture which you really like; you leave, slowly, full of new feeling from a particular room; you’ve almost suffocated from admiration upon seeing unusual colors in the sky… and all of a sudden it’s as if something has pushed you softly, you turn around, and you see an absolutely unknown person who gives you a look at exactly the same time. You know for sure that he is feeling and seeing the same thing that you are. You heard him. And he seems to be almost a friend of yours, and it’s easy to talk to him, and it turns out that you have a lot in common.
I turned around to look and see if she had turned around as well,
To see if I had turned around.
(Maksim Leonidov, “The Girl-Vision”)
Even this can happen.
You bring a person who is dear to you to a place that is very important to you. You’ve had deep feelings with this person, and you’re dreaming of giving this place and these feelings to this dear person… and nothing happens.
— “Ya, real nice”, is what you hear in the best case.
— “What the hell are we doing here?” is what you may hear in the worst case scenario.
You feel offended, misunderstood, and alone.
Nobody is guilty. This person just doesn’t hear. This place doesn’t have any resonance with him. Instead of hope for coming closer, there is instead an abyss between you.
WHAT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS SUBSTANCE?
There’s such a technical concept as resonance. There’s such a psychological concept as empathy — the ability to reach the other person’s emotional state without words and explanations, through feeling.
You have a serious personal problem, and you have to ask your boss for a favor. This is extremely important to you. You enter his office. Your boss is busy with a very important business conversation. Don’t rush. Put your need off for some time. Feel the situation, and feel the person you’ve come to. And you will find the right words for the conversation. The right intonation will come all by itself. After all, you need to achieve a result. Try for your own good.
Children are extremely good at this. Children cry when they feel that their mother is irritated. They don’t cry to be mean, or to make life harder for you. Your child feels you, and reacts with his whole being.
If you have peace and contentment at home then you will have a quiet, happy child who plays with its toys.
― Mom, can I go with my friends to the river?
― Go.
― Can I, mom, can I?
― I jut said, you can go.
Why didn’t we make any progress, and continue to beg? Oh, how well we felt that behind that formal “go” there was something else, unknown to us, but well felt in our mother’s discontent. As part of the DFS practice you will get the real opportunity to purposely reinstate this lost, but absolutely necessary ability. I propose that you leave the land of the deaf.
And to do so, here are some “hidden truths”:
1. Don’t hide from your feelings. Take them out of the depths of your memories, admire them, and go through them like a rapt collector.
2. Don’t avoid adding the feelings of other people to your own emotions. Use these emotions the way a traveler uses a guide. When traveling on an unknown trail with a guide you make the trail your own.
3. And mot importantly, if you want to see the light then raise the shades, and open the shutters; if you want to hear the world then stop being the center of everything. Don’t look at others through your own experience and knowledge. Look as if for the first, without knowing who is in front of you. Look with a fresh look. And you’ll hear and feel. You’ll get hearing and vision.
So, you’ve arrived.
WHAT HAPPENED?
How is the world that you’ve come to principally different from the one that you were in before, from the one in which you lived all your life?
In the world that you were used to you were always in your territory. You enter the room, and stand on the floor, and your favorite couch is standing on the floor, and your favorite chair too. You sit down on your chair, or lay on the couch, and your computer is on the table, and your lamp is on the floor, and your television is on the table, and there’s a vase on the television. There’s a long list of things and objects, and you are one of them. There is no whole. You feel uncomfortable, and you move thing from one place to another, or you move yourself from one place to another, but nothing happens.
And now leave the room, the way you leave the old world, and enter a new world, the way you planned to. Go into the space of your room, into the space of your home, then leave your house and enter the space of the city.
Leave this book for a while and enter this new space for real. Feel the difference.
Welcome, welcome to new space.
At the precise moment when you do this you will leave the flat world for the world of three-dimensional space. And you will immediately find that you’re not alone, because there are at least two — you and the space in which you are located.
Maybe, for some reason, you will want to move your things around. You may want to immediately take away some kind of statue or painting. Or all of a sudden you’ll understand that right now, at this very moment, it’s time to change the curtain, because all of these things, with their colors, and shapes, harm your space. They aren’t needed here at all – they came here by chance. You’ll take them away, and you’ll feel how your space has changed, that it’s changed in exactly the way you want, and that you finally feel comfortable now.
No matter where you are now, you will always know that there is a space which is called your home. You may get tired, or bustle about, or rush, but there will always be a space which is waiting for you, to tell you: “Welcome home! Relax, rest, you are completely safe here.”
You’ll come to work, and when you enter the space where you must work and think you’ll feel for the first time that you don’t feel comfortable working here because your space is not well organized. You’ll feel that your space is organized by chance, that it’s chaotic. You’ll see (hear, feel) what needs to be done in order for everything to change, and if you do much which is not in your power then you’ll learn to interact with your work space, knowing its weak and strong sides.
Now remember the places where you love to spend time. Think of them in a new way. Remember the space. Then think of the places which make you feel tired, unsatisfied, or irritated.
WHAT KIND OF SPACE IS THIS?
Remember how you sat in a museum next to a not-so-famous painting, and you were happy there, and didn’t want to leave? What was it in the space of that painting? Remember how uncomfortable you felt when, having come to the home of people you respect, you wanted to get out of their house faster, even though you absolutely didn’t know why? How bad do you feel in a hospital, and yet you know that you have to support your loved one there and help him, and your conscience torments you from the thought that you just want to escape. What’s there, in space, what does it tell you, what does it do with you?
So, we have no doubt now that space has a sound, and that it gives us information. This sound and information penetrate us, interact with us, and influence our behavior, mood, and thoughts. Space thereby influences our actions as well. It’s great if this influence, this sound, appeals to you and suits you. But what if it doesn’t? How can you understand that? How can you respond?
IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE FOR MAN AND SPACE TO AGREE?
The result of a search for an answer to this question, which is so important to any person who has come to a new country, has led to the creation of a language of states of being. The method of DFS proposes using precisely this language as a means of achieving sensible and effective interaction between a person living in space, and the space in which he lives.
We haven’t thought anything up, we’ve simply listened to space, we’ve gathered our experience of interaction and analyzed the results of this interaction, and have gradually come to understand. And, having understood, we are now responding. This is how the language of states of being came to be: a means of conducting the information given to us by space. And we’ve managed to hold a substantial and very effective dialogue. We propose that you take part in this dialogue as well.
Studying any language traditionally begins with learning the alphabet.
Have you ever been to a country where you didn’t know the language at all? Do you remember that strange feeling you had when this foreign, unfamiliar speech seemed to be a continuous flow of senseless sounds, and that you tried completely in vain to find anything at least remotely familiar to you in this speech? But then, when you started to study this language, it gradually transformed from chaotic sounds to something clearer and clearer, into informative communication. The same things happens when you study the language of states of being, which we will now attempt to learn, so as to understand it and speak it.
Do you remember what happened when you tried moving into space instead of continuing to live on the floor, the couch, or the chair? You felt how you were connected to space, you felt its sound, but you still didn’t know how to understand it, or how to talk with it. We have a name for this feeling of inclusion, this up-to-now still incomprehensible sound: “rhythm”.
Rhythm — This is how we will call the sound of space which we are capable of feeling.
Our next understanding was that this sound can vary greatly. What is the reason for this difference? How can we separate one sound from another and explain what exactly this difference comes from?
Our searches for criteria which will allow us to orient ourselves in this sounding, to separate various aspects of this sound and delimit one from another, opened a wonderful and very practical means which is common to the whole range of the “voices of space.” The whole range of sounds can be described as the space of action. This range of actions delimits one aspect of sounding from another.
How does this look in practice?
The Alphabet of rhythms. How do you sound?
Rhythm B
A quiet park in the center of a large city. Paths, green grass on the lawns, and you can hear birds singing. Look, look, a whole family of squirrels is jumping in the trees. The parent squirrels are teaching their young to jump from branch to branch. Business-like ducks are swimming on the calm surface of a small pond. The sun is first shining on all this beauty, then hiding for a short time behind capricious clouds. People on benches around the pond are talking together quietly or reading or napping, exhausted by this quiet. You’ve sat down on an empty bench, and there’s a light wind blowing through the tree tops, playing a melody that only it knows, or quieting down. Your thoughts become calmer, and gradually, attaching to one another, no longer rush around inside you like a constantly late train, but rather flow gradually, like water in a river. In the general flow of life.
***
The concert hall is full of people and sounds. A strong, gripping melody fills the hall to the farthest edges of the gallery, first falling on the listeners in a rapid torrent, then transforming into a happy stream, then flowing smoothly and majestically, like a great river, proudly bringing its water to the ocean. And the people in the hall, engaged by this flow, feel like a part of it and sail down the river as well, submitting to the force of the sound, adding their own memories to this flow. Images and feelings pop up inside each person. And the listeners feel the eternal flow of life with new force.
***
The dinner party is coming to its end. All the food is gone. The dishes have been washed, everything has been cleaned up, and the overhead lights have been turned off. Only your closest people remain. All you have left to do is drink tea and say goodbye. But a soulful discussion is flowing word by word. You’re not talking about your plans and problems, but rather about that which means the most to you, about your most important and dear memories, about your hopes, whereby the thoughts of one person unexpectedly turn out to be the continuation of the feelings of another. And then it turns out that those things which you thought were impossible to describe all of a sudden get word for them. And the pauses are just as significant as the phrases, and this stream connects people and makes them closer like never before, renewing the feeling of being part of the living flow of life.
I have no doubt that you have not only seen and felt the commonality of the sound of space in my descriptions, but have also connected your own associations and images to them, as well as memories from your own life. This could be memories of fishing on a quiet lake, or the sound of a child breathing heavily in bed, or the thoughtful quietness of a reading room in the library, or a road which your car tires have been creeping over for hours on end. All of these memories, images, and situations are united by one thing: the space in which they take place, the space which gives birth to them. We view the space which floats to the surface in our memory as a continuously flowing living stream.
It is for precisely this reason that we named the aspect of comprehending space in the language of states of being as the rhythm of the stream, the rhythm of the living flow, and, for the sake of functionality, as “rhythm B”. The key word is “living”.
Rhythm C
We want so badly not to get up in the morning, not to rush, not to force ourselves into the crazy rhythm of the business day. But at the same time we want to accomplish a lot, to do everything we have planned for the day quickly, to feel organized, to feel capable, accurate and light. Where is this mood? How can we help ourselves not to waste our strength on conflicts, on this eternal conflict between our own intention and our own caprices? How much energy do waste on these conflicts, and yet somehow we should be able to do without these conflicts. And that way we will have more strength, and we will feel that we are effective, that we are highly capable, and our mood will only improve. And, strange as it seems, we will have more energy.
How great. You just turned on the radio in your car, and there’s a great concert being played. The music is happy, rhythmic, and your drive is happier. You seem to maneuver seamlessly in traffic, and you see the situation on the road clearly. And then a thought comes to you: maybe I should go the gym on my way. It’s been a long time since I was there last. It’s about time that I stretch out a little. And I’ve got plenty of time.
Everything in the gym is so energetic, so serious. The general atmosphere there undoubtedly tones a person up. How is that I completely forgot about such a possibility? What a shame. Well, now I can go do my business. So what do I have on my plate for today? There’s really not so much to do as I feared. It turns out that it’s nice to feel the energetic, business-like, concrete rhythm of the business day.
***
An enormous office building. The doors open automatically, and you enter the building. The ceilings are high, the lines are precise, and all the people are dressed in business attire. Everything is calm, without unneeded words or movements. There are precise, clear directions. The office workers are polite, and do their jobs correctly. All of a sudden you have the sense that you are extremely confident, that you will do good work here, and that if you have any questions, you will resolve them without any trouble, absolutely and cleanly. You have an energetic, pleasant feeling of being in a system, in a well-functioning mechanism.
These are completely different situations. They lead to absolutely different memories, associations, and feelings, such as the mounting of the guard, which charms you with its consistency and synchronism of movements, or sporting competitions which you have observed, or taken part in yourself. What music sounds in your memory: An energetic march, the sharp rhythms of flamenco, the simple songs of your youth which pick up your mood so much?
You feel ready to act, in your head you have very precise, consistent ideas and ways of fulfilling them. You want to act, right now, without putting anything off. You see your situation very clearly.
In the language of states of being we name this aspect of understanding space as the multitude of discreet objects, and, for the sake of functionality, as “rhythm C”. The key word is “point”.
Rhythm D
It’s very scary, even though we don’t know why, to walk in a pristine, dark, dense forest. It’s even scarier to walk by demolished, abandoned homes. All of a sudden, for some reason, we don’t want to enter the courtyard of a building we’ve known for a long time.
It was hard to be in the hospital.
It is extremely painful, scary, and troublesome to find yourself in the place of a bad accident or tragedy.
And for some reason you don’t want to walk in a park that’s been built on the site of a former cemetery, or to live, even if in a new house, that’s been built on the site of a former tragedy.
And what a pity it is when you enter a store in a good mood, but then to leave it, without buying anything, in a bad, unsatisfied, irritated mood. And then to be even more upset due to your inability to get rid of this malice and irritation.
And then there’s a feeling that many people know well: you wanted to calm other people, but instead you got angry yourself. You’re walking down the street and you hear aggressive, angry music coming from a car driving by. And this music hits you like an unexpected punch, like an insult. You know that this music wasn’t meant for you, but you have a bad taste in your mouth, and you’re till irritated.
You know this space too. One way or another we run into things that make us feel bad inside, that irritate us, that make us angry or sad, or even at times fill us with terror or disgust. This is also a part of the space in which we live, not having the possibility to avoid it or ignore it. And it’s therefore very important to understand what this space is telling us when we hear such a sound — painful, aggressive, sad. And we must understand how to respond to such information.
In the language of states of being we name this aspect of understanding space as destructive, and, for the sake of functionality, as “rhythm D”. The key word is “loss”.
Rhythm A
You are lying on a field, in the grass. There’s nothing above you but the clear, blue sky. All your problems and anxiety has gradually dissolved in this endless sky, your thoughts have quieted, your body has almost lost its limits, and you are flying between the earth and sky, feeling like a part of this endless sky and endless land. You feel so good! There’s just you and the Universe!
***
The city is huge, loud, fast, and extremely business-like. The curious tourist looks around, sees a beautiful old door, opens it, and walks inside. After a second the tourist feels quiet, and sees a blinding light, and hears a majestic melody coming from somewhere above, and he is stopped by something so clear, as if he was taken by the hand. And, leaving behind the bustle of the city, this person enters the space of a majestic and unknown heretofore temple. He doesn’t really even understand what confession this church belongs to, but that’s not important. The important thing is that from the hustle and bustle of the city he has unexpectedly entered a completely new world. A high world filled with meditations not about the current moment, but rather far from everyday life. And it’s strange. There in that huge business capital this person had just felt like a small, insignificant part of a world leading who knows where. But now, in this temple, in this small building, he all of a sudden feels that he is important, significant, and almost eternal. He has become an equal and worthy part of the eternal world.
I have no doubt that you have had the same or similar feelings at some time. Each of us can add something to these pictures from one’s own experience and one’s own impressions. I think you’ll also agree that they are united by one feeling which we don’t feel every day, but which is very important in our life: the feeling of one’s own participation, of one’s adequacy in the eternal world in which he have the pleasure of living.
In the language of states of being we name this aspect of understanding space as the rhythm of the eternal, and, for the sake of functionality, as “rhythm А”. The key word is “cosmos”.
The practice of rhythms. Tuning the violin
Sit down comfortably. Shut your eyes. Inside you there is a hollow, white, luminescent space. Write the word “life” in this empty, white, luminescent space, and, without naming it, without giving it a value, listen to this space. Then erase this word from this empty, white luminescent space and open your eyes. Spend no less than five minutes doing this.
Do the same thing, using in turn all of the remaining key words – “point”, “loss”, and “cosmos” – to activate each of the four aspects of the sound of space. The choice of sequence these four aspects is completely voluntary, and will depend only on your preferences and your curiosity. And may you spend no less than 5 minutes on each aspect. Listen to each of the sounds. Compare them together.
Undoubtedly, you will find states that are more pleasant for you, and more familiar, as well as those which you would prefer not to interact with. But let’s remember old wisdom — if we can’t change the situation, nothing is stopping us from changing our attitude to it.
Now, when you have your own feeling of this part of the language of states of being, you can look around you.
Try to determine how your apartment sounds.
Do you have a favorite painting? Try to enter this space and hear how it sounds. This is the first information about your spatial preferences.
Do you have a conflict with your children because you don’t like how they decorated their room? Are you irritated by the music they listen to? Do they not accept your choice? Do you adore large, loud restaurants and cafes, where the voices of the customers, the music, and the diversity of colors all blend into one energetic space which appeals to you? But your girlfriend always takes you to small, half-dark, rather obscure places which seem to her to be comfortable and to provide intimate communication?
You have the opportunity to understand and to argue. What can you say? You have various spatial preferences. But the most important thing than you can and should know in order to overcome the barrier of incomprehension is that you use music, interior objects, and spaces which you prefer to choose to solve various tasks.
Remember that upon the first mention of DFS we learned that this book focuses on functional techniques for managing yourself, in other words for specific tasks. Even though we didn’t yet learn to manage these tasks, we’ve already made the first step towards functional use of those states of being which we come upon in real life. The most important thing is to remember which task you are trying to solve. Then you can attend to correctly organizing space for doing the right work needed for solving this task.
And a little more practice.
Experience shows that music is always the most reliable helper when learning the language of space, and that music is the best tuning fork for improving your perception of the sounds of rhythms. I offer a small list of musical works which have a certain sound in various rhythms. Find time and listen. Try to make a small effort to listen to these works differently than you normally do, but rather by entering their space. I assure you that you will make several important discoveries. It’s better to listen to these works once then to read about them several times. And it’s even better to listen to them more than once.
To begin with, here are four excerpts from great pieces of music.
S. Rachmaninov: “Second Concerto for Piano with Orchestra. Part One”
M. Ravel: “Bolero”
W. Mozart: “Requiem. Part I”
W. Mozart: “Symphony № 40, Part I”
Before you listen, sit down comfortably, with a piece of paper and pen nearby. Listen to each of these works, feeling your self in their space. After each excerpt quickly write down what mood you get from these works, which images pop up.
Do this for yourself, not for just anyone. And this will be your own, not told to you, but your own first-hand discovery. You will hear what the space of these works tells you, and now you can understand what this message means.
You will hear the impetuous flow of Rachmaninov’s music, and now you will know that that is how any manifestation of a living thing, whether it is flesh, or feelings, or thoughts, because in this space all of thee things exist at the same time (rhythm “B”, the rhythm of living).
You will enter the space of Ravel’s Bolero, and will feel the charming, magical beauty of clear, coordinated action, which gives clarity and orderliness. This applies both to physical actions and to feeling and thoughts (rhythm “C”, the rhythm of the discrete world).
You gather your strength and enter the space of Mozart’s “Requiem” and get the real possibility, perhaps, to finally feel what is pain, and sadness, and loss, and suffering — this necessary part of life. Because the devastation of that which is fated to leave and to remain in the past, in your memory, in your experience, gives the possibility of freeing space for new actions, new feelings, and new thoughts. And at that point feeling loss becomes less unbearable (rhythm “D”, the rhythm of loss).
Undoubtedly the space of Mozart’s Symphony №40 will open the doors to the world of joy, to a flight into eternal freedom to do no matter what you want to do, to feel no matter what you want to feel (rhythm “A”, the rhythm of eternity).
I’ll give several more examples of musical works. If you find the time to listen to them, then you’ll see that the sound of one and the same rhythm of space can have various shades, various power, and depth. You’ll see that the sound of space in one and the same rhythm varies, the same way that the voices of various singers performing the same musical work sound different, even when the singers follow the written notes exactly. Similarly, orchestral performances vary depending on the director, and piano music varies depending on the performer. But, although colored by nuances and timbres, a piece of music remains the same, just like the sound of space remains a witness of one and the same aspect of space, even though it can have various shades and nuances.
Rhythm “B”. E. Doga’s waltz from the movie “My Tender and Gentle Beast”.
Rhythm “C”. D. Shostakovitch’s attack theme in the “Seventh Symphony”, the song “Rodina” by the group DDT, АВВА’s “Money, Money”, W. Mozart’s “A Little Night Music”, and A. Vivaldi’s “Winter” from “The Four Seasons”.
Rhythm “D”. F. Chopin’s “Funeral March”, the songs of the group “The Doors”, A. Schnittke’s “Concerto Grosso” Part I, the early works of Pyotr Mamonov and the group “Zvuky MU”.
Rhythm “А”. J. Bach “Toccata and Fugue in C Minor”, A. Saint Saens’ “The Swan”, Edith Piaf’s “No, Never”, and V. Vysotsky’s “The Capricious Horses”.
And now a small exercise to see how well you understood this material.
We have called the feeling of being included in space as “rhythm”. The range of sounds of space can be described as the space of action. The variety of action differentiates one aspect of sounding from another. We have identified four types of such action: procedural, discrete, action directed at loss, and action directed at interacting with eternity.
Remember your friends and relatives.
Ah, I want to spend a quiet evening after the long work day, to eat well, to sit quietly, maybe to play chess. I’ll go to the Ivanovs’ house.
***
So, starting tomorrow morning, everyone is to be energetic and joyful. No whining, or dawdling, or sharing one’s problems with other people. Grandma and grandpa are coming to visit. We all have to be cheerful and friendly. We can’t anger grandma and grandpa.
***
Maybe you’ll go alone to your sister’s birthday party, and congratulate her from me too. I can’t go myself. It’s always the same thing. She takes one drink, and then she can’t stop talking… “Nobody respects her at work, that guy’s a jerk, and that other guy is even worse. Her former husband, that scum, with that new woman, he deserves… But as for me … Then the children, they’re so ungrateful, they’re just dying to leave home…” I just can’t take it any more. She’s your sister — you go and suffer without me.
Try to feel which rhythm your friends and relatives are in most of the time, what type of activity is most common for them, what space they make and in which space they feel most comfortable.
Why do we want to relax all our lives?
“Oh, if I could just get to the beach… I would just lay there until my stomach tans right through my back. But he just can’t sit still. Either he wants to go on a guided tour, or he goes hang-gliding, or he goes water-skiing. We only meet over dinner. There’s no rest there either: we go to dance, we go for a walk. And you call that rest?”
Are these feelings familiar to you? The expected displeasure, and that’s despite the fact that you dreamed about relaxing together all winter? Disappointment? Resentment? Or even arguments? Don’t dramatize the situation.
Remember yourself, how can you characterize yourself as concerns being included in space? And the person next to you? Can you feel the difference? Most likely you differ in terms of your dominant type of activity. This is the reason for many conflicts, misunderstandings, and silly offences, sympathies and apathies. But there are possibilities here to understand one another, to become closer, and to see the other in a person you’ve known for a long time.
This is the moment when you should remember about the magical power of resonance. A person’s typical, or dominant type of activity is not a verdict. Do you want to be together? To be next to each other? Do you want this to make you happy? Remember the possibilities that resonance interaction gives us. Enter the other person’s space, unify your two spaces into a single rhythm. And, get satisfaction…
Think about that. Think about what enormous horizons open, what real opportunities you have to increase your efficiency. And these are just the first steps towards achieving the art of living in space.
Where does energy come from? Let’s check the levels
We’ve gotten to know the feeling of being included in space, and we’ve learned about the range of space’s sounds. This is just the right time to get to know the characteristics of the space in which we plan to live now. These characteristics tell us about the source of energy which is used when performing one or another type of action.
I recommend that you take a look at your life experience, which until now, likely or not, has lied in the back of your brain, not called on at all. I would be willing to argue that you never thought to yourself “what type of energy am I using now?” And what is its source? After all, most often we use the common concepts of “I’m tired”, “I can’t”, “I’m full of energy”, “I can turn over mountains right now”.
We don’t even think to ourselves why it is that we don’t want to read this or think about the source of our energy, but we are ready to go take a run or work in the garden with pleasure? Or another situation: you’ve been waiting a long time to repair something, to clean up in the apartment, or to go to the gym, but you just don’t have the energy to do so. But you’re plenty ready to sit down and talk for hours on end. While other times you just don’t have the strength to talk. But it would be so good to finally have that conversation…
Now try these or similar situations on yourself. Feel space itself, and it’s quite likely that you will intuitively feel inside yourself what energy you are using at this moment.
This is precisely why in our searches of the characteristic of the source of energy, or in other words, the level of activity, we came up with three well-know and easy-to-use categories of the three main types of sources of energy which determine our activity level:
― physical,
― emotional-sensual,
― cognitive (intellectual).
Do you want to check? Remember yourself when you are playing sports, or are busy in the garden, or are carrying a heavy load, or dance. And now remember yourself during a soulful chat, or while having a nice vacation. Then remember yourself at a time when you were preparing papers at work, or when calculating profits and losses, or when getting ready for an important exam? Can you feel the difference?
We also use special terms in order to make it easier to learn the language of DFS as a whole with concern to activity levels.
Physical activity — 1st level
Emotional-sensual activity — 2nd level
Cognitive (intellectual) activity — 3rd level
Experience and many years of research show that the life of each person unfolds in such a way that the person prefers to use one source of energy (1, 2 or 3). Each person also has a preferred rhythm, in other words the type of activity in the interaction between this person and the space in which he lives and acts. This sound, which becomes the main characteristic of the type of activity in space, is called the mental energy dominant. This is made up of one of the sources of energy and the characteristic of activity. Let’s identify this moment, because we’ll return to it later and discuss it in more detail.
And now it’s time to talk about something amazing, essential, something that’s not banal at all. It’s time to talk about something which is undoubtedly one of the most important sources of efficiency of man’s life in space. And this is called the 4th level.
Let’s figure out what is what. So, the levels of activity or sources of energy that we have identified exist in our lives like a given. Over the course of our life we develop a preferred level of activity and sound. This is a unique energy trait (the mental energy dominant). This trait first develops in our early childhood, and by seven years old it becomes a very stable differential trait. The reasons for one or another dominant becoming strongest haven’t been fully studied, but they are undoubtedly a combination of what the person is given by nature, the focus of their upbringing, and the style of relations in the family. Only a real need can bring a person to change this level, and in this case he will use a source of energy that he isn’t very used to for some time. A person with a dominant mental type of activity can’t keep up this activity in the gym, where the point of activity is physical. And a very well-expressed dominant of emotional activity will be ineffective when solving serious intellectual tasks or during physical activity. Such is the daily nature of our “mental energy life.”
The 4th level which I’m speaking about almost never occurs by itself, unless as a result of spontaneous resonance with space that sounds in this way.
So what is this state of being? Well, here it is:
Remember that strange, constant, and rare state that you were in when, standing on the peak of a mountain, on the edge of a cliff, when eternal valleys lay before you, going all the way to the edge of the horizon..
Remember how you felt in church when candles were burning and the church was covered in gold, and people’s faces were serious… and incredibly beautiful voices were singing about something excruciatingly beautiful.
Remember the goose bumps which ran up and down your skin, and how you felt somehow higher, and that you existed in space in all its completeness. Remember how strong and organized you felt, when Bach’s great fugues were sung in the concert hall, or when the choir sang “Sacred War.”
Remember yourself standing next to a tree, pushing your back against the strong trunk, and it’s already unclear where the tree stops, and where you yourself begin. Even if you haven’t felt all these feelings, everyone has felt at least one of them.
That which you felt at these moments, those states that you were in, is what we call the 4th level. These are states when all three sources of energy inside us are activated at the same time with equal force, turning into a single, full, complete source of energy. This state makes a person harmonious, stable, and many times more energetic then he’s used to feeling. This state gives an indubitable advantage under any conditions ― the advantage to see, feel, to feel our situation in all its completeness. Is this not effectiveness!
Now let’s summarize a little.
Our voyage began with you accepting a proposal, and giving up your usual life on the couch, on the chair, on the floor, on Earth, and to begin to live in the space of the room, in the space of the city, in the space of your work and your family, in the space of Earth.
You’ve taken the first step, you’ve entered space, and heard its voice. And all of a sudden you understand that you’re now in the difficult, but well-known position of being a foreigner in a new land. You see that people are trying to say something to you, that people are asking you questions, and you feel that they may be saying something very important, necessary, and important. But… You can’t understand, nor all the more respond or ask questions, no matter how hard you want to. This leads you to the next decision. If I decided to come live here, then I have to study the language.
We’ve taken the first steps to learning a language which was created precisely so that there is a dialogue between man and the space he’s in. You’ve gotten to know the theoretical bases of this language, and you’ve even tried some things independently.
Now you can say for sure that you’ve passed the first course. And if you want to you can understand simple phrases, ask difficult questions, and, most importantly, understand what people say to you in response.
Maybe for some people this is enough. That happens. A person opens a new page, sits on the edge of the ocean, and lives happily, meeting the shop wagon once every three months and buying things from it by pointing to them.
But for those of you who want more, we continue our journey. And if for the first meeting it was enough to pass a short course, then the next step is to work harder and independently.
PART TWO. DOLLS DOn’t live in Space
We’re still talking about space. It’s one kind, and another kind. It turns out that space is expressed by different voices, and that it lives a various and changing life, and that it acts, and speaks out for various reasons. And the hardest thing is that this comes not from us ourselves, but rather as if independently of us. We know something, or we don’t know. Everything takes place by itself. How offending.
And then it turns out that each of us takes some part without even knowing it. We react ourselves to something without even knowing what it is. We fall somewhere without even knowing where, sympathize, get angry, feel satisfied and protest vehemently. Overall, just like puppets.
The puppets are pulled by their strings:
And they have smiles on their faces,
And the clown plays on the trumpet.
And during the performance
One gets the impression,
That the puppets are dancing themselves.
(the Russian rock group “Time Machine”, “Puppets”)
Just the time to think.
― Maybe you should forget all these stories and conversations, all these plays and feelings, and go back home, to the couch. Go back from the heavens to earth. Maybe we shouldn’t confuse tourism with immigration? Because you’re already seeing the writing on the wall: happiness is ending. Get ready to work. It’s getting harder.
— So what were you expecting? Everything is fair. We warned you from the very beginning: as soon as you changed the furniture in the room you got scared, remembering each time that things no longer stand where you are used to. It’s tough to move from apartment to apartment, or to change one’s work. And to move to a different city is hardly imaginable. And to move to a different country – that’s even more incredible.
— Maybe there’s not really any point in changing? We were still living, even without all this.
― Who’s arguing with you? “Each person makes his own choice.”
― Ya, it’s clear. Each new step will take one further from what he knows, and bring him closer… to what? What are we really trying to reach?
Ah, what a pity,
That we can’t see the puppet master.
And the strings go up, into the darkness…
(the Russian rock group “Time Machine,” “Puppets”)
What is it that makes the locals so interesting? These people who live in space, rather than on their couch? And what do they have that we don’t? What is it in their life that is so attractive and seductive that a risky idea comes to our mind: maybe we should stay here forever?
Let’s try to find the differences.
The people who live in space are quiet, confident, they live how they want to and even do things that they have to do, but only because they want to do this. In a word, they’re the MASTERS.
— So you mean to say that any person who takes a decision and becomes the local inhabitant of space becomes a master?
— That’s exactly what I want to say. Any inhabitant of space becomes the master of this space. This is the result of these people’s refusal to be puppets. It is the result of their decision to be the masters of themselves and their lives. I emphasize again – of themselves and their lives.
AN IMMIGRANT’s STORY
Here’s a story. Nobody will argue that a newborn is not really a person yet. He’s just a small human being from which a person has to be made. And as soon as a child is born there is a whole line of people who are ready to bring it up, so that a worthy and correct person, someone who is preferably “standard”, comes off the production conveyor.
At the end of the conveyor belt this ready good is equipped with all kinds of rules of behavior, knowledge about what is good and bad, how one should act or not act, and what one should be praised for or punished for, in other words with a detailed description of the world which he entered, and where he’s going to live. This good is given standard instructions about who he himself is, what he knows how to do, what he doesn’t know and will probably never know, what he can want and what he shouldn’t want. And he’s given a life. We brought you up, we fed you, we raised you, and now we’re going to live through you. And if you try to get away from us, we’ll punish you. What, you still didn’t understand who’s boss in this house?
Who says that this is bad? It’s simply necessary for human civilization, but sometimes too strict for certain individuals. And really, who can guarantee that the instructions are right, and that nothing will change with time, and that the people who bring us up haven’t confused pines with baobabs? Well, in fact there is no guarantee.
It happens that the moment sets in and a person doesn’t feel well. He’s worried about something, and he wants something all the time. This is a good state, it promises a lot. This means that a person has grown out of their children’s pants, and, just like at some point in childhood, pushed away his mother’s helping hand and said: “let me do it myself.” This means a person throws away all the instructions on how to live, and goes to find out for himself if life really is what everybody says it is.
And this is where people most often go on a trip similar to ours. They jump over the fence named self-control, with all its video cameras, its surveillance systems, and guaranteed instructions, behind which a person is so safe, but where it is so boring to live. This person goes outside the boundaries so as to test, finally, the taste of the word “freedom.” And… this person ends up face to face with space. (This is where our small, but already existent experience with dialogue comes in handy.)
— Alright. Let’s say we’ve gotten rid of the fence. What do we get in return?
In return?
Freedom for…
For a new life, for new paths, for new relations, and for a new, somewhat worrisome, but incredibly attractive sense of one being the master of himself and his life.
To feel one’s self as space: open to all the winds, ready for change, flowing, penetrating, uninterested in any kinds of instructions.
In place of the fence of self control one gets the confidence that this fence is no longer necessary, because there is no one to hide from. And there’s no one to give instructions to. There’s no face control in the spatial world. The entrance is free. Everything is full of new feeling, a new affair – with space.
And so everything takes place in the way were used to: you change the country you live in, you change your citizenship. You give away your old passport and get a new one instead. You refuse to have self control, and instead you get self-consciousness. Welcome to your new home, ladies and gentlemen.
ENERGY OF THE WHITE FIRE
Every country has something in its people which make them different from all other people. Who can doubt that? A careful observer will never confuse an Englishman, a Frenchman, an American, or an Italian, even if they speak in the same language. If you have the goal of becoming a local in space, then you have nowhere to hide from learning the language so well that you don’t even have an accent, but also to learn the new rules and to catch on to the small and large secrets of this world. Everything is important here — the skills a person has, one’s customs, one’s ability to communicate.
YOU’VE TAKEN THE DECISION TO LIVE IN YOUR NEW HOMELAND — IN SPACE?
You’re ready? Then let’s start.
We already know some of the particularities of the inhabitants of space. But these traits have allowed us only to come closer to this world. But where is this gold key which opens the doors, which makes us a local, and completely destroys our foreign smell?
Now we’ll find out.
The main negative trait of all those who came to this world, to this space by the path that you and I are trying to take is that they really love Fire. They’re friends with fire, and they’re almost made from fire. Precisely made.
No, these people aren’t pyromaniacs, although there are such people among them, probably. There are all kinds of people among them… They found their inexhaustible source in space ― the energy of fire.
And don’t be surprised. Man is not foreign to fire at all. The process of incineration is common to every person’s organism. Every person has the process of digestion, and this is a sort of “quiet burning” in a certain sense of the word.
You close your eyes and see an empty, white, luminescent space inside your self. What is it shining, why is there empty white space, why is it luminescent? You see the shining of your internal fire, of the fire inside us as long as we’re alive. We see a cold, white fire which has always been a part of us.
And now you take the decision to call this fire for help at solving your problems and fulfilling your intentions. So let’s be strong in our intentions and sure in our actions. And may this be the best attempt to do what you really want to do.
Having learned the secret of how to manage fire, the locals are free to do anything they like. Isn’t that why they (and we too) decided to move from a flat world into space? Isn’t that why we decided to build our relation with space, so as to have the possibility to become the masters of our desires?
— What are these fairy tales you’re trying to tell us? We’re normal people. What fire? Were made of flesh and blood, and we know exactly how dangerous fire is for our flesh.
— Please don’t tell us all these beautiful stories right at the very moment when we almost believed that you’re offering something real and practical.
— But why, it’s a beautiful method. It’s a beautiful picture for some pedagogical tasks on how to learn new tasks.
— No, my friends. These are no fairy tales, there are no pictures, no methods. The road to life in space lies through building a real, very working structure of fiery energy in your body, made of flesh and blood, so beautiful and functional as it is. This structure is called the “Fiery Flower”. You have this fantastic adventure — fiery building. This is fiery energy, the energy of white, cold fire — this is the key to the secret of the inhabitants of space.
Fire. How many fairy tales, legends and real stories exist in people’s lives only because there is this amazing strength called “fire”. This is one of the greatest elements.
Fire always scares us and attracts us. It’s God’s gift and God’s punishment. It can destroy everything, or warm you up, giving a hearth to life.
Fire and man. Admit that the history of the relations between man and fire isn’t so simple, but it’s beautiful. Fire! It’s transformational power, its ability to melt, to clean, to take away everything unnecessary, painful and extra couldn’t go unnoticed. How could it be that there are no brave people who risked not only warming themselves around the fire, at a safe distance, but also to unite themselves with it, to allow it inside themselves, and to find beautiful and reliable methods to turn it into something useful, into something glorious.
So, let’s get started. Let’s start building a functional system and learning four exercises which can give us a reliable base and a fine, multi-use instrument for turning a person into a complete and creative inhabitant of space with its own fiery energy.
I hope that you haven’t forgotten that the technology with which we do all this is called DFS. This is the method of differentiated functional states of being. And now you will learn for the first time about the functional system which will we become the construction of your mental energy instrument, and about the four base DFS exercises. Try to fulfill these exercises and it’s entirely possible that you’ll manage. We will then continue our journey, our lessons, and our relations.
“Fiery Flower” — A functional system
The “Fiery Flower” serves as the base of all transformational changes that come about as part of our method. When implementing the “fiery flower” in our body with the help of fiery energy, we thereby build the mental energy instrument. The quality of this construction determines to a large extent both the quality of the instrument itself, and by the success and results of all future work. Building the “Fiery Flower” inside helps you to develop your understanding of yourself as space, to develop stable self-consciousness, and to enter spatial relations with reality.
Your body’s energy production increases, as does the body’s sensitivity to intricate interactions when you build this fiery structure.
YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY!
Instructions for use
Preparatory phase
Sit straight, without sitting against the back of your chair, and put your feet at a right angle to the floor. Clasp your hands (the left on top, or the right on top if you’re left-handed). Your eyes are open, you have a soft glance, you aren’t focusing on anything.
First phase
All of your attention is in your tailbone. The “fiery point” forms here. The “fiery point” rises within the spine in a slow, gentle, constant movement, leaving the “fiery stem” behind it. The “fiery point” reaches the center of the head and opens into the “fiery cup”.
Fiery energy comes from below, then goes down through the “cup” and the “stem” and is collected in a fiery ball in the first center. (This forms around the stem, about the size of an apple). We consolidate this process.
Fiery energy rises and collects into a fiery ball in the second center. We consolidate this process.
Fiery energy rises and collects into a fiery ball in the third center. We consolidate this process.
Second phase
“Fiery roots” go from the fiery ball of the first center into both legs right to the bottom of your feet and your toes. In the bottom, at the “roots,” the fiery energy enters into the fiery ball of the first center. There are two flows of fiery energy: upward, towards the “cup”, and downwards, along the “roots”.
“Fiery leaves” go into both arms from the fiery ball of the second center. When the “leaves” reach the palms and fingers, your hands open with their palms facing upwards. The fiery energy goes into the fiery ball of the second center through your fingers and palms.
There are three flows of fiery energy: through the “cup”, over the “roots”, and through the “leaves”.
Third phase
Let’s begin the fiery pulsation. When inhaling we draw fiery energy from space through the “cup”, the “roots” and the leaves, while when we exhale, the fiery energy, going out the same channels, burns up everything extra, painful, and unnecessary in our body.
Our breathing is free, calm. Let three pulsations go by while holding your breath, then breathe softly once again. Do this for 24―36.
Fourth phase
We stop our pulsation. We pull our “fiery roots” into the fiery ball of the first center, and bring part of the “fiery stem” from the tailbone into the first center. We pull our “fiery leaves” into the fiery ball of the second center, (our hands close, the right on top, or the left on top for lefties). We draw in part of the “fiery stem” between the first and second center.
We close the “fiery cup”, draw in the fiery ball of the third center, and bring in part of the “fiery stem” between the second and third centers there as well.
We give away the “fiery ball” of the first center, right in front of us, to space with thanks.
We give away the “fiery ball” of the second center, right in front of us, to space with thanks.
We give away the “fiery ball” of the third center, straight up, to space with thanks.
Requirements for learning
Developing a fortified construction.
Necessary conditions for developing a construction: The “fiery flower” should be performed for 30 days straight without stopping, in a closed room, following the above instructions exactly.
Note: all feelings should be real, physical, and should take place in the physical body.
The fiery pulsation is not connected to breathing — it is an independent, active action of the mental energy instrument. In the beginning stage pulsation corresponds with breathing only so as to set the rhythm of pulsation.
Defects in the construction at the beginning stage make it impossible to achieve the promised result.
These exercises should take from 30—40 minutes.
Base exercises of the DFS method
“Contemplation.”
“The flight of the white bird.”
“The movies.”
“Zero concentration.”
The base exercises of our method make up a united, integrated set of interconnected and complementary exercise which serves as a way to solve the main task which the DFS method proposes: achieving spatial relations with the World.
The main task of all exercises included as base exercises in the DFS course, when done correctly and precisely, is to prepare the instrument for fulfilling the main task for which this method exists — to provide man with a real possibility and skills for achieving resonance interaction with space.
The entire practical part of this method helps the student to master his mental energy as an instrument. These exercises stress developing mental energy because having an instrumental approach and the fact of using mental energy itself as an instrument is an entirely new approach to life for the majority of students.
While fulfilling these exercises one trains the mental energy instrument itself, unleashes its possibilities and expands the range of its use. Furthermore, information about the very fact of existence of this instrument connects to feelings that are linked with action and its results.
THE MAIN REQUIREMENT IS THAT YOU FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.
There is nothing coincidental in the instructions on how to fulfill the base exercises. Results can be guaranteed only if the instructions are followed exactly.
Contemplation
This exercise is a mandatory element of this practice. It’s impossible to feel the automatisms of consciousness, to discover its instrumentality, and, in the future, learn the skill of using consciousness as an instrument, without first making an effort to achieve internal peace and quiet of consciousness. This exercise serves as an active means for developing stable self-consciousness.
Instructions:
Preparatory phase
Sit down as comfortably as possible and put an object in front of you at such a distance and at such a height so as to be able to contemplate it without any unneeded tension. This object should be as simple as possible (like a matchbox).
First phase
Close your eyes, try to see a white, luminescent space inside you. Then open your eyes and look for five minutes straight at the object without stopping (the particularity of such contemplation is that you don’t examine the object, you don’t see its various details, your look doesn’t move over the object. Instead, contemplate the object, look at it as a whole, and let it inside you).
Second phase
Close your eyes and contemplate the same object in the empty white luminescent space inside you for 5 minutes straight.
Requirements for mastering this phase:
Real attainment of empty, white, luminescent space;
Wholeness and objectivity when contemplating the object.
Note: the object to be contemplated should be simple in form, like a matchbox or a children’s cube.
These exercises last for 15―20 minutes.
Particularities of mastering this exercise
“Contemplation” as an exercise has a final result: upon practicing, you eventually realize that this exercise has exhausted itself, and that it is no longer an exercise, but rather an essential quality of the person doing the exercise.
The flight of the white bird — training controlled imagination.
This exercise is borrowed from an auto training, and thus, undoubtedly, has all the possibilities in this system that have been described many times, but, at the same time, can and should be filled with the substance and meaning contained in our practice. Most of all this exercise helps develop skills of spatial interactions, and in particular the ability to enter subtle, differentiated relations with space.
Preparatory phase
Sit down as comfortably as possible, relax, close your eyes, cross your arms and legs, with the right arm and right leg on top (or the left arm and leg for lefties).
Instructions for controlled imagination.
You’re lying on warm, yellow sand. You see the calm, clean, blue sky above you.
A white bird is flying in the sky. You rise up and fly together with this bird. You yourself are this white bird.
You are flying in the calm blue sky, and you can see the calm blue sea below you.
In the distance you can see a yellow sand beach. It’s coming closer to you. You fly to it, go down to the warm, yellow sand, and once again turn into a person. You lie on your back.
You are lying on the warm, yellow sand, the calm sky is above you, and you are relaxing.
The tops of your feet are touched by a pleasant coolness. A pleasant coolness fills the muscles of your legs. Your muscles are light and energetic. A pleasant coolness fills your stomach, and the muscles of your back. Your muscles are light and energetic. A pleasant coolness fills your chest and your arm, and it’s easier for you to breath. A pleasant coolness fills your neck and head; your head is clear. Your whole body is full of pleasant coolness, your head is clear, and your muscles are light and energetic. You take three deep breaths. You open your eyes! You get up! You’ve rested!
These exercises last for 25 to 35 minutes.
Requirement for fulfilling this exercise:
The aim of this exercise is to make a real emotional feeling, so that this “journey” is full of specific, individual feelings.
The movies
“The movies”, or self-remembrance, is an exercise which is a key element of the whole set of base exercises. The aim of this exercise is to form stable self-consciousness and to show the way to de-identification with consciousness.
The strongest result of this exercise is the ability to really feel the principle difference between self-control and self-consciousness. “The movies” is an exercise that helps you to perceive yourself as space.
Instructions:
Fulfillment of this exercise should be the final action in your day, whereby you watch a color, wide-frame film with you in the lead role, where all events take place in a reverse order.
Note: “The movies”, just like the “Contemplation” exercise, has an end result, in other words a quality of the psyche. This quality develops with the help of this exercise. This psyche comes from a special state of being.
The main difficulties which students have when doing this exercise are:
In order for this film to be continuous, it’s necessary for the student to be aware of what’s happening all day long.
In order to fulfill the main condition of correct execution of this exercise — to be in the main role in the “film”, and not in the role of a video camera around which all the events are taking place — it’s necessary for the student to activate all his or her skills at de-identification and to make an effort to produce stable self-consciousness.
This exercise, more than any other from the whole collection of base exercises, forces the student to make the transition from perceiving himself as a thing, object, or puppet to a spatial perception of reality.
Zero concentration
This exercise is one of the most important in our practice.
This exercise helps to develop stability in the emotional sphere, and is one of the best ways to find internal calm and quiet, and to start an internal dialogue. It also serves as part of the training for gaining a spatial view of one’s self and spatial interaction. This exercise is very helpful for mastering mental energy as an instrument. Mastering this exercise is also an effective training for gaining stable self-consciousness.
Instructions:
Preparatory phase:
Stop your fiery pulsation.
Draw the fiery stem up through crown of your head another 15-20 centimeters.
Form a fiery axis from your tail bone to the end of the extended stem.
Everything has become calm and quiet inside you. You have a minimum of muscle and emotional
flexing.
5. All internal indices are at zero.
Main phase:
6. All your concentration is focused on the fiery axis. Your concentration is distributed equally over the whole axis.
7. We work confidently, sharply, firmly.
Concluding phase:
8. Take away the fiery axis.
9. Draw in the end of the extended stem.
10. Renew the fiery pulsation.
These exercises can last from 15—20 to 40—45 minutes.
The main difficulties that students have when doing this exercise are:
They need time while learning to master the exercise to enter the state of zero concentration.
2. One specific difficulty when mastering this exercise is how to achieve the right state of being. There are two factors which we should pay particular attention to.
A) Our state of zero concentration may be replaced by the “stop”
state, which is well known from other methods. The main difference between these two types of states of being is that in the “stop” state there should be a complete and instantaneous stop of all instruments: the body, consciousness, and mental energy, in that state and position in which they were at the moment of the “stop“ command. In other word, all action should end. After taking away this command, there should be just as full and instantaneous restart from the same state and position.
Under zero concentration, there should be zero concentration of all instruments, the same way that the instrument panel in a car shows all zeroes of active instruments. The principle difference is that activity is possible in the “zero concentration” state, while in the “stop” state of being no activity is possible.
B) The “zero concentration” state can also be replaced by relaxed, contemplative state of being, under which a state of internal quiet is achieved, but under which a person is not alert. In other words the most important element of the “zero concentration” state of being is concentration.
Cheat notes for those who have already tried
So, you tried. But you had difficulties. Let’s try and figure out what these difficulties were.
The Fiery Flower.
You read the description of this exercise… And…
— This construction is very complicated. It’s impossible to remember. It’s absolutely impossible to keep track of everything at once. And you mean to say that it’s possible to learn all of this easily and rather quickly? And do it well? And even get satisfaction and use from doing it?
— I don’t just mean to say so. Rather, I am absolutely sure.
First hint — equal distribution of concentration.
— And what is this?
— This is yet another common trait of all inhabitants of space, which there was no point to speak about before because it’s not visible from the outside. But as soon as you try to shift to the technique of life in space, then you immediately understand that there are still some other particularities about this way of living. Let’s take a look at your previous life experience. Have you every studied how to drive a car? Have you played football, or volleyball? In that case you have definitely experience distributing your attention to many things at once. You simply didn’t know how this is called, and nobody explained it to you.
You’ve been told from childhood: gather yourself together, concentrate, don’t lose your train of thought, don’t wander with your eyes. And we listened to these lessons very well, and even mastered the idea that attention is a concentrated, narrowly-aimed ray, which, like a flashlight, shines on whatever we want it to, on whatever we must concentrate on. And we don’t see anything else around us… It’s like when you stick your nose in a book, and don’t notice anything else but the book: neither what is happening at home, nor what is happening in class, nor the fact that a pretty girl has sat down next you with her books in the library. This state is typical of students preparing for their final exams.
But sometimes we need a totally different kind of attention. For example, when you cross the street it’s a good idea to see everything that happens around you; when you play in a team, it’s good to be able to see everything happening on the field at once. If you drive a car, then you know that you must have a feel for the wheel, the pedals, other cars, your speed, the speed of others around you, and to keep in your lane, and note the distance to the car in front of you… And there are all kinds of people around at the same time! If you’ve learned to drive then you remember the terror of the first days. What pleasure is there in that?! How can you take pleasure from freedom and speed in such a situation?! You are focused solely on getting to your destination. But experienced, professional drivers very often feel the space of movement around them, and successfully go from the road or street to this space. But for those drivers who don’t feel this space… There’s a popular phrase among drivers: “He came out of nowhere.”
So what is distribution of attention? It’s the kind of attention that allows you to use the whole volume of space in which you act. You won’t be transferring the ray of attention from one object to another, from one detail to another. Rather, you’ll see all space as a whole. And your attention will no longer be similar to a narrow-focused ray. This ray is also good, since it allows you to see what’s on the table, on the floor, or on the road. But distributed attention, like a sphere, allows you to perceive the space in which you exist as a whole, without missing a single detail.
Now you can try to do the “Fiery Flower” once again, this time using distributed attention. You’ll be successful.
Enter the space of the street, keeping in mind what you now know about what distributed attention is. A whole sea of new impressions will be waiting for you.
Do the same behind the wheel. Try it.
Contemplation.
— Where can I see that object?! I don’t see anything. It’s just dark, and I see some colored rings in front of my eyes.
— Somehow it’s not very clear. It’s distorted. I don’t understand.
— Well, I risk saying that each of you has had the experience of contemplation. And you may not even know about it. Let yourself remember an event in your life that amazed you so much that you remembered each one of its details forever. Do you have such an event? Of course. Or remember the face of a person who is dear to you. How can you forget this face? And how many more examples are there. Look in your internal gallery. There are amazing discoveries waiting for you there.
Attention! Don’t look for these pictures in front of your eyes. They’re inside you! Inside you as space.
And now let’s try answering a simple question: “How did you do this? How did you see everything that jumped out in front of your eyes now without managing to appreciate it, without managing to name it by assessing it, just like the first time?”
— What if I have problems with empty, white, and luminescent?
Second hint — a state of internal peace. This state of being is incredible because it has a unit of measurement. It is measured by depth. This state can easily be defined in such ways as superficial calm or deep calm. As long as we were living on a flat surface, under the constant management and attention of an external observer, we were quite satisfied with external, superficial calm. There is such a positive characteristic of man in the flat world: such a person is very calm on the outside, and never shows what he feels on the inside. He’s a reserved person. In other words he’s a closed person, behind seven fences and seven locks. That’s why we like external quiet. We are afraid of these fences breaking, because there, behind the fences, inside us, there is hidden irritation, restrained emotion, and depressed feelings and reactions. And these feelings gather and gather, and boil inside us. We hold back and hold back, but then… Have you ever seen what happens when a pressure cooker explodes? Or when a dam breaks?
Where do people who live in space get their peace and calm from? They grow it from within. Close your eyes, feel yourself to be space, and imagine that within you, like in space, there is a calm and deep lake whose surface is like a mirror: there’s neither wind, nor waves, nor ripples. This is exactly what each person has seen when the sky and the forest on the shore of the lake are reflected, without being distorted at all, in the perfect mirror-like surface of the water. And you immerse yourself in your internal space of calm, and there is depth and calm there. And the deeper you go, the quieter and calmer it is.
Have you ever dived into the sea or into a deep lake when there are waves, wind, the cries of birds, the voices of people, and there, in the depths, calm and quiet? The sea isn’t afraid of a storm, just like the deep lake is not afraid of the wind, because no storm, no wind can rouse it from the bottom. No storm or wind can stir all the silt and sand from the depths. The sea and the lake will preserve themselves. They won’t become dirty and murky swamps, like agitated puddles. It’s in the same way that a person who lives in space, who is open, and flexible, and who knows that he won’t lose himself in the bustle and the noise no matter how big the storm, such a person is not afraid of an explosion of his own emotions. This is the path to getting empty, white, luminescent space inside you. The deeper the calm, the quieter you feel inside, the whiter and most expressive this light will be.
The Movies
This is the most mysterious, the most intriguing, and the most interesting exercise. This is definitely not an exercise for dolls.
— Who needs all this nonsense about showing the movie backwards? What, am I supposed to watch how everything goes backwards?
— How can I watch myself as an outsider? Where am I supposed to look from?
— My situation is that I can’t see myself from that point where I was standing before. Is that normal?
— Listen, I noticed that my “film” always “rips” in the same situations. What does that mean?
Tell me, did you ever meet a person on the train platform when you know the number of the wagon, and it’s very important not to miss this person? Where did you stand? Probably, you stood in a place where the crowd coming down the platform from the train will go by you, in other words, against the flow. Did you ever think why you stand like that?
Or let’s say you’re standing on a bridge, and you can see cars below you. The cars are all flying by. Which of them can you see best? Isn’t it those, which are coming at you, and not those, which are going away?
Well, there are your answers. Let’s say you sit down in a chair at the end of the day, close your eyes, and your day flows past your eyes, from the morning till evening. Do you remember we said that changing your place in space is always accompanied by a shift from self-control to self-conscious? That’s an important characteristic of an inhabitant of space: you are like space and self-consciousness. And it is in this space that your self-consciousness watches the film with you in the lead role, thereby observing with interest this day in the life of your instruments. How many unexpected needs, how many exciting details, and sometimes whole plots emerge in space? You can make the “film” go faster, you can slow it down or increase the size of the screen.
You can’t remember where you left your notebook? Here the picture is large, then larger, and now here it goes slower. Stop. You left your office with your bag on your shoulder, talking at the same time on the telephone, and before you left you agreed to go with your co-workers to drink coffee. You picked up your stuff and quickly threw it into your bag when your co-workers came over to you.
Stop. Your self-consciousness has changed its place in space. You see yourself, in the doorway, with your telephone, and your bag, and behind you — your workplace with the forgotten notebook. So that’s where it is. And you say why do you need “movies”?
The flight of the white bird
— Well, everything here is clear: just close your eyes… and take a nap.
— What do you mean take a nap!? As soon as I picture the sky I see clouds, or black clouds, or even a thunderstorm.
— I see everything very well, but I’m afraid of taking off. It’s scary and uncomfortable for me.
— It’s no problem to take off, but I’m afraid of landing. Either I see cliffs, or a thick forest, or some scary person walking below me.
Well, what can you say about that. This simple, pleasant, and, for most people, east to learn exercise sometimes reveals our psychological problems. This exercise demonstrates our acute fears and anxieties from time to time. That’s why this exercise is also for relaxing: those barriers which prevent us from relaxing, and which make us tense, are the first to emerge. Well, and then where else, if not in the sky, if not when flying, do you feel like an inhabitant of space, and gain possession of it like your natural element?
Zero concentration.
— Aw, I just can’t do it. I fall asleep, and my body just falls from the chair.
— Thoughts just keep coming and coming into my head. I push them aside in all sorts of ways, but everything goes even worse.
— I disappear from time, and all objects around me become blurred and disappear. The space around me is so calm, and luminescent. I could just sit and sit there.
The most important hint for this exercise sounds simple and precise — distributed attention. Once again: your attention should be distributed around the whole fiery axis, from your tailbone to the end of the extended stem, in other words the whole stem should be constantly under your attention. Your attention gathers it all in completely. But, if the master decides that he can do something else while everything is happening here, like look into his past, or disappear into the future, then don’t judge too severely, because nothing useful can happen in the house when its owner isn’t home. Speculation likes to take power over us and command our parade.
Our secret weapon against mischievous speculation is to ignore it. Speculation babbles, tugs us by our sleeve, and tries it hardest to grab our attention, but you proudly ignore it. If you don’t ignore it once, and twice, then it will subside. The wild mechanism of ownerless, mischievous speculation is like a camp fire: paying attention to it is like feeding wood to the fire. If you throw dry wood into the fire then it flares up. But if you don’t feed it then it will die out. Decide for yourself what you need.
Well, now the first tests are behind you, and you are doing well so far. Some things, of course, didn’t work out. But your interest is piqued by new sensations, new impressions, and even your first success.
And how many new and most unexpected questions you have!
Foreseeing all that, I got the idea to organize a meeting for you with the locals — the inhabitants of the world as space. These people turned out to be all kinds. Some of them moved to the world as space a long time ago and have gotten used to their new world, while others began their adventure just recently. Their experience, their feelings and their view on the main principles of such a life are very interesting and useful to us.
So as not to get lost in the multitude of opinions and experiences, the topic of our press-conference was limited this time to the most basic exercises: what, how, why? Naturally we won’t leave these statements without detailed commentary.
Harold. A very educated man.
The author of the DFS method created another interesting idea as well, called MQS — the Method of Quality Structures. This is a way of thinking about the whole. I thought to myself, what if we look at the whole system of exercises like a whole?
If we go in order, then the “Contemplation” exercise allows us to make a channel of communication, to learn to pay attention to the background. We thereby get the necessary conditions for that which is called resonance.
Secondly, it is impossible to employ the skills learned when doing DFS exercises in one’s real life without having stable self-consciousness. If we don’t have this self-consciousness, then we can use our new skills only in a group, only when there is some kind of “We” which replaces stable self-consciousness. And in order for stable self-consciousness to arise we need “The Movies” exercise.
In order for mental energy to have any chance to function, it naturally needs a structure: the “Fiery Flower”. This structure elaborates the aspect of organization of mental energy. The whole instrument is built on the base of the “Fiery Flower”. By mastering all of these exercises, the “Fiery Flower” gives us the possibility to use the space around us for which he have done all this work.
Thank you, Harold! What a gift! If the interview was directed, we would have begun right from MQS — an excellent director’s approach. But the fact that you got a little confused when trying to use MQS will be a help to us all.
I won’t tire of reminding you that we are solving a very complex task: we are trying all the time to speak about the whole by using linear means – speech – which is so poorly suited to our task. But we have no other means. And so we try.
The method invented by the author for developing relations with space is nothing more than MQS (method of quality structures) — a means of thinking about the whole.
Dear consciousness, moved aside by love and interest for feeling and space, rejoice! These lines are for you.
We keep on speaking about perception through feeling, about life in space, about the whole, about understanding the whole. And it seems that everything is alright: we are gaining experience, and there is more and more resonance. There’s one problem though — all of that is good as long as we don’t have to speak about it any other way besides using images, or poems. But if we have to state precisely and responsibly what it is that we have understood, seen, and realized in the process of this integrated interaction and perception, then how can we do so? The integrity of the whole ends at this point. What has our consciousness gotten used to? Our consciousness is used to working linearly, successively, from the simple to the complex: first the most important things, then the less important. But anybody can see perfectly well that the whole is lost like a dream under such an exposition. It’s easy to say that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but how can you describe this whole without examining each of its parts? And without losing the “big” picture?
And here’s one more question to stump you: what “whole” are we talking about? Man? DFS? Or, maybe, mental energy?
It’s hard to understand that from Harold’s statement. Remembering such an important thing a MQS (a way of thinking about the whole), he immediately demonstrated the difficulty not only of the actual process of describing the whole without ruining its qualitative distinctness, but also the difficulty of making the first step — separating the whole from the seeming chaos of the surrounding world, information, and situation.
DFS offers a plan of action which will suit the worldview of a person who likes the idea of looking at himself as a whole, and at the surrounding world as being integral. The method of differentiated functional states of being came to be as a necessary instrument for fulfilling such a worldview. Therefore, DFS itself is a living, acting, evolving system. Right at the beginning of our journey, when we offered the instrumental approach as a way of looking at man, we laid the foundation for this possibility. We offered looking at man as a certain whole consisting of three instruments: the body, consciousness, mental energy — and self-consciousness, which transforms the set of natural qualities into a living, evolving whole. This whole is a system without a hierarchic structure or dominance of one part over another. This is the incarnation of the almost unrealizable dream of equality.
What does this mean? This means that if we speak about some kind of part of our method, and practice only one exercise, then we are not practicing the method of DFS, but rather doing something else. Why? Because part of the whole outside the whole is something else entirely, a different function, a different object.
In his attempt to use MQS to view our current topic (base exercises through the prism of MQS), Harold forgot to think through one very important thing, thereby giving us the chance to have a detailed conversation. Harold confused two different wholes: mental energy as an integrated instrument, and the set of basic DFS exercises, which can also be viewed as a whole, but as an entirely different whole.
We have created the method of quality structures (MQS) as a way of solving this puzzle. MQS can be used when looking for an answer to these questions, which are tricky, and yet still fair. This method is a kind of code for thinking as a whole.
What is the main cunning we need here? The cunning thing we need to know is that movement of the whole in the whole takes place in the coordinate point through the means of the zero-transition.
Once, very long ago, wise Chinese people thought up one very funny toy among their other incredible inventions. This toy is often used as a type of decoration. One ball spun freely within another ball, cut out of stone. Both the first and the second stone were made out of a whole stone. How did they do this? I don’t know. Probably, know, using our modern technologies, it’s not so hard to do this. But just imagine that a traveler from a far-away, mysterious country gave this decoration as a gift to the famous Tais during the time of Alexander the Great. Well, this toy is representative of how the whole lives and moves in the whole.
And now about the capabilities of MQS — the method of quality structures, which was invented so as to identify the movement of the whole in the whole intellectually.
First. You can never see the whole as long as you are located within it. You will always see only parts and details, catching hold of those which, in your understanding, seem to be most important. You will note details which seem to you to be only insignificant and small. As the saying goes, you have to look at a situation from the side in order to see it.
Second. You can never see, feel, or sense the whole with the help of a NON-whole instrument. For this reason we speak about the appearance of self-consciousness, in other words of some external ball, if one can say that, which can catch hold, grasp, and attract all parts into a whole, just like a magnet. At the same time, self-consciousness is a part of this whole, and holds a position which is unrelated to the other parts (like the master clock in a complex electronic device). Thanks to this unusual position, self-consciousness attains the ability to coordinate the whole from the outside, like a point of intersection of any coordinates, which is always located both within, thereby determining the quality of the system, and outside, in the position of the coordinator of the whole.
You can discover the originality of that which you see only by seizing the simultaneity and equality of the parts of the whole. You do so at the same time as you perceive the background on which this whole shows itself in all its fullness, finding all of a sudden that there are no more or less significant details in the whole, because the disappearance of even the smallest detail makes the whole different. And while this new whole may seem similar to the previous one, it is still different, and has changed its qualitative distinctness. A broken cup that has been well-glued together again is still different from the original cup. A graph from which one axis has been taken away is already a different graph for a different system. Here are two analogies: we will take the Chinese toy as an image, and the axes of the graph as an application.
And here are some specific words.
MQS proposes viewing the whole, distinguishing in it:
— the coordination aspect, the content of which forms the qualitative distinctness of the given whole,
— the organizational aspect, the content of which describes the construction of the whole,
— the communicative aspect, the content of which determines the type of interaction with reality, or, in other words, the background on which we view this interaction,
— the functional aspect, the content of which describes the product made by this whole.
The MQS Square
And, of course, as you undoubtedly figured out yourself, all of these aspects are equal in importance!
How can we use this in practice as concerns DFS? Now let’s try to practice on the example of those two wholes which Harold spoke of.
Mental energy as an instrument from the point of view of MQS
Figure 1. Mental energy as an instrument from the point of view of MQS
The coordination aspect is the language of states of being.
The organizational aspect is a construction, in this case a system which you can feel with your flesh: “Fiery Flower”.
The functional aspect is a differentiated range, the “sound” of states of being that have been formed.
The communicational aspect is emotional resonance with the space of the external and internal reality.
And here is the direct use of such an approach. Having gotten the possibility to see the instrument whose formation and development as a whole we have been working on with more or less perseverance, we thereby receive the unique technology of its harmonious development. That’s because the strong and weak sides of our instrument and its developmental program become totally obvious to us depending on how particular the task is that we put before us.
And here is one more whole which we promised to analyze.
The set of base exercises from the point of view of MQS
— But wait a second, what set are you talking about if the “Fiery Flower” which you just spoke of, which we always considered to be the main base exercise, turns out to be part of another whole — mental energy?
— Well, here you go again, with that typical word “main”. If we started down the path of learning MQS, then we will have to learn from habit which the “main” one is, and gradually refuse it.
But the “Fiery Flower” is a functional system which we build in our body as part of the process of mastering DFS so as to create the level of organization of the mental energy instrument (see the figure “Mental energy as an instrument from the point of view of MQS). This is why the process of learning the method starts from building the “Fiery Flower”.
And the set of base exercises, from the point of view of MQS, looks as follows.
Figure 2. The set of base exercises from the point of view of MQS
The coordination aspect — “Zero concentration”.
The organizational aspect — “Flight of the white bird”.
The functional aspect — “Contemplation”.
The communication aspect — “The movies”.
And as always, we have to answer one simple question: will we “jump better” from this? We will, without a doubt, because the scheme of the MQS square, which looks simple, is entirely capable of helping you discover why one or another exercise influences you so much. Why does one of them seem more “important” than the others? Why are these exercises studied in this particular sequence? Why is it that you can do one exercise right away, while we can’t do another at all? What do the problems from? What do we need to pay attention to? And why does all this work?
We’ll, will continue our press-conference for now…
Michael, a businessman.
In my opinion, simply, I see myself from within myself, and I see all that I’ve experienced honestly right before myself.
We’ve already spoken about the whole, but it’s possible to understand the depth of each of these exercises only by going deeper into each one of the exercises. I’m going to speak simply, and I’ll start with the technique that was the most complex and difficult for me to understand — “Contemplation”. I’ll tell you what I realized, or, more simply, what I learned from discovering this technique on the level of feelings.
We come to the lesson, sit down, and an object is put in front of us. We stare at it, but I don’t understand why. I come home, rewind the film, and later understand that I am at “The Movies”. But what did I really do? I sat down and stared. I wanted to understand my inner vision more deeply, I wanted to discover what contemplation is. I wanted to understand contemplation in detail.
And what happened…? There’s something in front of you, which you have named in some way. Let’s say this is a ball. But who is the person who named this thing a ball? Where does the concept of a ball come from? And do I have such a deep awareness that this has become an imposed image? Does some kind of database on all objects which surround us exist? In other words a database which has named all objects, and has attached a file to them? When I sat down in front of the object for the first time I thought to myself, “what am I just sitting here, staring at this ball for?” But when I immersed myself, a thought came to me: who said that this is a ball? And I got the sense that I’m not looking at a ball. I simply saw a picture, because someone told me once that this is a ball. But I didn’t see the object itself. I imposed my database on the object that exists at the current moment.
As soon as I understood that, there was a separation between my consciousness and the usual way of explaining the external world. There is an object. I look at it, and name it. I name it in accordance with the way which I was taught. But I don’t see the object itself.
Many people have asked you: how do you put this object inside you? But I have an absolutely precise explanation: when you contemplate an object, you don’t get your knowledge about it from a card index, but rather you place this object in your card index as something new. Accordingly, there is such a deep experiencing that you can’t relate to people as if you’ve known them for a long time, because this person is entirely different at each moment of time. A person feels life differently, and breathes differently, all the time. Thus contemplation is a certain ability to separate one’s consciousness from the usual explanation of the world, and to perceive what exists at the current moment.
“The Movies.” First I perceived this exercise as an intellectual game which allowed me to view the events of the day anew. To be honest, I like to pay attention to details. But I often got the feeling that the different parts of the day were taken out of the whole, and that I jumped through the last 24 hours. But once I worked to the point that “The Movies” really did become a continuous stream, then I saw those details which showed me what I meant to myself, which showed me how to work on my mistakes. I saw what I had done, I saw what led to the situation I was in, what can be done with that situation and how to manage it. Some things were uncontrollable; there was no manager. For example, I gave myself the task of constantly being in the “fourth” state, but I lost this state after a while. How did it go away? Where did it go? When I turned back “The Movies” then it became obvious what in particular had turned off, what had been stronger, and where it led to. And the next time it’s possible to catch this.
“The Movies” make it possible to turn on the mechanism of stable self-consciousness with some edge. “The Movies” lead to the point that a person who appears who looks and who sees what is happening right now, and who can come back later and check again if necessary, and live through this feeling to the full degree. This exercise gives one the ability to make everything that I person goes through in life to be really felt.
I want to get in everything
To the very essence.
In my work, in life’s path,
In my heart’s confusion.
To the essence of days passed,
To their cause,
To the beginnings, the roots,
To the core.
B. Pasternak
The experience which Michael is sharing with us is not even his experience at mastering the exercises. It’s his experience with a larger practice about which we already spoke. Man takes the decision not to be a puppet. Man takes the decision to be the master of his own life. Man takes the decision to take inventory of his belongings so as to take possession of them, to become a high-class, advanced user of that which he owns, rather than a thoughtless heir of some accumulated things. I have no doubt that when we talked about moving from the flat world to space, you understood that you will simply have to give up your “doll’s” life. You understood that you will have to give up your automatic reactions to life. You asked yourself, or, mentally, you asked me the question: “Alright, fine, I’m not arguing, and I even see the self-interest and use, but how? What am I supposed to start with?”
Here’s a good answer to your question. Start from whatever you’re doing now. You’ll manage.
Alexander, engineer and logistics manager.
For me the most important moment at mastering all the exercises together was to make the transition from evaluative thinking and comparison to perceiving my surroundings and myself as a situation and space, thanks to my instrumental approach to my own life. Now about the exercises.
“Contemplation” takes away evaluative thinking and allows one to see objects, people, and situations without evaluating them, and to perceive them as a whole. One discovery for me was “distributed attention”, which I also trained quite well. Here I see the possibility not only to train one’s mental energy, but also one’s consciousness as an instrument.
Lastly, thanks to the “Flight of the White Bird” I managed to experience space within me. And only after that, as part of the “Fiery Flower”, I managed to connect the internal and the external, to view everything around me as space, and to experience myself as space.
All four exercises exist for constant work with one’s instruments. And, once you have the ambition to name the body, consciousness and mental energy as instruments, you will then undoubtedly have to cultivate and educate the master.
Have you ever thought about how discoveries are made? About where new inventions come from? They come from a person not knowing that they can’t do what they’ve thought of. Inventions come from their great desire to know and to be able. Everyone forget to tell this person that this is impossible, that nobody does that. He skipped that listen. And instead he got something totally new, something impossible.
Here’s a story. They say that when an inventor starts developing a new, unprecedented device, he doesn’t give this device any name, but rather simply calls it “thingamajig”. The only thing that the inventor sets very precisely is the task that this “thingamajig”, which doesn’t event yet exist, should solve. This is how people create something that didn’t even exist earlier. This is what Alexander has in mind when he says that the main result of learning the exercises is that you stop evaluating things, that you learn to distribute your attention, and can perceive yourself and the world around you as space.
Sarah, designer and architect.
When I thought about the complexity of the base exercises I drew a parallel with sport. Let’s say we’ve decided to set specific tasks for perfecting our body’s capabilities. We come to a specialist, and this trainer says: “There’s a certain group of exercises. If you do them all together, then you will achieve the result you want.” The same is true with DFS, in principle. All four exercises train “various muscle groups,” and all together they give an integral result which allows us to fulfill our goals. That’s why these exercises intersect in many ways.
The “Fiery Flower” allows us to work with fiery energy, and to build a construction on the foundation of which we do everything else. But the “Fiery Flower” also includes contemplation, because we have set ourselves the task of perceiving the “Fiery Flower” in its integrity. We’ve given ourselves the task of separating the point of self-consciousness from consciousness, which leads to de-identification with consciousness, although the greatest effect in solving this task comes from the exercise “The Movies”.
When fulfilling the “Fiery Flower” we work with a rather large volume, and this ability intersects and becomes stronger when fulfilling the exercise “Flight of the White Bird,” in which spatial interaction expands from the sky to the sea. We can say the same about all the other exercises. In “Contemplation” we master the white, luminescent space which is nothing more than fire, and the need for deliberate inclusion. “The Movies”, like “Contemplation”, requires inclusion and internal activity, while the “Flight of the White Bird” requires a feeling for space, just like in “The Movies”.
All of these exercises work on various muscle groups, but altogether this set gives the possibility for wholesome and harmonious development of the whole instrument.
Continuing the analogy with sports. You can’t expect your leg muscles to grow if all you do is lift weights with your arms. It’s the same thing here. When doing only the “Fiery Flower”, we can’t expect that we will develop skills of practical interaction with space. Similarly, when doing only “Contemplation” we shouldn’t expect that we’ll get a structure that we can use to develop our state of being.
Note that Sarah’s experience with spatial relations with the world combines well with her profession in her thoughts about base exercises. Who other than an architect, most of all, will see the need for strong connecting beams and joints which lie in the base of the most beautiful and refined building, even if these elements are invisible to the untrained eye. These joints are a necessary condition of harmony, longevity, and reliability. The whole can be formed only on the basis and with the help of another whole.
And let’s continue the parallel with sports too. We often hear the complaint: “I’ve been doing the fiery flower for so many years, and it’s working. I feel great and I feel strong after doing it, but nothing much else really happens.” Well, what can happen? Which physical achievements can we expect from a sportsman who prepares his body for some kind of concrete movement? He can run faster or farther, or he can jump higher, or he can fulfill more and more difficult gymnastic elements. All he’s doing is training one and the same muscles again and again, seeing his only goal to be to train these muscles. There’s such a category of body-builders who are like little children. Such a person just carries his muscles around, even though they’re good for nothing. He just likes them the way they are. But they aren’t going to jump, or run, or dance. Such body-builders want muscles as a functional system all on their own. It’s the same way for those who don’t see that the results which are promised to a person who fulfills the method of DFS are impossible to achieve without fulfilling the whole set of base exercises.
Christina, a child psychologist.
For me these exercises exist as if they are separate from one another, but in principle they all work on the “Fiery Flower”. The greatest use which can come from DFS is to find your self, your self-consciousness, your areas of calm and self-awareness, if we speak about the exercise “The Movies”. For me, as a person who works with psychology, it’s very important that the base exercises take away a person’s fear that “nothing will work for me.”
The “Fiery Flower” is a long-term project. It doesn’t give results right away. I was lucky because I turned my “Flower” on at the first lesson, but then I lost it. But I already knew how it works, so I didn’t worry. It takes longer for some people to achieve results. But if a person fulfills all base exercises, then h gets affirmation that all of this is real. I did this, so if this worked then everything else will work as well. Just be patient.
The “Contemplation” exercise was very hard for me, and started working only after I mastered “Zero Concentration”. But for some people these two exercises might work in the opposite order. I was very surprised when I heard about “The Movies” for the first time and we did this exercise over a short time span. I was so surprised because when I rewound my film and “went by” the television in my own living room, I all of a sudden understood that my husband’s disk wasn’t there, and that it hadn’t been there for at least two or three years already. I hadn’t yet rewound the film to that place where I could see who took him and where he disappeared to. But even my first experience impressed me a lot. And I can say that it really helps psychologically to achieve such results. Even if one doesn’t achieve such results in the “Flower” as of yet, success in base exercises immediately takes away one’s worry. One’s sensitivity and self-realization increase after “The Movies”, for example. It’s funny and useful too to see the expression of one’s own face, and to see one’s own strange gestures and poses in various situations. You become more attentive after this. This is how all the exercises work on the “Fiery Flower” for me.
Who could have known that a story about how one person learned the technique would turn into such a useful psychological consultation for us all.
Christina enumerated almost all of the psychological difficulties that arise when beginning to learn DFS. That’s not surprising. DFS is an unknown world, with new sensations, new rules of behavior and communication. It’s not surprising that people feel anxiety or that they’re uncertain about their abilities. And how it helps us in such situations to know that it’s not we who are so awkward, but rather that this is simply a natural process that many people go through, albeit each in their own way. And what helps man not to give up when he’s only halfway to his goal? Of course it’s the first successes, the joy of a positive result.
Here is where many people first feel the mysterious effect of the whole. Success at learning one of the aspects will strengthen our efforts to learn the others without fail.
Mary, a doctor and psychologist.
Focusing on one exercise helps you to achieve your desired result, but also distorts your state of being. The “Fiery Flower” allows you to have the necessary amount of energy at any moment. In other words, the amount of energy you have increases very quickly. But if mastering the “Fiery Flower” doesn’t combine well with “Contemplation”, then your energy brings you just over-excitation and anxiety, which can’t be considered at all to be the desired result.
“Contemplation” creates a feeling of internal calm and stability. This feeling trains the appearance of more or less stable self-consciousness, so that the master becomes stronger together with his increased energy. In other words the master can manage this energy well. Furthermore, internal calm and stability allow one to better perceive the surrounding space without distorting this perception.
Once three blind people were brought to a rajah’s palace. The rajah’s servants decided to entertain themselves and the rajah by bringing an elephant to the square in front of the palace, then brought the three blind men to the elephant. Naturally, none of these people had ever seen an elephant. The Rajah ordered them to touch the elephant and then tell him what it is that they felt. The blind people were brought to the elephant. One of them felt its trunk, the next touched its leg, and the third touched its ear. The first, when he was ordered to speak, said that he had just held a large and strong snake in his hand, and that if this snake becomes angry it can easily suffocate a person. The second said that although he had touched a living thing, it wasn’t a snake, but a very strong animal, as big as a tree which you can’t put your arms around. The third said that he had felt the wings of an enormous butterfly which must fly very, very high.
You of course heard this old, wise tale. Doesn’t it remind you of anything?
Samantha, a doctor. (A very recent inhabitant of space).
I’m a newcomer, and I haven’t developed “The Movies” and “Contemplation” all the way yet. But I can say that for me all of these exercises are like a view of space. I understand now what this means — seeing the whole in this space, in other words seeing myself as a whole, a whole which I observe and which lives is located in the big whole. This gives me a unique sensation, and not only a sensation but also a view of very subtle things which I didn’t know anything about earlier, but which I feel for real now.
Andrew, an artist and designer.
When a person learns DFS, then there is a change in his energy supply system. The person learns to take energy from space in the amount necessary to him, and to use this energy in whichever way is necessary to him. In order to fulfill this large task he must rebuild man’s apparatus as a whole. There needs to be a person who does this, and for self-consciousness to be stable. It’s also necessary for this person to have instruments, and for there to be harmonious relations between these instruments, so that they are balanced.
“The Movies” trains self-consciousness, while the “Flight of the White Bird” teaches the body to relax and to exist in space, while eliminating one’s fear of eternity. “Contemplation” teaches internal quiet and clears the internal space for perceiving subtle interactions. All of this works together like an integral system for tuning man’s apparatus to accomplish this task.
Here is one more task to be solved for which our method helps a lot: achieving maximum harmony of form and content. Design is equal to form, and form is equal to design. And do we really mean anything different when we say, upon looking at a painting, or reading a book, or listening to music, or learning about the history of human life: “That’s a work of art”? It was natural for an artist to focus his attention on such an additional possibility given by integral use of our method: to come closer to art when fulfilling any goal.
Peter, a simple sommelier with three higher educational degrees.
Well, I thought what this is about, if we look at it simply.
Let’s say that there is such a formation as mental energy, and the only thing we know about it is that it acts in space. We don’t know anything more. And, if we think logically, then what do we need in order for it to start working? How can we make an instrument from it? So this formation lives within us somehow, this something called mental energy. This energy can be joyful, anxious, or sad, and it can enter interactions, but we don’t really know anything about how this works. So how can we begin to use it, to work with it?
The first thing that we need, probably, is to give it some kind of form. Any instrument has a certain form. A microscope has a special form, just like an axe does. So we need a form for this new instrument that we use, for mental energy, for the task which we are going to solve using this instrument. We use the “Fiery Flower” in order to give mental energy a form. This method proposes giving this instrument a particular form.
Now let’s say that we have an instrument, but who’s going to work with it? Who is the worker? What possibilities are there? The first is that consciousness will work with it. We can give this instrument to consciousness. Go ahead, take yet another thingamajig, do whatever you want with it. Entertain yourself, earn money. Or you can give it to your body. But what will you get? Both your consciousness and your body will obviously exploit this instrument in their own interests. If you give this instrument to consciousness then your body won’t get it, and if you give it your body then consciousness won’t get it. You get the idea in your head that, maybe, this isn’t exactly right, that maybe this instrument wasn’t made for this purpose. Clearly you need something which is neither your body, nor your consciousness, nor the object of the deal itself. This something is mental energy. You need something else that can link all of these things together. This thing was named self-consciousness. I’m not going to go into detail about what self-consciousness is. Let’s just remember that this is something which can manage all the instruments: the body, consciousness, and mental energy.
Mental energy is something which lives and acts in space. It must perceive in order for it to work, but what’s really going on there, in space? What is mental energy? What capabilities does mental energy have, and what methods does it use to perceive the surrounding world? After all, it can’t use the methods of perception that are used by, say, consciousness, such as words, categories, and texts. These are all conceptual things. Mental energy can’t use the body’s methods either, in other words sensations and movements, since these are brought to the body from outside the body. How can we develop mental energy’s own organic method of perception? I think that ideally the exercise “Contemplation” should lead to such pure perception. Such perception won’t feature words, concepts or texts, which are things common to consciousness, and neither will it feature sensations — certain things which are common to our body. In other words there should be a different type of perception. There must be the “Other”. “The Movies” and “Flight of the White Bird” both organize one’s preliminary experience so as to learn to live with the Other, without fearing it and without trying to change it.
So really, how is this working instrument, which we call mental energy, formed from this indistinct, almost formless thing? How does this instrument turn into that whole which we’ve already spoken about? Let’s remember again.
In order for this something to turn into a working instrument it must gain firmness, some kind of hardness, or, in other words, become a construction. This is what the “Fiery Flower” functional system, which we feel with our body, serves as. While learning this method we build a functional system into our body, using fiery energy to do so. We use our resonance skills so as to have the possibility to enter into relations with space with the use of this instrument. Entering into relations with space is our main task in this practice in the widest sense.
But we can only consider an instrument to really be working when we can discover the product of its activity. In our case the product of the activity of mental energy as an instrument is clearly the range of sounds of man, the managed multitude of mental energy states. The language of states of being gives this instrument the qualities which distinguish it as a whole. This language results from learning DFS. The language has sixteen positions, which we’ve mentioned several times already. We even got to know this language once before. We’ll give a more in-depth description of this language and how to learn it shortly.
Our press-conference turned out to be very unexpected and creative. I understand that the significance of this even may be unclear to those readers who have just become familiar with the method of differential functional states. But let me tell you, you’re really lucky to get to know this technology, which has reached a new level of its development, right off the bat.
What exactly happened?
A NEW STAGE. DFS AS A WHOLE
We should probably go back in time a short ways in order to answer this question thoroughly. Or, more precisely, we should go far back in time. To the last century, to the last millennium. To a small city in a country that has existed for quite a long time already. There is a group of talented young people there who are inspired by the idea of working to together to create an unprecedented theater, to surprise and amaze the world, leaving behind everything that a person could leave behind, and taking with them everything that they would be necessary. And the group became entirely devoted to the creative process. The group did quite well. They made a new play, and created and studied at the same time, employing everything that they learned in their creative work. But then one of them got the idea that in order to create something totally unprecedented, they have to distinguish themselves from everything that came before. They have to be able to know and be able to do something that nobody else knows, that nobody else has done.
This is how the idea of the theater of states of being was born, a theater in which everything was like usual: a play, roles, texts, and plots, but which were all held on a complex score of feelings which were created with the help of managed emotional states. Energy filled the room, as if being unheard and unseen, thereby creating space and atmosphere which did not allow the spectators to remain simply outside observers of what was happening on the stage and in the space of the hall.
To this day there are people who remember how at one of the performances the spectators came into the hall where, first remaining unseen, actors stood motionless around the perimeter of the hall. And each person who came inside felt that even though the play hadn’t started yet, and the curtain was closed, and the spectators were just taking their seats, still there was something happening already in the hall itself, and that this “something” was already a part of the performance, that the performance had started a long time ago already.
What happened, what was discovered that time? And in which way is it linked to what we’ve been talking about all the time?
Well, here’s what happened: the first demonstration of the technology of conscientiously managed psychoemotional states was made as part of the process of the search for new means of expression in art. Furthermore, ways of constructing relations with space were discovered. This is the path that was formed from what would have seemed to be just another system of self-regulation to a technology for another way of life, of life in space.
And since the “Fiery Flower” exercise was the original and necessary condition for gaining control over this technology, this is what the method itself was called for a long time — the “Fiery Flower”. The exercise for building a functional system was seen to be the “main” exercise. If you learn to do the “Fiery Flower” then you’ll manage everything at once. Such a distorted understanding is entirely excusable since it is customary for the majority of us to think in a hierarchal order ― from more important to less important.
Naturally it was hard at first to see how effective, deep and multi-functional this technology was. The focus on specific theatrical goals did not give people any reason or the possibility to see the whole large spectrum of tasks or the large range of activity which this technology can be used for. But with time, and under the influence of life circumstances, actors from this same legendary theater started to notice that the skills which, as it had seemed to them, were needed only for improving one’s acting ability, also work extremely well in regular life. Their emotional firmness increased, and they became more effective at fulfilling their goals in life, perfecting their ability to build their relations both with the surrounding people and with the surrounding world as a whole. There method went outside the boundaries of narrow professional use, and was in high demand among all kinds of social groups, and by people with various professions.
One serious test for checking the real effectiveness of their method was to use it for training sportsmen with the highest qualifications and achievements. Sports, which always have a very precise focus on achieving results, leave no doubt about the real effectiveness of one or another practice. Sports ask people one specific question: will we be able to jump higher as a result? And the results, as well as medical and psycho-physiological research showed that sportsmen do jump higher, and run faster, and throw farther.
Soon after a speech was made about this method at a conference of the Biophysics Institute of the Ministry of Health of the USSR on “Use of the 16-character code for forming differentiated functional states of being” (see the Appendix), it stopped being simply a practical method, and was studied and researched scientifically. At that time the method received its name which is well-known and common to us today — the method of differentiated functional states. (MDFS or DFS). The bases of this method are published in the monograph “Alone with the World”. Furthermore, the textbook “Teaching the Method of Differentiated Functional States” has been used to train a large number of instructors on how to teach MDFS. Furthermore, this textbook has helped to regularly improve their professional qualifications. The number of people wishing to learn this practice is increasing as well. It would seem that everything that could, and should have happened has indeed taken place.
But the thing is that the wider the tasks became which were solved using this methodology, the more diverse the activities became and the more effectively they were fulfilled thanks to the people’s new skills, the more clear it became that DFS is not just simply a very effective and modern method of self-regulation, but rather a technology which gives people the ability to build integral spatial relations both on the level of any one of the instruments, as well as on the level of man as a whole with space as a whole.
And here’s where it became clear that deeper study of the subtleties and nuances of the method itself, and of the technique for learning it, were impossible without employing MQS (the method of qualitative structures) as a way of thinking as a whole. Unifying these two approaches gave excellent results.
The thing is that one can hear a rather similar complaint from time to time among people who learn this method: “I’ve been doing the Flower for so many years, and everything seems to go pretty well, but I haven’t achieved the desired result yet.” Naturally, people were worried by this. And here’s what was discovered upon deeper analysis into the method as a whole in light of MQS.
On the surface it turned out that the aspects which have a relation to various integral systems were shifted. Most of all, there was a shift in the perception of the functional system of the “Fiery Flower” and in the system of base exercises of the method. And since this mistake entered earlier publications of the methodology as well, we would like to point your attention once again to the following, very important fact.
The “Fiery Flower” is a functional system which in our practice serves as a construction, as a level of organization of such a whole as the mental energy instrument, and which naturally, can not in any way be a part of any other whole, including such an integral whole as the base exercises of our method.
The system of base exercises consists of the “Flight of the White Bird”, “Contemplation”, “The Movies” and “Zero Concentration”.
Building a functional system is a necessary, but inadequate condition for achieving the results expected from our practice. Only a combination of perfect skill in fulfilling base exercises and a correctly-built functional system gives the possibility both of achieving a guaranteed result and of entering penetrating into the full scale of the contents of the DFS method.
This is why we can speak right now about the method in its full scale and, finally, imagine it not only as a system of self-regulation, but as a technology for building spatial relations.
Figure 3. The DFS method as a system of relations with space.
The coordination aspect — states of being
The organizational aspect — vital relations, functions (feelings)
The functional aspect — intellectual relations, differentiation (classification)
The communication aspect — energy relations, resonance (experience)
And there’s one more very educational story from an inhabitant of space.
The DFS technology took me to a new world. Bringing a new dimension to my consciousness besides my already-existing notions allowed me to see the relativity of my worldview, and shifted the focus from concepts to space. This cleared my field for activity. Now there is no longer any speculative “impossible” standing in front of me like a big wall, or, even more so, fatigue. I have plenty of energy! It’s funny to remember the dull world of flat insinuations of the intellect, when you fly like a white bird, when you can drink each moment down to the bottom, if you want to do so! And you begin to hear all this music of space, and at first you are surprised and don’t trust it, and then, pushing your speculation to the side more and more, you let the sound of the Other enter you.
Contemplation gives me the possibility to see a lot of things that I couldn’t see before, the filters that control incoming information disappear, and I begin to just know something. To be able to count on this knowledge is a pleasure that I didn’t have before, and its source is the creative interaction between me and the world! Intellect begins to play the role of the helper rather than of a controller in this clear position. It becomes possible not to think, and the saying “fools get lucky” changes its meaning in a rather serious way.
The possibility to manage one’s states of being is a huge bonus in any type of activity. You can’t be offended, or frustrated, if you don’t want to be. Surplus energy and empathy will always allow you to enter a dialogue with whoever you need to, and get cooperation going. It’s hard to believe this at first, but no external circumstances can stop a person who uses the DFS technique from doing that which he wants to do in almost any situation. For him it is simply a question of his qualification and the power of his instruments. And this will take place without any violence, to great satisfaction. And simply thanks to the acquired skill of more complete use of the communicative channel, or, speaking in the language of the author of the DFS method, thanks to resonance interaction of you as space with the space of the Other.
The main problem when learning the method for me was and is the world view which I had developed in the previous period of my life, and my behavioral automatisms that are connected to it. Objectifications of the skills received are good medicine from this “gift of fate”, in other words fulfilling actions which seemed to be impossible before. The training itself gives a large amount of such objectivities in a play form. But this turned out to be not enough for me. The most serious and really transformational activity was to employ these skills in my own life, in my main activity. Nice policemen, friendly utilities workers, going to the consulate without waiting in line, carrying sharp objects onto the airplane, intricately braided green onion on the window, and much, much more – this all gradually transforms my internal and external world.
Advanced user
Yes, our press-conference was unexpectedly very productive, but besides its great cognitive use it was also undoubtedly very useful for getting to know the local inhabitants. People, as you saw yourself, are all different. They live in various ways, solve their problems in their own way, read various books, get joy from varying things, and even get depressed from various things, but they’ve all found a common third voice.
It has already been stated several times before that the success and meaning of new knowledge and skills are only expressed when this knowledge and these skills are put to a practical use. This is yet one more excellent reason to practice. Remember the principles of forming a Dialogue: I, the Other, and an obligatory third voice. Remember what can serve as the third voice: a plot, an authority, a common system of criteria or a witness. What served as the third voice for these people? Maybe for some people a plot served as the original impulse: fate linked them with someone who had already opened the possibility for life in space, and got the feel of his new surroundings with the help of DFS. Or somebody read a book, and the author’s opinion seemed to be sufficiently authoritative and convincing. But in order to not only take an interest, or begin to respect, but also to take a real specific step, then a person definitely needs a more large-scale third voice, and in particular a common system of criteria. If a person discovers that his world view features the notion that the world isn’t flat, but rather that it’s space, that it isn’t simply a set of physiological properties and signs and psychological mechanisms, but rather a whole, incomparable world which is unique in its own way, and if this person discovers that he can be his own master, and the creator of his own life, and if at the same time in his view of the world he has a feeling, knowledge or intention for his own good, for the good of fulfilling his creativity, and finding the meaning of his individual life, and he’s ready to learn in accordance with these skills, and to change with this knowledge, then this discovery becomes the third voice when interacting with those people who live and act in a similar world. And more. All the people who spoke out at our press-conference are professionals, each one is a leader in his field or is trying to become one. And thus we have the right to say that these people will use precisely the DFS method to achieve their goals. Most likely these are people who have at least one common part of their world view. They know that they have to take action in order to be and to achieve what they want.
Each of them discovered his own real benefit and need for the technology which the method of differentiated functional states provides. And they came together for one reason: so as to master the technology more effectively, since it is well known that it is much easier to train in a group, and to take action under the motto… “each person chooses for himself.”…
DFS — A TECHNOLOGY for ACTION
If you remember the very beginning of our acquaintance with life in space, and with the rules, particularities and conditions of this life, then of course you remember that mental energy is the main instrument in this life. You remember that mental energy interactions, and getting to know the world through feeling, are not always capable of being translated into the language of another of our instruments, the instrument which is used to being a leader, and telling us what to do — consciousness.
But you also had to notice that all of our stories, the whole process of preliminary acquaintance with a different way of living, was addressed precisely to it, to consciousness, with the hope that your curiosity and interest will lead you to want to try, and that, upon trying, you will find that one really doesn’t hinder the other, and not only doesn’t hinder it, but even supplements it, strengthens it, and widens one’s opportunities.
There is one very important practical note. DFS is a technology for action. It does not, I underline, replace action. We are all children to some degree, we’re all a little lazy, and we all grew up on fairy tales about miracles. We all dream, no matter how embarrassed we are about it, that a miracle will take place in our lives too. We all dream about something simple, clear, and specific: “a magician will suddenly fly to us in a blue helicopter and show us movies for free.”
So. Right now, at this moment, when we have come to the most important thing — an answer to the question how is this done, I propose to all of you who hope that DFS will be this “miracle”, to quit thinking about miracles. There won’t be any miracles where you think: “Ok, I’ll learn something special now, even if I don’t understand what it really is, and everything will take place by itself.” You were warned right from the beginning that the DFS method has one very serious downfall: it’s not for lazy people. The practical skills of life in space are just an additional means for solving tasks before you, and for fulfilling your intentions. If you don’t have any tasks which you need to solve using exactly this knowledge and these skills, then you have need for DFS. And just like any other purchase that you make impulsively for no reason at all, even if it’s something of high-quality, prestigious, and beautiful, it won’t bring you anything but discomfort and problems about how to store it. But if you do have such tasks, and you, having tried all existing ways and solutions, have come to understand that what you are missing to be have really effective activity is the ability to manage your own emotional states, internal stability, the ability not to be swayed by external circumstances, knowledge on how to find confidence in the strength of your own intention, without looking for external support and praise each time, then the more you use these skills and the more diverse your practice will be, the faster the opportunities that lie within you will open up to you, and the wider your space for implementing them will be.
And you, most likely, will feel that if you try to look at yourself as some whole, the parts of which are these instruments themselves, even if you don’t look for long, then that which we have talked about so much really will take place. For some people it will be easier, for some people it will be harder, for some people it won’t take long, while other people will find the master of all these instruments constantly, your point of consciousness, your self-consciousness. I will allow myself for now to offer several variants of how to name that which can serve as a strengthening aspect that gives each person his own, incomparable qualitative certainty.
Now we have come close to the edge of all that which we can say to our consciousness about the practice of life in space.
— Wait, wait. If we’ve come all the way to the boundary, then let’s go all the way. But before we leave our consciousness, which is disappointed by the fact that there is a border, at peace, can we try one more time to generalize everything, to draw a more or less whole picture about how to connect all of these things. We have a lot of different concepts now, such as the instrumental I-concept, for example. And really, what are the I-concept, and instruments, and the master, and how is all this connected to spatial relations?
— This is a very modern request, in my opinion.
Each of us has found himself in such an awkward situation when you have to answer the question: who are you? It’s a strange question, an uncomfortable one. The first thought you have is what can I say? And if you can’t avoid an answer at all, then you begin to combine everything together: about your profession, your position, your salary, your family status, your parents, and where you are from originally, and what you like to do for entertainment, and who your friends are, and how your students years were, and where you’ve been, and what you’ve seen, and what plans you have. Isn’t this a familiar situation? What are really doing in this moment? We are giving a self-description, while at the same time describing our own relationship to our self.
This, accordingly, is what we mean when we talk of our I-concept or our concept of ourselves, but which isn’t organized, and which isn’t structured in any way. When psychology starts working on such a metastructure as man’s I-concept, then it first of all proposes structuring the mélange so as to increase the effectiveness of self-perception and the possibility of constructive reflection on the one hand, and for a qualitative solution of problems which arise with outside life on the other. This is very nice. It’s unlikely that anybody will argue about the fact that organized life is more useful than chaos. Naturally the intention to create order, or, in other words, to increase the level of structuring of one’s own subjective reality, leads to understanding the necessity of the appearance of that which we called the “master”, or, to speak correctly — stable self-consciousness (I exist).
That is how one of the variants for structuring the I-concept looks from the point of view of the method of qualitative structures (MQS).
Figure 4. One of the variants for structuring the I-concept from the point of view of the method of qualitative structures (MQS).
Coordination aspect — I exist.
Organizational level — Me as Me.
Functional level — I as the Other.
Communicational level — I as We.
Organizational level — Me as Me. Our steadfast confidence in our self-identification is the basis for this aspect. I am myself, and no one else.
Functional level — I as the Other. This aspect includes the whole range of social roles, for example our professional role, I as the son of my parents, I as the father of my children, I as a driver in heavy traffic, and everything else that you can add to this range. By the way, if you accepted the possibility of the instrumental approach to man, then we can say that this approach has become a part of your I-concept in this particular aspect.
Communicational level — I as We. This aspect tells us about that We which you include yourself in, and thereby uncovers the background upon which you see yourself as a whole. This can be, for example, your family, your professional community, the alpinists club, the group of people that you feel yourself a part of, the country of which you are a citizen, or humanity as a whole.
Coordination aspect — I am. In other words: I exist.
The I-concept is a structured description of our perception of our self. From this point of view the instrumental approach can become a part of the I-concept in the aspect I as the Other. The possibility to see man as a whole and the world, and a situation as whole, is made possible by accepting a worldview in which the world is perceived as a whole, and, consequently, the necessity arises both for a means of a whole description of the world, and for technologies of interaction between various amounts of the whole. We receive these possibilities on the level of consciousness through MQS, and on the level of mental energy through the DFS method.
Now I think that the statement that we’ve come right up to the boundary of that which we can say in general about the practice in words should not come as a surprise. Is it possible to learn to swim by following instructions from a book? And to dance? Sooner or later we have to enter the water and learn by practicing, or get on the dance floor and let go of our bodies, preferably under the guidance of an experienced teacher.
And consciousness? It will have to make due and wait while the body learns. You’ve probably learned how to swim, and you can already dance, but if your consciousness enters the picture then you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know where to put your legs, and feet, and then you realize that the water is deep here and that you’re heavier than water — and you start to sink to the bottom. And the same thing is happening now as well.
And here are a few more words about how this is done, and we will end up in the place where that notorious rock is located — you can go to the left, or the right, or you can stand right next to it and sell books.
When offering you the DFS method as a technology that will give you the possibility to form relations with space, we said that you are guaranteed to pick up some of the beginning skills under the condition that you fulfill the base exercises correctly and carefully. You’ve already gotten to know how the functional system with the poetic name “Fiery Flower” is formed, and what it’s about, and how the base exercises are performed, and maybe you’ve even tried these exercises.
— You know what, I even got some new feelings after fulfilling the “Flower”. I feel more energetic, fresher. Is this the promised amount of energy at the needed moment?
— No, of course not. This is just the positive effect which results from the fact that during the process of pulsation your energy, as you remember, “burns up everything unnecessary and painful”.
— So, pulsation — isn’t that the same thing as managing energy flows? I think I’ve heard that you shouldn’t break off activity in the process of regulation, but aren’t we supposed to do the “Flower” in special situations?
— Well, first of all, pulsation is part of the functional system, and furthermore you’re not speaking of that activity which we had in mind when we spoke of managing energy flows. Once you pass complete the 30 day period of constantly doing the “Fiery Flower”, then the “Flower” will become stable for you, and you can do it any time in any situation.
The last instruction for consciousness.
Providing all activity with the necessary quantity of energy and with exactly that quality which is most efficient for the chosen activity takes place as a result of implementing the skill of constant collection of energy from space, and transformation of this energy with the help of the same “Fiery Flower” and constant radiation of the necessary quality.
In order to achieve this effect one must implement energy collection in the same way as you did so in the first phase of pulsation. Radiation, meanwhile, takes place through fiery balls that go through different channels than in pulsation. Rather, radiation goes through fiery balls right into space. Go straight ahead for your first attempt. But keep in mind that you will get to know only the beginning technical method of collection-radiation.
If you study energy from all three balls constantly, at the same time, while at the same time collecting it from space through all three channels of the functional system, in other words the “cup”, “roots” and “leaves”, then you will have the chance to form the “4” (accord). This is the exact state that we already discussed, and which doesn’t form on its own during the process of socialization. Sometimes it arises spontaneously in a harmoniously organized situation, or in nature, while conscientious control over it gives us the real and promised state of guaranteed domination in any situation.
If you need to form a state in your activity where the first center should be your source of energy (the center which gives us our vital energy), then you will constantly collect this energy though the “cup”, the “roots” and the “leaves”, but you will channel it all to the first center though the functional system and will radiate from it.
Trip to America
You’ve bought your tickets, you’ve put your things away, and now the long-awaited hour has come — finally, we are leaving on our trip! Our trip lies through Amsterdam, which we reach in a few hours on the plane, then we have about an hour to change planes, and then we get on another plane to New York. We’ve completed the first flight, and our head has been cleared in that time from its usual tasks and questions. Our soul is full of euphoria from our expectations of the adventures and impressions that await us abroad.
— Ya, we have plenty of time, — your husband says as you get off the plane in Amsterdam, with hope in his voice. — It would be great to go into that “Irish Pub” over there and drink a beer to celebrate the beginning of our vacation!
And so now we are relaxed and happy with how well things are going for us, and we aren’t paying any attention to time as we sip our Guinness. Not rushing, we leave the pub, look at the departures board, and understand that we have to go to a different terminal, which is quite far away.
First we start walking with beer gurgling in our stomachs, then we pick up the pace, and finally we start running towards our gate. We get there right at the last minute and… oh no! What’s written there? Instead of New York it says Kuala Lampur, as if they’re playing a joke on us. Or first reaction, of course, is nervous laughter. Well, what of it? Kuala Lampur is a beautiful city too, maybe we can just fly right there directly? Ya, and we love Holland too, so we could always just stay here for a day. But we can go to these places later. Right now we want to go discover America!
The friendly staff in the airport told us that our gate has been moved to a different part of the terminal, and that the last call for boarding has already been made. And we took off to go find it… Those of you who’ve been to Schiphol (the name of the airport) know just how big it is, that a whole city fits inside this one building, and that it takes about half an hour to go from one sector to another at a regular walking pace. And I hate to run. Right away I could feel pain pounding in my temples, and my side began to hurt, and I couldn’t breath normally. “That’s it, I can’t go any further, I’m going to fall down and die right here, and boarding is over anyway, the plane is taking off in ten minutes, and I can never go so far in such a short time,” ― was floating around in my head. “What can we do? What can we do?! Where can we find enough strength to make one last dash?”
And at this moment a life-saving idea came to my throbbing head: “1C! That’s what will help me! The most important thing is to calm down and to enter this state the right way.” Right away I felt how my body thanked me, and turned on. My legs became light again, my breathing became more regular, and there was a happy rock and roll song playing in my mind. And I have to say that the people around us started helping immediately too: right away some people in uniform asked us “Ahh, you’re probably running to catch your flight to New York? Go on, go on, we’ll call by radio and say that you’re on your way. You don’t have far to go.”
We flew into the airplane, and of course we were dead tired and red in the face. We dropped into our seats, the last people to come onto the plane, and the other passengers we’re all glaring at us for having to wait for us. But I didn’t care. The important thing was that we got on the place, and I continued hearing in my head for a long time yet “Left, right, that’s the way. We’ll be on time, hey, hey, hey!”
If you need emotional energy, and I hope you remember that the source of this energy is the second center, then, taking energy without stopping through the “cup”, the “roots” and the “leaves”, you will direct this emotional energy to the second center, and now from the second center you will have radiation of energy with the quality you need while constantly collecting energy from space.
Another thing can happen too.
I have to meet with clients as part of my job. And due to a change in the law I had to sign an agreement as part of the existing contract with the clients, thereby making our business together satisfy the new law, so that no inspection could find any fault with our cooperation. In other words a really funny situation arose. For me, as a person representing my company’s interests, this agreement is very important, while our clients have no interest at all in understanding such details, or to read our long documents, or to waste our time, to think, or to check if we are tricking them. I understand them well, but, unfortunately, I am told what to do by my boss, and I have to follow orders.
One client was very hard to agree with: he lived in a different city, and he decided to move, and answered all my questions very politely, and said that of course he would look at everything, but later he said that he hadn’t received any documents yet, and then that he had lost the documents by accident, and that now he hadn’t had a chance to look at them… After a few months of our calls to him, with no results, he moved to Moscow, and came to our office, because he had lots of questions for us.
― Well, perfect! In that case we’ll sign this contract while you’re here,” I happily announced.
― Wait, wait, what are you talking about… I’m not ready yet. I have to read the agreement first, and analyze it, the client said in fear.
― Well, how long can you look at it? What worries you? I can explain it all to you right now!
And I thought to myself, all the while: “Oh no you don’t… you’re not going anywhere until you sign this!”
But I didn’t go against him. I have to listen to him, understand what state he’s in, and then I’ll think of something. I can feel that he’s nervous, and that he’s lost in his own thoughts. And all of a sudden his mobile phone starts ringing. It became clear from his conversation that he’s busy working on repairing his new apartment, and that everything is a mess there, as is usually the case: that the wrong doors were delivered, that the locks weren’t installed correctly, that the door frame wasn’t straight. Everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong. And I understood that I should help him to relax, to calm him down somehow, or maybe listen to his complaints. And I decided very quickly that 2В is the best state for a soulful discussion about life. Of course this discussion might go on and on, but I’ll decide myself later how to end the conversation. And this really did turn out to be the right approach. The client, feeling my support, started to share his concerns and doubts, and about 10 or 15 minutes later he was completely calm, drank tea with me, and laughed at his own troubles.
― So, maybe we should talk about the contract? I asked him cautiously, switching to 4B to be true.
― Well, there’s nothing to discuss. You’ve never let me down, and I believe in you 100%, ― the client said, taking my hand in his.
When the situation requires that you act with a focus on mental energy, then by using the same method of constant collecting energy on all three channels of the functional system we thereby direct all of the energy within the Fiery Flower to the third center, while the constant radiation comes from the third center.
We’ve already described the quality of inclusion into space, which is signified by the concept of rhythm, and the beginning acquaintance with skills of differential inclusion. It would seem that that is all we can say to our consciousness about the bases of the practice. The rest is just practice.
THE LANGUAGE OF STATES of being
Right at the beginning of acquaintance with life in space we asked ourselves the question: is it possible for a person to agree with space? And we said that it’s possible. In order to do so we need to gain two skills — to enter resonance and to learn the language of this world.
Then, continuing to understand the particularities and nuances of the rules, laws, and principles of life in space, and using the method of quality structures (MQS) in our thinking, we discovered that resonance serves as the communicational aspect of our mental energy as a whole. It is precisely a well-developed ability to enter into resonance with the surrounding world, and with the situations and people around us that gives us the feeling of inclusion in the surrounding world, the sensation of the reality of our presence in this world, and the feeling that our own position in this world is an active one.
The language of states of being is an aspect of coordination of our mental energy as an instrument (see Figure 1) and fills its qualitative definitiveness with real content. It is precisely thanks to learning the language of states of being that we make the transition from incomprehensible confusion (I feel something, I sense something, something is happening around me, something seems to has changed, I seem to have a different mood today) to the ability to differentiate one’s own states of being and the states of the surrounding world. Do you remember?
DFS is the method of differentiated functional states of being. The better and more subtly we can differentiate the sound of the space around us, the sound of people and things, our own sound and the sound of the situations which we are in, the more subtly we can reproduce these states so as to reach resonance with the surrounding world, then the more effective our activity becomes. This is because when we can momentarily react to communications from the external world, and have the ability to read this world thanks to the language of states of being, then we can use energy of that quality which will be absolutely suitable to our activity, no matter how various our activities and intentions are.
Many people immediately question what “energy of that quality which will be absolutely suitable to our activity” really means. And the next text will answer this question.
I’ll let myself remind you again what the language of states of being is made of, and why it is called a 16-character language.
The language of states of being came to be as a result of the fact that we divided the sound of space into two aspects, and re-coded them in the language of states of being.
1. The source of energy.
There are three such sources.
Source of vital energy (the first level of activity).
Source of emotional energy (the second level of activity).
Source of mental energy (the third level of activity).
And there is a harmonious sound of all three levels of activity called “The Four”.
2. The quality of space — rhythm.
The DFS method singles out four rhythms.
Rhythm А — the sound of eternity, and the cosmos.
Rhythm B – the sound of the constant flow of life.
Rhythm C – the discrete sound of objects and things.
Rhythm D – the sound of collapse.
The combinations of these aspects give the 16-character language of states of being, each of which is identified with a number and letter, for example, 1В ― the sound of physical energy in the rhythm of the living, or 2С ― the sound of emotional energy in discrete rhythm, or 3D ― the sound of mental energy in the rhythm of collapse, or 4А ― the harmony of the eternal.
Here a law comes into play which is typical of learning any language: I already know how to ask a question, but how can I understand what I will be answered? All people go through this stage when learning a language. And the problem here is not that you haven’t learned enough words. The problem is that each speaker always uses something unique to him in his speech: his own intonation, his own way of constructing phrases, his own timbre, or his own speed of speech. We often aren’t yet ready to discern all these details at the first stage of learning a language. It’s the same with the language of states of being.
Each state of being is not a precise designation; rather, it’s a volume, a range, and an individual set of characteristics. In other words, the sound of one or another state of being among various people will always be slightly different among various people, even though the references of the sounding will be one and the same. All people have a different voice in space, just like they all have various voices in our familiar world. We’ve already thought of musicians. Their scores can be ideally reproduced, but their piece of music will always sound slightly different when performed by each new musician. This is because each musician performs the piece with his own individual feelings, colored with his own unique voice, and his own interpretation.
The width of the range is determined not only by the timbre of the sound, but also by the variety of activity for which one or another quality of energy is effective. If this state is 2В, a state of emotional comfort, then this doesn’t at all mean that this state is effective only for high-quality lying on the couch. Used at the right moment, it can become a very weighty and deciding argument in serious negotiations. How can you refuse such a soulful and subtle person? If the state is 1С, the energy of strong, specific, physical action, then it’s effective not only for running faster or for cutting wood. When used correctly, this energy state can save you in relations that have dragged on, and give birth to words which will be convincing and irrefutable. “Gather your things. I’ve decided. We’re getting married, and you’re moving into my house. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
In order to help you come closer to the fullness of the language of states of being, we offer you a rather detailed guide to the language of states of being. This is a necessity in the baggage of any traveler with self-respect.
The form of activity, and, consequently, the sources of energy, differ on the principle of optimal correspondence to specific intentions and activity: what you want to do, how you want to do it, and with what or with whom you want to fulfill this activity…
Level 1. Domination of physical activity is effective for any forms of movement and sensory interactions. This can be physical education or sport, yoga exercises, interaction with nature, animals, or plants, cooking tasty and healthy food, or a natural desire to get internal satisfaction from the process. Every person knows the feeling “I can move mountains” and the feeling of being full of vital energy. This feeling arises when the 1st center has surplus energy.
Activation of mental energy on level 1 ensures maximum possible (for this moment in time) muscle mobilization or maximum possible relaxation, depending on the “state” used (1C or 1A, for example). You can replenish your energy more quickly after physical exercise in the states of level 1, and overcome tiredness faster. The states of this level also promote health overall, thereby reducing the influence of the external environment (difficult weather, large temperature changes, or poor quality of food).
DFS has an effect on biochemical and hormonal processes once you master it more deeply. It also has an effect on processes connected with the body’s energy expenditure (which takes place, for example, under a managed process of super-mobilization). DFS helps lead the body into its maximum regime of mobilization of physical and mental capabilities at the current moment of time, using states of being from level 4.
Level 2. Domination of emotional activity is optimal when you have close communication with people, or when you are forming emotional contact and: in the family and intimate contact, in a close circle of friends, at work, or on the street. The activeness of the second center determines my world of sympathy and antipathy, the number of friends and acquaintances I have, as well as the quality of these relations. In other words, activeness of the second center determines the quantity and quality of my emotional links. It depends on the amount of emotional-sensory energy in my second center. Precisely the “second” center, and its richness and ability to manage rhythm determine my communicativeness and emotional brightness. The quality and effectiveness of communication depend directly on the second center.
Mastering the basic skills of DFS significantly increases emotional firmness while at the same time having a sufficient level of openness. A further increase in sensitivity in people with greater firmness improves the results of their activity, giving them the ability to get additional, unique information about the state of being of one group or a whole group thanks to resonance, in other words thanks to working with the space that interests them. Thereby one can fulfill the tasks of re-structuring interpersonal interaction by creating role models: role-play models of your own self which suit the requirements of one or another social game.
Level 3. Domination of intellectual activity helps when making calculations or estimates, an helps to understand results and analyze situations. Productive work of our memory, intellectual sharpness, and the ability to think and communicate intellectually depend on one’s ability to manage the consumption of energy and energy transmission from the 3rd center. Man manifests himself as a thinking being thanks to modulating energy inside the 3rd center.
The use of DFS “for the task at hand” increases the speed at which consciousness operates, increases the intensity of processing information of a verbal-logical or visual type, which, in turn, makes it easier to find tactical and strategic solutions.
Leitmotif and a voyage through rhythms
(* This chapter was written with the participation of Alexander Tyshkevich)
Any person has three internal sources of energy, described as the language of three levels of DFS, but for each person they are developed and manifest themselves differently. As concerns their individuality (biological construction), people are different from one another based on which of their energy centers is dominant. These three centers cannot be balanced by nature. And this circumstance has a large effect on people’s behavior, and their thinking, and their ability to communicate with other people.
In some people vital activity may be strongest ― a dominant 1st center. Such a person is more focused on physical action. Such a person, as a rule, is strong at taking specific decisions and practical action. This person’s words are followed by real action. As for emotions, such a person may run into some specific difficulties in their subtle differentiation.
Some people have a clear surplus of emotion — a dominant 2nd center. This person constantly flies along on the waves of his own unstable emotions instead of clearly interpreting what’s happening and rowing in the necessary direction. This person has to begin to take action, and not simply get upset over little details and suffer from their own mood swings. On the other hand, it’s entirely natural that such a person (if he has a “regular character”) can be viewed by other people as a “natural psychologist” and a “soul doctor”, who, thanks to domination of the 2nd center, actively manifests himself as an attentive and sympathetic friend.
If a person has a surplus of intellectual activity then the 3rd center dominates. This person has great intellectual capabilities which are sometimes manifested even if this person isn’t “bookish”. This person has a natural ability for reflection and analysis, and strives to understand and know more completely. This, however, often deprives this person of an inner fire, and strong emotion, thereby making this person too dry and distant in communication.
Such inner irregularity can make it hard to achieve the life goals that such a person sets himself.
The practice of DFS proposes learning how to consciously set yourself on the right track of activity so as to have clear confidence: “My state of being is optimal for that activity which I am about to do!”
Furthermore, mastering the states of being of level 4 (accord — harmonious level of activity, combining all three base forms to an equal degree: physical, emotional, and intellectual) brings internal calm, self-confidence, and the ability to act in any unforeseen situation. After all, now I really am ready for anything, since no matter what the characteristics of the environment are, I can take a dominant position in any space without any special effort.
Here’s an example.
Everybody knows how difficult it is for Russians to get a visa to the United States. There’s a very low percentage of lucky people, who, even though they have real estate, children, and other dependants, all of which suggests that this person will return home, can brag about having a piece of paper glued into their passport with the proud inscription “United States of America”. But we wanted to go to America so badly, that my husband and I decided to risk it, and try to get the visa anyway, even though we might be wasting our time and money.
So, we gathered all the necessary documents, and then came the scariest part: to get through the interview in the US consulate. It was clear that the final decision would depend on the subjective opinion of the officer who interviews us, and on what side of the bed he got out of that day, and on whether or not he had time before the interview to drink his morning coffee.
Usually people look very nervous at such interviews: they keep their heads down, their voice becomes weak and unclear, and even the most confident people have a questioning intonation. And that’s not surprising, since the consulate looks like a jail more than anything from the inside: very high ceilings, grey, stone walls, poor lighting, and doors with huge locks similar to something from the Middle Ages, and which shut tightly behind you when you walk in. You immediately start to feel small and pathetic. “Whatever happens, we can’t become confused or embarrassed, so let’s use 4B,” we decided happily, and, having enough time to enter the required state, started waiting. Finally our turn came.
― Brgrugurug, ― said the American officer, apparently trying to speak in Russian.
I gave the officer the tokens that we had been given earlier.
― Abyrvalg, brgurug, grmr! ― the American said with even greater distress.
Thinking a little, I tried to give him our Russian passports.
― Grrrr, ― he whispered threateningly.
I was totally lost. I thought to myself: “Is it really so hard to find a person who can speak better Russian?.. No, this isn’t good, I’m starting to get upset. I have to keep the base, the base! I can’t forget, ― 4B, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to pull the roots a little, because everything went to the second center, and it’s no good not to have “B”…”
― Yes, yes, we’re husband and wife! ― my husband said all of a sudden, unexpectedly understanding the question. Judging by my husband’s face, the same thing was going on in his head as had been going on in mine.
The officer calmed down a bit. The remaining questions didn’t matter any more. I felt how a living, calming wave was passing through the dead, lifeless space of this dark room thanks to our mutual efforts. I saw out of the corner of my eye how the woman in the corner stopped sobbing, having just been refused a visa, and how the officer stopped paying attention to the fact that we didn’t understand his questions and didn’t answer him properly, and in my soul I became more and more convinced that this interview was just a simple formality, and that no matter how subjectively the consulate viewed us, we had already convincingly “proved” our reliability.
― Your visit has been approved, ― the officer grinded out, and threw the documents at us. But this didn’t bother me at all. And who can get mad if he’s just received the possibility to take a wonderful trip, and finds himself in 4B?
***
Once four of us were on a ferry boat sailing on the Bosporus. We wanted to sit on the deck, but couldn’t find 4 seats together anywhere. Two places had been taken by some French kids. At first we thought about kicking them out with something D. Then we got the idea to employ a more humane option ― it’s hard for children to sit in place, and they definitely won’t sit still in 4C. We needed to wait just half a minute, and then we drank wine quietly in the cozy corner of the deck the rest of the way.
***
I came home and the heating system was leaking. I had already flooded the neighbors. I put a bucket under the heater, but I had to empty the bucket every half hour. It was impossible to go to work. My wife left, but I stayed. I called the repair men, but they said that they had no time to help that day. I was in the “four” and simply continued to talk with them. I asked them questions (the base, four), and we talked some more. Two minutes after a rather hysterical refusal, I all of a sudden was told that they would do everything possible to come to my place within the next three hours. They showed up, and fixed the heater, and the next day I went to work.
One important element in our activity is the quality characteristic of the environment, in other words the rhythm with which one or another task is fulfilled. Each rhythm transforms the external environment, and it becomes a spatial support for completely different events. Each person knows the feeling of “the right atmosphere” or “the wrong atmosphere”. But far from every person knows and remembers (!), that “atmosphere” (the quality of space) can be created in such a way that it will ensure the efficiency of the efforts you make, in other words for the task at hand.
1A
This is a state of absolute openness to your natural origins, of internal attention to the sources of life energy, characterized by a change in the scale of perceived reality, the appearance of depth and greater volume when reflecting everything living, and the ability to perceive everything living in all its variety of manifestations. Life’s space doesn’t have any borders, and every living thing which is accessible to my imagination is always nearby. State 1А leads one to take part personally in natural processes, and frees one from fear before the great variety of life.
It’s possible in state 1А to “understand” the deep links between man as a whole and Nature. These links can be felt, and one has a clear sense that living reality hears me alive, and that I can pray to her for a good harvest, for rain, for the fertility of the Earth, and for a cure for any crisis. This state of being, to a certain degree, cures everything living like “living water”, makes it possible to establish connections with the surrounding living reality, and raises one’s overall life energy, being at the same time very informative. It is precisely in this state that our ancestors received intuitive knowledge about earthly cataclysms, ploughing, sewing, and harvesting, about changes in weather conditions, about collecting useful herbs and how to use them…
Music to listen to:
Vladimir Vysotsky: “The Capricious Horses.”
Edith Piaf: “Non, je ne regrette rien”
1B
This state awakens interest in life on a biological level, and makes it possible to fix life on this level, filling any living form with living strength and stamina. This state also increases external and internal endurance.
In 1B man is capable of maximum muscle effort that doesn’t require speed (lifting weights), and physical endurance appears as a result of long training (such as walking for a long time).
In this state one is particular attentive to one’s body, and perceives the importance of interaction on this level. One opens intuitive knowledge about how to correctly perform biological (vital) interaction. Vital emotion becomes possible too, while the ability to radiate vital emotions when speaking with others allows those who work professionally with health and physical development to be successful. This state also helps people who work at taking care of life in its various forms (man, animals, plants…) to do their work as well.
In 1B one has a sensitive attitude to aggressive programs of conceptual consciousness aimed at the organism, as well as healthy natural ability to neutralize these programs (for example, the social ideals of mechanical “beauty” created by the media, in the form of extreme (for show) “bodybuilding” or a “healthy lifestyle” (aggressive and exhausting diets), thereby also raising one’s biological firmness.
Chris Rea: “The Road to Hell”
Louis Armstrong: “Go down Moses”
1C
This state is effective for raising one’s own life energy, for overcoming slowness and being tired, for activating one’s physical activity and for making the transition to an impulse regime of action and overcoming inertness which manifests itself on a physical level. This state is also good for making you more dynamic in those situations where the circumstances demand it.
The state 1С has the following traits: maximum speed of movement, speed of reaction and movement, making sharp thrusts and fulfilling one’s impulses, which is important for some types of sports and play situations, and maximum muscle effort in an impulse regime that requires speed (jumping, pushing, or throwing objects).
1С is effective in those situations where physical activity should be subject to a clear rhythm: marching movements, ritual or folklore dancing, modern dance, and other movements which increase one’s physical and emotional tone.
1С ensures completeness of interactions with the physical world, the world of things and impulses, makes it possible to orient one’s self freely in this world, to organize it, to make order, and to construct new models and create the necessary configurations from the totality of objects. This may look like it is very manipulative in nature. It’s easy to go overboard in the space that separates non-aggressive interaction with reality from forced actions, and so you must be very careful!!!
Since the living and natural world is perceived in 1С as the world of things, with which various manipulations are possible, these manipulations are subject to rhythm, and are fulfilled quite clearly, then from the position of a viewer oriented at understanding the environment as a stream (in the rhythm of life, rhythm В), these can be seen to be harsh, rude actions. For example, in the human environment such a style of interaction is described as an administrative-management type, or army behavior. This is acceptable, and sometimes absolutely necessary in some situations, but it’s not desirable in others.
Thus, for interacting with the living world, the 1С state can be used successfully in those situations which require clear and precise organizational changes in the process of forming a regular structure, or when reorganizing an old structure.
Yury Shevchuk: “Rodina”
Elvis Presley: “Tutti Frutti”
1D
The state of 1D, an environment that has a destructive sound, is not pleasant for living things, and leads to activation of destructive processes. Thus one should keep in mind the fact that living things feel discomfort in this environment, and that if this continues for a long time, then one can get sick. 1D is capable of leading to terrible disgust or panic and fear. Sometimes these feelings paralyze a person so much that he loses his ability to take action. Catching the destructive signal, this person most often shies away from any action with the source of this sound, looking in panic for the nearest toilet.
On the other hand, the state of 1D in the regime of short-term hard radiation produces a cleansing effect similar to an “energy enema”, when one must speed up the process of analogous physiological cleansing by removing infected food from the body ― “burning up everything extra, painful, and unnecessary…”.
There can also be life situations when a person is forced to be located in 1D space for a long time, taking care of dying relatives, working in a hospital with intensive care patients, etc… Such situations lead to a need for self-regulation of one’s psycho-emotional state, which includes the ability to recognize one’s state, to reason with one’s self, and to receive additional energy, and to use it to separate the destructive state from one’s self, thereby creating another state (А or B, for example), necessary for further activity.
Janis Joplin: “Try”
Led Zeppelin: “Denied and confused”
2A
A flight of the soul, a feeling of freedom, inspiration, readiness to communicate with others: all of this creates a feeling of being above everything else. Your soul spreads its wings and flies over the earth. The 2A state gives one a feeling of emotional-sensitive unity, and allows one to raise their communication to the level of a prayer.
Blessing… an almost forgotten emotional-sensitive form of relations today. A mother blesses her child and his undertakings, and not just with words, but also with her state of being, which opens space, taking away possible obstacles in his path. The reality of this action is achieved through the 2A state.
Repentance… This is not just a state in one’s head, but most of all a state of one’s soul, its openness to higher meaning, to the eternal… in the wish to cleanse it of something incorrect, heavy or oppressive. This work of the soul can be fulfilled in the 2A state, in which case liberation becomes real.
Forgiving… The desire you feel to let go of your grudges entails such emotional activity that eliminates obstacles to communication, wipes away the boundaries created by grudges, and reproduces the atmosphere of unity within your soul. If you practice the 2A state in this context, then you can feel real relief and healing in your interactions.
Thanksgiving… as a state of being, as an action which carries the meaning of thanks. This is the work of the soul, which can be effectively fulfilled in state 2A. Agreement as total “yes”, as the threshold of Acceptance and Love… Those people who have felt such relations at least once in their lives are familiar with 2A.
Healing of the soul and sublime inspiration, which open the way to creativity. This is the philosophical context of space filled with the rhythm of the eternal from the emotional center. The 2A state can be useful to people who have creative work in the field of high relations, for those who wish to fulfill the depth of their relations in various forms and to reflect them trough the means of art.
Edvard Grieg: “The Song of Solveig”
Camille Saint-Saens: “The Swan”
2B
A living river of healthy, human relations, healthy emotions and feelings, a favorable environment for friendly emotional-sensitive relations connected with communication on the level of mutual feeling, sympathy, and man’s spiritual life. This space reveals a deep interest and understanding of all subtleties and shades that exist in the sphere of human inter-relations.
2В makes it possible for a person to be both sympathetic and patient towards other people, to respect their feelings, smooth out conflicts, establish emotional contact, and feel satisfaction from interaction with people on an emotional level.
Communication in 2В is not formal, but rather a constant living process: spiritual warmth, softness, readiness to communicate and be responsive, and be able to accept other people’s position.
2B brings people the real feeling that human relations are a process that requires attention, support and development, and continuation in time.
In 2В people are particular sensitive to the reasons why relations are destroyed, and people become able to avoid such situations, neutralizing emotional aggression and taking away psychological tension, thereby ending any conflicts and eliminating confrontations.
Eugene Doga: Waltz from the film “My tender and gentle beast”
Whitney Houston: “I will always love you”
2C
Feeling as a thing is the main motive of this state, which inevitably gives birth to other forms of emotional-sensitive reactions than 2В. Sometimes they are a combination of dramaticality and comicality at one and the same moment. Separation of one emotional manifestation from another and impulsiveness in the field of feelings creates the impression of playing with relations, of lightness and a lack of seriousness. From the position of another rhythm such a thing can be interpreted as a lack of deep feeling and superficiality in relations, but for a person who is in the state of 2С, this is not the case at all. This person has his own perception of the depth and seriousness of the relations. This perception comes through the specifics of his impulse vision.
In 2С consistency leaves one’s relations, and there is no monotony f the kind that sometimes irritates a person so much that he tries to revive these relations, to make his own rhythm and play in his relations. This is what the beauty of this state of being is ― one can make communication playful or light, or change it, or make it dynamic, adding any note to it: coquetry, spirituality, joy, firmness, warmth, or care, in other words whatever the circumstances call for.
The application of state 2С in life practice creates a situation that require reviving the process of relations by adding a shade of joy, or emotional movement, or rhythm to one’s emotional world. This is done so as to overcome the inertia of feelings of one’s interlocutor, and, perhaps, to even create happy communication, where a joke leads to laughter, and humor is perceived in the proper way. The 2С state is a sort of healing factor for such emotions as melancholy, sadness, unnecessary seriousness, depression or sorrow that have been following a person around for a long time.
2С activates the tendency to belittle the object which we focus our emotional influence on. Here we can use cute forms of speech, which looks as if we are babying a person, especially when we do so with children.
The practice of the 2С state helps develop emotional liveliness an flexibility, the possibility to quickly switch from one emotional mood to another, and to easily establish emotional contact with several people at the same time, since the rhythm system of this state of being makes it possible to react emotionally to a situation very distinctly. Undoubtedly there are such forms of human endeavor, the success of which depends on one’s ability to communicate in exactly this way. Several types of theater art can be mentioned here, as well as those professions which call for the possibility of emotional interaction with several clients at the same time, without forgetting anyone.
ABBA “Мoney, Money”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”
2D
Emotional aggression leads to destruction of emotional space, and this is reflected in man’s inner world. Anger, envy, hate, meanness, competitiveness, threats, gossip, and other forms of emotional aggression are all various forms of the unmanageable 2D state, which destroys the living space of human relations. People suffer when they come into contact with manifestations of 2D. Man goes through inner pain, then reaches a new balance, and keeps on living. Those people who can’t get over 2D end up living with this state as a constant background in their lives: these people have spiritual illness. They have hysteria, nervousness, emotional imbalance… coldness and heartlessness, an inability to sympathize with others and to perceive subtle movements of the living human soul, intolerance of others and protrusion of one’s own “ego”: all of this creates the possibility for emotions to boil over in 2D. This state has no place for forgiveness, repentance, or thanksgiving, and it has no place for agreement and accepting people with different philosophies, different views, or different opinions from one’s own.
But! Let’s remember the Slavic tradition of “mourners”, who would actively cry in resonance at the deceased’s funeral, and languish compassionately, thereby bringing the relatives and friends of the deceased into hard 2D. This helped the guests to quicken the process of the ritual of self-pity. There would be cries of “а!а!а!… who did you leave us for?!”, thereby taking away tension and helping to promote cleansing of the soul and emotional relaxation of the people at the funeral.
I want to point out one nuance that concerns all states of being, and rhythm D in particular: one should understand that this state may depend on the current situation, in other words it can last for just a short period of time, or it can be constantly inherent to man. States of being in rhythm D are not dominant, but they can be situational. But if destructive situations are repeated frequently, then this state of being is consolidated, and we have to deal with a pathology of physical health (1D), emotional life (2D) or consciousness (3D).
Alfred Schnittke: (Concerto Grosso No. 1, Part 1)
3A
A flight of thought and the space of eternity as born by the intellectual center separate a different totality of volumes available for interaction, and shift the borders of consciousness, making it possible have contact with eternity on an intellectual level.
One can really feel the infinity of the space of knowledge, and the closeness of the Cosmos, and one feels one’s own presence on the background of eternal space. One gets the feeling of intellectual freedom, of the accessibility of any knowledge, and of the possibility to interact with it.
When we lift our gaze to the starry sky, then we can feel the incredible lack of separation between one’s self and the sky’s eternal depth for a short time. One has a feeling of rapture and inspiration upon realizing the reality of one’s presence in cosmic space. This is precisely the way in which the influence of 3A is manifested, inducing man to share his feelings with others through fulfillment of this emotional experience. The fruits of such creativity contain sublimity and beauty, and purity of intention, and can be the reflection of an internal prayer, praising the Creator.
Cosmic consciousness, the ability to operate with large amounts of information, easily entering resonance with it so as to receive knowledge: in this way we can describe those possibilities provided for by state of being 3A on an intellectual level. Those people whose work calls for a clear mental state and depth of intellectual penetration into their field of study combined with breadth of the informational range and vivid vision should use this state for creative self-realization, for the ability to be open to new knowledge, and for increasing the speed at which they gather information.
Antonio Vivaldi: “Gloria, Part 8, Domine Deus”
Freddy Mercury: “Exercise in Free Love”
3B
Being in the state of 3B is most of all conducive to the process of thinking. This state is most effective for interpreting the results of one’s activity while having the least possible muscle activity. This is a logical, dialectical state for solving intellectual tasks connected with interpretation, generalization, and the search for solutions in various fields of research. In this state the thought process is a continuous action.
The world and other people are perceived most of all as thinking, while reason is viewed as the base of the individual’s creative strength. It’s easy to find the link between a person’s opinion and his own practical philosophy, which makes it possible to identify the person’s internal intellectual organization, and to interact effectively with this organization, thereby having a living influence on the thinking process.
The 3B state of being can provide invaluable help to people who fulfill various forms of intellectual work connected with interpretation, generalization, and the search for solutions in various fields of research.
Eric Clapton: “Leyla”
Vakhtang Kikabidze: song from the film “Mimino”
3C
The world of thoughts, ideas and images as clearly defined objects is characteristic of this state. Thought as a thing. Image as a thing. And the thought process as constant manipulation of these objects which are created in the space of one’s consciousness. Precision of thought processes is characteristic of this state, thanks to which the speed of informational reaction and the exactness of information processing are increased.
The 3С state provides excellent opportunities for construction design, for effective work with numbers and letters, as well as for activity which requires planning, creating schemes and structural sequences which form the skeleton of technological processes.
The accuracy and speed of intellectual reaction makes 3С best for all types of operator activity, and for correcting or analyzing the structural organization of texts. This state will gave any specialist who works at making calculations or processing statistical data undoubted advantages and satisfaction from his work. This state guarantees precision of thought and subordination of intellectual activity to a certain temporhythm.
The 3С state is a good means for reviving the thought process, for overcoming its inertia and passivity, for improving one’s quick-wittedness, and for speeding up interaction with one’s own memory.
An intellectual impulse in this state has the power to fascinate other people by its idea, to inspire people with one’s thoughts, and sometimes even subordinate others to one’s will. This looks like intellectual magic, which can have a clearly expressed aggressive character due to a lack of understanding of the continuity of the thinking process and the inability to feel the living fabric of intellectual interaction (which exists in the space of rhythm B).
Usually a person in state 3С is described as being smart, rational, prudent, technocratic, and dry, since the 3С state disposes one to inner rationalization and intellectual optimization of variants, and estimates of all “for” and “against” under the most commonplace life circumstances.
For this reason state 3С can be very useful in situations when one has to make a choice, or take a final decision. This state can help speed up this process without overlooking any of the possible variants.
The influence of the C rhythm on a person can be seen in this person’s behavior: he has more abrupt, jerky movements when gesturing, while his speech also follows a rhythm, and has more precision and is more concrete in nature. Rhythm is kept when moving in space, and is manifested when perceiving time. Reaction speed increases, and dynamism intensifies on the physical, emotional-feeling, and intellectual levels.
Antonio Vivaldi: “The Four Seasons”, “Winter” Part 1.
Vanessa May: “The Storm”.
3D
This state features intellectual activity which destroys the space of consciousness. This state is manifested when people argue, trying to prove something to one another so as to change a perception in the other person’s consciousness. In other words, the 3D state can be observed in those situations when one manifests intellectual aggression, stubbornness, or doesn’t accept a different world view, and wants to destroy one’s opponent intellectually. As a rule, all of the participants of “family scenes” with arguments and fights, or after poorly organized business discussions, take leave of one another with a headache.
The spectrum of sounds of 3D states is quite wide: from the heaviest forms (as during tough diseases) to the most refined sounds that aren’t felt so strongly (such as arise, for example, when using drugs, or after sitting for a long time before the computer).
Being in the 3D state constantly brings various degrees of heaviness, a lack of flexibility in one’s thoughts, stubbornness, the possibility of getting obsessed by some one thing, joylessness and hopelessness. One may fear anything new. A reluctance for change leads one to strive for intellectual opposition.
Attention!!! Keep in mind that the 3D state often arises in life crisis situations and during long “tough” periods, when one revaluates one’s old values and changes the bases of one’s life path. At this time one “breaks up” the old constructions of one’s consciousness, and replaces them with new ones. In this case a person simply outgrows one’s internal world view, and goes through the collapse of one’s ideals and the meaning of life. Once this person becomes healthy again, he appears before himself and others in his new internal quality.
There are obviously two facets of the destructive process. The first variant is when destruction is simply a developmental stage (revaluation-purge) and is positive for the person, who parts with the old, with the “painful-extra-unneeded”. The second variant is when 3D is the result of intellectual coercion upon one’s self or others, where the 3D state may be manifested as an incredibly conservative way of thinking, and which serves as the personification of fanaticism, dogmatism, or nihilism.
Pink Floyd: “Time”
Deep Purple: “Stormbringer”
“4” — Harmony as the base state of a person’s new quality
Many years of practice and serious scientific research revealed one very important particularity in the technological structure of DFS. This method has an element which is universally good for the whole set of man’s basic needs. It works both for banal seduction of the opposite sex and for invigorating one’s own organism, and for any creative activity. This is a state during the formation of which the whole structure of the mental energy instrument works in a harmonious, resonance regime. In the DFS language this state of being is called the “four” (4A, 4D, 4C, 4D). This state is very good, and universal. Getting to the “fourth” state is the ideal goal of lessons on a good level. The states of “accord” mean complete inclusion into the world. These states are exclusively comfortable, both physiologically and psychologically. One reaches optimal mental organization in 4С. One has maximum mental relaxation in 4B. The states of 4B and 4А are excellent helpers for harmonious interaction between men and women at all levels.
The 4B state increases one’s level of connectivity, mutual understanding, and empathy, and increases sensitivity. This state is useful for effectively setting goals and understanding what one wants from life. It helps to structure the thought process, and makes it easier to understand one’s dominant internal motivation. Furthermore, the 4B state of being harmonizes the activity of the right and left halves of the brain. Thus the main task when learning DFS is to develop the custom of constantly being in states 4B or 4C.
Some things, of course, seem to be strange, or unusual. One loses the fever that some people mistakenly take for purposefulness. One loses all types of inertia (when one can’t be moved from his or her spot on the couch). The state of 4В makes a person “fluid”, while at the same time being steady.
“Fourth” states are very useful as the beginning position for any game, whether it be a social game, or a game with space, or a game with energy. These states of being are a base, a starting position for beginning professional work with one’s mental energy.
I often hear the question: “You know, personally I agree with you. And you’ve given a very good description. But… I still have one “but”. Do you really think that this entire subtle, vague, unclear world of feelings, experiences, and emotions can be adequately translated to a language with just 16 states of being? Aren’t you simplifying this world into 16 buttons? I press a button and I get a feeling, or I press a different button and get a different feeling. Isn’t this just like something from the fantasy world of robots?”
The DFS language was created as a means of achieving purposeful and effective interaction between a person living in space, and the space itself in which he lives. You already know how this language was created and what it is made up of. So what’s the problem? Did you ever think about the fact that there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet? It doesn’t worry you that such a small number of letters is expected to express everything that a person can think, feel, and express in words? And what’s more. Before we offered you a description of states of being, we witnessed the fact that we came really close to the end of what our consciousness can say about energy practice. Your question proves that yes, this really is the end. But we’ll still make one more attempt. And this is almost a fairy tale.
Once upon a time there was a child. It’s not important if it was a boy or a girl. Once, when it was very young, circumstances came together in such a way that he was left alone one night in the apartment. Probably his parents hoped that he would sleep, that he wouldn’t notice their absence and that he wouldn’t be afraid.
But the weather outside took a turn for the worse, and a thunderstorm picked up. There was thunder all around, and the rain pounded into the windows, and the trees could be heard bending in the wind outside, and an advertising billboard made a loud noise as it fell over right next to the window. And of course the child woke up. At first the child simply called its parents, then, having overcome its fear, it walked all around the apartment, but didn’t find anyone. The child sat down on the floor right beside the door and started crying loudly and bitterly. The child cried the way only children can cry — with all its being.
It wasn’t very late for adults, and one of the neighbors walked by the door where the child was crying. A sympathetic female voice asked him for a long time about what had happened, and, finally, understanding what had happened, started to calm the poor child. But the child still couldn’t calm down. And so the woman sat down on the stair on the other side of the door and started singing a very simple song. The melody was very simple, and its repetitive tune first calmed the child down quite quickly, and then lulled him to sleep.
When the parents came home they saw their neighbor sleeping by their door on the stairs, and then found their child, who was sleeping peacefully on the rug in the hallway. It would seem that this is the whole story with a happy end. But no.
After a few years the parents decided that their child should definitely study music. The child didn’t have any personal opinion on this matter. And didn’t it just have to happen, that just several lessons later the teacher played a simple melody and said that it was the Russian folk song “A Birch Stood in the Field”, and that they would learn it by heart.
The child remembered this song immediately, he couldn’t not remember it, because never in his life had there been a stronger feeling than that which he felt during that thunderstorm… And he felt tremendous happiness, equal in strength to the power of the grief and fear he had felt when he was left alone. This melody for him held the meaning of calm, protection, and consolation. Maybe he didn’t know all of these adult words, but he had experienced the song emotionally, and his soul knew everything about that. Happy, joyful, and full of enthusiasm, he sat down at the piano. Now I’ll do it MYSELF… But there was no music. He hit the necessary keys, trying his best, but… there was no music. The miraculous melody didn’t arise. Ugly, uncoordinated sounds came up from the strained, sweaty children’s fingers.
How can we describe the depth of his disappointment? How can we conceive the great wave of sadness that arouse in his head and was ready to wash over him? Words are powerless where the soul lives. We don’t know what his teacher said, or which words, actions or depth of sympathy she used to save this child from the approaching wave. But at this moment he learned the first truth: there is a long road that lies between knowing seven notes and the simplest melody, and that this road is woven out of a desire to go forward, and from occasionally difficult work. He didn’t stop right at the very beginning, and slowly, gradually, from under his fingers, he gave birth to simple, then more complex, happy, sad, and sorrowful melodies. And he made them from the same seven notes, from his desire, and his work.
Why am I telling this story? Here’s why. The child who wasn’t afraid of the long road went to the Conservatory. Of course he went with his parents or teachers, and he went regularly. He listened to music which for him, as a beginning performer, was still inaccessible. But can music really be inaccessible to the soul?
There was a famous orchestra and an even more famous conductor this time on stage. The concert program said: Part 1. P. I. Tchaikovsky: “Symphony № 4, fa-minor.”
And do you know what our hero said, when the room went quiet, and the conductor waved his magic wand? He heard the melody of his happiness. Pure, clear. And then everything got caught up in a mix of complex symphonic interweaving, in the singing of the violins, in the ringing voices of copper and velvet wooden wind instruments. The music first became almost unbearably complex, and then it seemed that all the strings were untwined, that all knots were untied. But whatever happened in the depths, the music was instilled by that one theme, which connected everything together, giving the music order, rhythm and meaning for the whole forty-five minutes that the symphony lasted. This theme was the original folk song, the simple, great melody which gave birth to this whole mix of emotions, this kaleidoscope of feelings, the melody of the Russian, practically children’s song “A birch stood in the field”, woven together from the same seven notes and the great soul of the great composer.
There’s no need to worry that there won’t be enough characters in the language. Just like there’s no need to worry that the possibilities of seven notes will someday reach an end, and that the music will stop.
After that you will have only practice.
And so as not to sound unfounded, here is one more subjective opinion about DFS from a man who knows this method very well.
Any instrument has instructions. As a rule. But no guides or instructions are capable of passing along living knowledge — that knowledge that a master makes with the help of the instrument. Will paper textbooks on how to play the piano or drive a car help you much without practical lessons? There are also self-help books in the style “How to learn to perform Tibetan mantras on a water-pipe with a teaspoon”, which are published in amounts equal to the print runs of text books on classical physics and mechanics. The notes written by the masters of the best musical works are published as well. Films are shot about the best car drivers. Musical schools are opened whose students learn to play on musical instruments, just like driving schools are opened to teach people how to drive. Such schools have their own educational programs. These may be intensive or not so intensive. And we already know that if a conscientious (but not exactly “crazy” in the meaning of his professional devotion) teacher will teach only using general programs, then the result will be about the same as for everybody else. And we know how all of these elusive “everybody else” have the virtuosity of a musician or driver.
It’s another thing though when a talented, creative individual teaches others how to feel the instrument, to see the sounds, to hear the music of space, to fulfill the melody of the soul using the instrument, to enjoy the vibrating harmony of the powerful motor or the soft, almost unnoticed change of gears, picking up speed when going around the turns… and taking pleasure from all that, and perhaps, sometimes, deviating from the formal program, but immersing students into the world of real feelings.
And another thing. Nobody thinks it’s possible to become a good Formula 1 driver in just 30 days, or learn to play the violin in just 3 months. Oh no! So then at what cost is the statement made that one can master the mental energy instrument in just three months, even though this instrument is much more complex than the violin, or the new Maclaren prototype?!
Since DFS uses the techniques of internal instrumentation, which make it possible to learn to be one’s self not in words, but in a slightly different way, then naturally it’s more effective if my teacher knows how to learn himself, and to teach people how to teach themselves.
A trainer who knows perfectly well how to classify information and determine states of being at the base course, but who doesn’t have the ability to teach me in the space of my own life tasks, can’t give me much for my future growth, isn’t that true? A real expert is not that who “passed the course”, but rather that one who took responsibility on himself for his own further self-study.
So then who is the best teacher for me? Of course! I myself, and my active life position: “I want to learn mental energy skills very well, this I can and I will do so… I’m already doing so every day, happily.”
We can say that you’ve learned almost everything that a person needs to know about the fact that besides his own usual way of life on the surface, it is also possible to live in a completely different way — life in space. I want to underline and warn you that this is obligatory, and necessary, but not beginning knowledge. But if in order to move we don’t have to pack our things, or buy a ticket, or get a visa, but rather we simply have to want to master that knowledge and those skills which we talked about so much, then what will really change? We ourselves or the world around us?
First variant. Usual
A moment comes in a person’s life when he feels that he himself and the place in which he lives, perhaps for all his life, start not to suit one another any more. Looking around, familiarizing himself, turning the globe around, and stretching his mind and his opportunities, he sticks his finger into this very globe and says with hope: “This is exactly the place where I will become famous and successful. I’m needed there, people are waiting for me there.” And, having gathered his things, a picture, a basket, a cardboard box, and his little dog, he goes on his way. And he repeats, like a mantra: There’s no need to bend under a changeable world. Let the world bend under us. At some point the world will bend under us.”
But how will the world change its shape, to sit us? Did you ever think about that?
Further… Man, having overcome, more or less, his first difficulties, getting to know the particularities of the geography, the requirements, traditions and order of his new homeland, notices with confusion and surprise that most often nothing more than the external decorations changed. There was the same chaos, the same pressure from circumstances, the same inability to see the cause-and-effect relations, and the same old familiar, excruciating indistinctness and unmanageability in the mood change, and the same dependence on plus- or minus-reinforcements which came from the outside. There was the same house, but without a master.
Second variant. Unpredictable
This motif is the same — the desire for change. You’ve checked the normal methods, and they’ve turned out to be ineffective. Neither one’s own experience or that of one’s friends and acquaintances is any good. Everything is just not right. The world still hasn’t changed its shape for you, and your soul beats in the cage of circumstances, and doesn’t give you any rest. Even spells, such as “get used to it, and you’ll love it” can’t help you. Then the phrase, which you heard once “If you can’t change the circumstances, then maybe you should change your attitude to them?” comes back to you. Well, that sounds good. Who’s against it?
And here one gets an idea, strange and scary as it, but also intriguing and uplifting, probably thanks to the fact that you are already so crazy. “In order to change one’s attitude, then you need to change the person who gave birth to this attitude, who made it.” But who said that I can’t change? Who said that I can’t have a new view of the world, or a new vision of what is happening with me or around me? Who said that everything’s already happened, and that nothing can be different?” It would seem that nobody had said anything, it just happened that way of its own accord. It happened itself, but I want to change it myself, based on my own desire, and in accordance with my own intentions. Hey, is there anybody here who wants something similar, or who’s done something similar? Tell us more precisely how to start.
We’ll, we’re going to start from the fact that the world around us is space, and although there is only one space, it’s filled with many. And man is a part of this world, unquestionably, and consequently can feel himself to be one of the volumes of this space with complete confidence. You and I have the same blood. And thus nobody changes shape for anybody else. But rather each person enters a dialogue, because we’ve been given this possibility since birth, because there is something very indefinite within us, but which is known to us under the name “soul”. And those who enter a dialogue are always, factually, equal.
— Hello there, Reality — it’s me.
— Hello there, person — it’s Reality.
Did you hear that? Did you feel it? That’s the change in attitude.
And what can be done so that this goes from being a beautiful dream to a practical part of life? I already said everything that I know about how to begin. Maybe, besides one thing. We had to leave at least one thing as a reward for those who got through our book.
IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION. WHY people DON’T live by THEIR SOUL?
DFS is an exercise for the soul. This is an organ of spatial perception. The soul doesn’t have any one specific location. The soul is traditionally linked to the heart, or to the imagined spiritual heart.
The soul is a spatial organ, and, strictly speaking, has a relation to our brain, and to higher nerve activity, just like all organs. And the soul reacts or doesn’t react to those weak interactions which exist in space. This is very difficult, and unusual, which is why people don’t live by their soul.
Children live by their soul. Children use only this instrument, their soul, until they’re about 3 years old. They don’t really understand what they are told, or don’t understand at all. Children perceive everything as energy through space, and orient themselves by this energy. They see that which we call auras, and for them this is entirely normal. A child lives with total emotion, and he experiences everything that happens to him completely. And if a child goes through complete negative experience as a child, or that which we call mental anguish, then this system of perception is blocked. Adult people are most often traumatized by these childhood experiences.
This is why, when we speak of essence, of the system of man’s spatial relations which arise on the basis of the soul, we often discover the following situation: a person is 40 years old, but in essence, speaking in his language, he is 5, or 6, or 8 years old. This is precisely the result of some strong mental trauma which, unfortunately, wasn’t neutralized later in life. This is why people are wild for the most part, wild in their souls. I spoke out on this topic for the first time quite some time ago, in the article “Jesus and Wild People”. We read with pleasure, interest, and admiration about the life, the path, and the actions of Christ. We are enraptured by this, but on an emotional level, like an Event which is entirely inaccessible to us. We understand things with our head, not with our soul. But this is exactly what He was talking about, when he spoke of love. He spoke of interaction between souls.
Bu what if we don’t have this interaction? What if our soul is blocked, closed? It’s scary to open up our soul. Some times it’s very scary to open our soul, since we aren’t used to doing so. I had one friend who came over to me. He was about 37 years old, and he announced to me with pride that he had just felt mental anguish for the first time. What was he doing until then? How did he live?
This is the kind of world we live in. The beginning of the construction of civilization started once. That was when the so-called matriarchy died, and patriarchy arose in its place. This patriarchy began because the time had come to build, to win territory away from nature so as to build society. And we built and built, and often went against our soul, because our soul asked for one thing, and our reason asked for something else. And then the Age of the Enlightenment began in the seventeenth century. “I think, therefore I am.” So we’ve been existing since this time. We’ve forgotten how to be in this world. We simply exist by thinking. We are thinking beings. That’s great, but it’s a totally different lifestyle. Why is so hard for artists to live? They’re unhappy people, because it happened to them that their soul is open, and reacts to life. They try to express that, but it hurts them, and they injure themselves.
Feelings are the link between one’s soul and one’s consciousness. Now it’s almost impossible to explain to people what feelings are. Probably, it’s easier to lead them to such a state that helps them to remember how things were in their childhood. But that will just be regression. Who needs that? We have to open the world of feelings again. Once again.
Feelings have a completely different time. We live in hours. If you take away clocks, civilization will be destroyed. What do clocks show us? People have agreed that one revolution of the Earth around its own axis takes 24 hours. And that there are 60 minutes in each hour. And that there are 60 seconds in each minute. And we agreed that one revolution of the earth around the sun equals one year, and we divided this year into 365 days with 24 hours each. This turned out to be not quite exact, so once every four years we add another day. And we called this time. What relation does this have to real living time? None at all. (When we say the word “time”, what we really see in our mind is a clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock. This isn’t time. Living time is the time of habitation. And while living, we discover ourselves through feelings.
If a person opens his soul and starts to depend on it, and learns to orient himself with the help of his soul, and to take decisions, since the soul is a decision-making organ, then he feels more energy, and feels happiness. The relative speed of life starts to increase at this point too. You start to live through so much in one day as you felt in three days, or ten days, or eighteen days. Like children. Children learn to live a colossal life and gain a colossal amount of information in just three years. This is a fact, but it is forced out. Children live much more intensively than adults do. From children’s point of view, adults simply good-off, while from the adults’ point of view, children — tyu-tyu-tyu. What tyu-tyu-tyu? Three hours have gone by in your children’s understanding during the time it takes you to say tyu-tyu-tyu.
It becomes clear that when they wrote in ancient texts that “he lived 800 years”, this wasn’t much at all. He lived not 800 calendar years, but rather 800 years based on his inner feeling, and died at a young biological age. What is 800 years? It’s nothing at all! If you have a slow speed, a working speed of 20, for example, in relation to conventional, then this means 20 years per year. This means that if you lived 50 calendar years, then you lived 1,000 years. This is the way they wrote in ancient texts, because they were writing about BEING. One person lived 1,000 years, and this is the complete truth, while a different person lived for 10,000 years in the same time. Simply, the speed of his internal living was longer. This is all connected to the life of the soul.
We’ve even reduced the concept of the soul as best we could. The soul is a colossal organ which we don’t even use. But even though we don’t use it, our soul still influences us. A number of things are understood quite calmly if you think about that, if you remember that you have this organ, and that it’s working as long as we are alive. Let’s say we don’t use it or listen to it much, but it exists. When we say “essence”, we are speaking about the interrelations of the soul with external and internal reality. We’re speaking of that part of consciousness which is connected to feeling.
Feeling is the most perfect ability of our consciousness, in terms of the volume of information processed and the speed at which it is processed. Not a single computer comes even close, because the computer can process only that information which is entered into it, while the soul can process everything. In the direct meaning of the word “everything”.
Why do we need a soul at all? We need a soul so that man can interact with reality, as such. Why? Because each of us gets what he wants. Each of gets what his soul wants. WHAT HIS SOUL WANTS, NOT SPECULATION. Reality doesn’t know the categories “good” and “bad”, or “I want” and “I don’t want”. It’s important for reality that your soul wants what it does. What’s the point of being positive? What’s the point of focusing on your desires? Why did the ancients say that each desire is sacred? Because this was the principle upon which reality responds to man. Not social reality, but rather big reality, in other words as such. This is what it means to be “in the image and likeness of man.” Man is part of the world, that’s a fact. It’s hard to argue with this. But the world is part of man through man’s soul. Therefore, man has what we wants with his soul so as not to think about his real life.
This is hard to believe. How is that? I may not be happy with my life, for example, so it turns that I don’t want such a life. Ousting this fact results from mass brain-washing. What is used to scare us most of all? Our desires. Buddha was disfigured so as to say that desires should be destroyed. “Be afraid of your desires, because they will be fulfilled.” Supposedly Buddha said that. But there are other interpretations and translations of his texts as well. Desires really do come true, but why should we be afraid of that? Just in case.
“Well, in general the soul is just for God, so we don’t need it at all in real life. We’re not children at all, we’re adult, complete people, or, as is commonly said today – successful people.” The meaning of such statements is that we shouldn’t expect anything else from ourselves.
Social pressure in all its various forms is aimed at forcing man to forget what it means to WANT. To forget what it means to feel desire. There should be a goal instead of the idea that is born out of feeling. And you are told what this goal is by your parents, teachers, and bosses. You need to accomplish these goals by overcoming obstacles. You will be given these obstacles as well. Everybody gives you them. And you believe in that, you think like that, and it’s as if you want life to be like that.
Reality doesn’t put any limits on your “I want”. Reality can do anything. Because reality is everything. But man is not allowed to come too close to reality. Dates with reality are not allowed, and you can’t correspond with it either. It’s good that some people still cram texts stating that freedom really does exist into the prison library from time to time. Texts saying that there is something outside of the prison walls. And that they can help you to escape. But this doesn’t mean that all people will immediately start to make an escape plan. Who knows what there will be outside the prison?… It’s not so bad in the prison, after all. I know everyone, and everyone knows me. I know everything, and I have a routine. But who knows what I’ll find outside.
Well, the DFS method is, in truth, an exercise that tames your soul, so that it can have a link with consciousness, so that consciousness can differentiate its perception of space, or rather some of the volumes of space. Furthermore, the DFS method is done in such a way that it’s safe.
What is safety? Firstly, this technology is linked to our body. The soul manages the body. This is great. The first step is to get used to the idea that our soul manages our consciousness, and man himself, and man’s life, and his being. That’s because the soul is an organ made for this. Therefore the question “how?” is not a correct question. Man’s business is to know WHAT HE WANTS. And to really want it. In that case reality will give you what you want. It’s not hard for reality to do so. It’s simply a question of time, of our conventional time. Reality will bring you to that which you desire. Because if you want something, then you already have it. It’s impossible to want something that doesn’t exist. This is impossible by definition. This is because the contents of our consciousness are linked directly to that which already exists. Even our fantasies are those fantasies which we already have. So why should we be afraid of our desires? It’s society which is afraid, because a free person feels a thrill because he’s not going to sit in prison. He’s going to live in freedom. He’s going to live from his soul.
This is what DFS is, in fact.
APPENDIX. General Principles of self-regulation
(From the speech “Using the 16-character code to form differentiated functional states of being”)
Everybody knows about autogenic training (AT), or has at least heard of it. A strange thing happens with AT. AT sessions are held in many places. The idea of the sessions is to teach people in rest homes or health centers, but the number of people who do AT sessions independently is very low. There are a number of interesting books on this subject. But despite this, there are very few people who do AT regularly. These are mostly people who need this practice for their functional or professional needs.
It’s quite possible that the same thing happens with any completely perfect method, since this is a general rule of people’s activity: a person does something new only in the case that the usual means don’t work. The usual means are those means which a person receives during the process of socialization, education, learning professional skills, or when talking with people. He uses these means without thinking about them, and these, of course, aren’t special means, but those which are habitual.
For example, when a person doesn’t have clear information, it might be typical for him to make a decision by flipping a coin: heads or tails. It turns out that such a practice isn’t so foolish. Once an interesting experiment was done: during the fishing season, fishing trawler captains were offered to flip a coin to help them choose where to fish, since they couldn’t make a clear decision themselves based on their professional skills and intuition. That season the catch increased by 15%. It turns out that such a simple thing as flipping a coin plays a very large role.
There is a system of self-suggestion performed in the classic, people’s form: a wedding ring is hung from a silk string and fortune telling is done with it. The person’s fortune, and the importance of this sign for us, is determined by the way in which the ring swings — lengthwise, crosswise, or some other way. This is a kind of “speaking pendulum”. There is also a “perfected” wedding ring — the divining rod. Fortune telling is done with such a rod. Now frames have appeared as well.
Tests were done in one laboratory of the department of theoretical problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR whereby it was proven that all these things act as a sort of magnifier in relation to that information which a person receives at the subliminal level, in other words these things strengthen not the entrance of information, but rather the exit of information (a person does not receive more information through the frame, but is able to give more information that is already available, but which doesn’t have an exit). The question of whether the pendulum answers correctly or not depends on what unrecorded information there is in the person who resorts to using this method.
The pendulum strengthens this weak signal by up to 10 times, while the frame increases this signal up to 100—200 times. Sometimes the pendulum strengthens signals to a well-trained, specially taught person who does this professionally by up to 1000 times. And visualization, if it is used knowingly, can increase the signal by up to 10,000 times. Thus, such a person can see something in his dreams which will help him solve some kind of difficult problem thanks to the fact that visualization is a very effective way to increase weak signals. We can therefore say that self-hypnosis is a very wide field of activity aimed at oneself.
This can be activity aimed at self-management in accordance with the given program one has set. This can also be activity aimed at self-formation in accordance with the final product, or it can be activity for management of some kind of functions that a person has in accordance with technical or functional requirements. In other words, in each case we have one of three working situations in front of us:
1. Finding that inside us which we already have, but which we haven’t yet recognized.
2. Forming that inside us which we would like to have.
3. Perfecting our skills at managing our own internal world.
These are all very different activities. This means that when thinking of self-regulation, we have in mind two very large and very different fields of activity. These are activity aimed at changing ourselves in accordance with any kind of model, and activity aimed at activating possibilities of self-regulation, such as, say, functional opportunities existing within ourselves. These possibilities may be potentially present, but they haven’t been activated. In accordance with this, the further logic for building any kind of method of self-regulation should lead to either the first or the second variant.
PRINCIPLES OF THE DFS METHOD
The method of differentiated functional states (DFS), or, speaking in simpler terms, the method of mental energy resonance, is built on structuring unclear, and at first hard to feel elements of understanding that are connected to such concepts as energy, sub-sensor sensitivity, and the emotional sphere.
How is this method built? We are quite sure that the final product of any system of self-regulation is change in the I-conception. We can say with a high degree of certainty what method was used by analyzing these changes. Therefore, we consciously orient ourselves towards this task: what has to be done to the I-concept in order to gain the possibility of managing the structure of a person’s emotions, feelings, and mental energy?
Solving this task required using the idea of the instrumental element of the I-concept. This idea, expressed through various descriptions, was born thousands of years ago in the concept of the trinity “body-soul-spirit”, or the ancient Chinese system of “three boilers”, separating energy under the principle “land, man, and sky”. This three-pronged separation has existed in all cultures since ancient times. Each culture separates three main forms which can be used to classify man’s activity,
1. Activity using muscles, physical activity, vital activity,
2. Activity which is mostly emotional, through feelings,
3. Activity which is mostly cognitive, or mental.
In order to solve tasks in the field of mental energy, it is most important to use the so-called instrumental element, in other words to include the notion of an instrument, of relations, in one’s I-concept: the body as an instrument, the psycho-emotional sphere as an instrument, and creation as an instrument. Here we have in mind that part of general relations with the body, with the psycho-emotional sphere, and with consciousness, about which we can say: “I can do this and that with this”.
Let’s say I know how to think in three ways, or I know how to activate my memory in a certain amount, or I am able to do calculations with the speed of a computer — these are all characteristics of my consciousness as an instrument. In other words instrumental characteristics are brought together. Why is this important? Because when we speak of the three main types of activity, this isn’t the same as when we speak about instruments.
All three forms of activity (with domination of vital, emotional, or mental activity) can be inherent to each of the three instruments.
This approach has existed for a long time in spiritual traditions. This approach has been described by Uspensky in his stories about Gurdzhiev’s system as a psycho-technical tradition. There’s nothing new in this. We are saying that with the help of special exercises and conscientious decisions, we can form a system of instruments. We learn, for example, what a person can do with the help of mental energy. Does man have anything instrumental in this field? This is the reference position, our beginning approach.
Further on we propose a specialized language. In this case language is a key factor, since it is used to clear up all of a person’s disturbing feelings, such “I feel something”, “it’s burning” “it pricks”, “it seems” and “it appears” in the field of mental energy. This language is very simple. The domination of one or another form of activity is specified by the word “level” and is coded in the following way:
Level 1 — this is activity with domination of a person’s vitality.
Level 2 — this is activity with domination of a person’s emotions.
Level 3 — this is activity with domination of the cognitive, intellectual sphere.
Level 4 — this is work of the mental energy instrument, whereby all of these levels are equally represented, and are in “unison”.
Further on we can see the concept of rhythms. What do we mean by the word rhythm? Rhythm means the characteristics by which you understand the surrounding environment through your activity. This is the main distinguishing factor of our method. Here language takes into account that one’s state of being — functional, psycho-emotional, and one’s psycho-energy state — is determined not only by the form of activity, but also depending on which environment this activity is directed, and how this environment is understood.
The origin of this notion comes from the concept of “tempo-rhythm”, which is common in the acting profession. The concept of rhythm includes a certain understanding of the surrounding environment, and the domination of a certain understanding and feeling of inclusion in this environment, since activity must be accompanied by a feeling of being included in this environment.
Thus, we now have four rhythms or four ways of reasoning:
Rhythm А — Understanding an environment as being a continual, expanding sphere; the rhythm of the eternal.
Rhythm B — The rhythm of the living, a wave, a stream.
Rhythm C — Understanding an environment as being discrete, as being a plurality of discrete objects, a symbol, or impulse.
Rhythm D — Understanding an environment as being destructive, chaotic.
These are the four possibilities. Likewise, sixteen combinations are possible, sixteen words, sixteen code designations for sixteen functional states. During lessons one gradually forms a semantic field which makes it possible later to activate this understanding.
Our practice (and we have already taught several thousand people) shows that this language can be learned easily, that the code is short, and that the semantic field is quite strong. The only problem is that our language is insufficient. Why? Because the language should have some form in order to be able to use the instrument.
Thus the next problem is that of form, of construction of an instrument, all the more so of such an unusual instrument as mental energy. In order to so we need to use some sort of archetype image.
This image must be archetypal, in other words it should automatically awaken a certain number of deep associations, deep semantic fields, so that a person can be drawn into these fields as completely as possible. We use the archetypal image of the fiery flower. A similar construction with the name “gold flower” is used in one Chinese mental-technical system. This system has rather different aims than we have, but such an analogy can be made.
Why is the flower fiery? This is very hard to describe shortly. Basically, the long path of comprehension brought us to this archetype. But, since at present this has gone through an experimental and practical test, we can simply say that the images of “fire” and “fiery energy” allow us to solve two tasks:
1. To control our psycho-emotional sphere and our psycho-energy tone.
2. To not strengthen our blood circulation at the same time, unlike autogenic training, where, as is well-known, one feels warmth (it’s simply hot, warm, and my muscles are relaxing), while at the same time there is a flow of blood to that place towards which one directs his or her hypnosis.
The process of burning is well-known to our bodies, since oxidation takes part in it. Oxidation is burning in a certain meaning. There are other associations as well, and thanks to this one gets a large semantic field. What can help us to feel those feelings which are given in the instruction? A pepper bandage can help, and, in general, that burning which we feel from hot pepper on our skin. But sunshine is the very best – that burning which intense sunlight gives us. This is an absolutely precise feeling. Frankly speaking, the reality of physical feelings is one of the main problems in the learning process.
The exact formula which we use in our instructions is fiery energy.
One has to be able to concentrate on these instructions. I give precise instructions to exercises and explanatory maps in my book “Alone with the World”. But fulfilling these exercises without an instructor who has been specially prepared is risky, since one always needs individual correction. Each person practicing this process goes individually, and there can be side-effects. Thus one has to be able to properly describe the nature of these feelings, as well as know what to do with them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Igor Kalinauskas was born on February 7, 1945, in Novgorod. He graduated from the Theater School of B. Shukin, and was a famous theater actor and director for a long time.
He then expanded his field of activity considerably, and the name Igor Kalinauskas became well-known in scientific and literary circles. This name became associated with books and articles on a wide variety of topics — from psychology to medicine. Today Igor Nikolayevich Kalinauskas is a doctor of science and professor, the vice-president of the International Academy “Information, Communication, and Management in Technology, Nature and Society”, the honorary president of the International Scientific Film Association, a current member of the International Academy of Informatization, a doctor of philosophy in the field of psychology and socionics, and a professor, poet, writer, and artist. He is the author of many scientific articles and monographs. He was one of the first experts on socionics, and the author of its simplified model — “The Kalinauskas Steering Wheel.” His books “You Have to Live”, “Games which I Play”, “We’re Having a Good Time” and others arouse interest in all kinds of readers, which is testified to by the many translations of his books into English, Lithuanian, and Slovak.
Igor Kalinauskas has been well-known as a singer and composer for more than ten years (his stage name is Igor Silin) of the duet ZIKR. Starting from 1996 he became interested in painting. Today his creative work attracts an ever-growing circle of connoisseurs.