Tausha

Rating:
Summary: Living light from Russia
Review: Because Russia has for so long been disconnected from the flow of people, ideas and information that has over the last century so enriched the consciousness of the rest of the world, most of us know little about the spiritual insides of this deep and mysterious land. As many of us have suspected from the scant but intriguing stories of extrasensory discoveries behind the iron curtain, from what we know of the legacy of original teachers such as Gurdieff and Ouspensky, and even from the novels of Dostoevsky, there is a deep and unique vein of other-worldly connection in the Russian tradition. Some dimensions of it are profoundly spiritual, producing an effulgence of light and wisdom, while other aspects have been developed in the service of darkness, for sinister use by the KGB (the secret police) and for psychic warfare.

The interplay between the forces of light and darkness is a part of this story as well, as Beliaev seeks initially to make sense of some terrifying encounters with "the Prince of the World" (aka the Prince of Darkness) and other dark beings who came to him from time to time during the earlier part of his spiritual journey. His inner world ignited when he met a strange and powerful spiritual master, Tausha, who was essentially a living channel of light and healing, and who imparted the techniques of being a vehicle of this light to his disciples.

The conflict between light and dark in the author's inner universe culminates during a sojourn with Tausha and his band of followers in the Armenian mountains when, to Beliaev's utter horror, the Prince appears on the crest of the hill beyond their campfire - and he sees the features of the Dark One suddenly reflected through his teacher's face. He made the traumatic decision to abandon Tausha on the spot, precipitating a long period of confusion, as the student, bereft of his teacher and the living flow, struggles to make sense of it all on his own. Eventually, they are reunited for a brief time before Tausha's untimely death.

The master's purpose for himself and his disciples was, as he put it,"to establish the site of another reality in this gloomy world - a reality where the natural course of evolution can be restored.....The plan is to create a Shambala-like place, a place hospitable to the flow, right here in the midst of the Soviet madness, in the city, not in a faraway retreat. ...When I say 'a place', I don't mean a concrete location, I mean an energy structure, a sacred bowl filled up with energy and acting as an energy preserve."

Living beneath this continual and ever-increasing downpour of energy was a transformative and blissful experience for the group, infusing not just their minds and bodies with light, vibrancy and supreme aliveness, but filling them up as well with the imperative to channel this awareness into the world. It was life in a state of Grace.

Tausha teaches them that they are not working alone. Initiating the process requires a blessing from a higher source. The Sufi masters call this light of blessing baraka, which means grace, or the power given for the Work. What is required of those who receive this blessing is service - a dedication to becoming a channel, a link that connects the realm of the higher energies to this world. Of necessity, a healer who seeks to serve in this way must do the difficult inner spiritual work of dissolving the ego in order to become a pure, empty channel.

Tausha is a very creative teacher and instructs them in various disciplines. Some are original to him, and some are traditional, among them Kunta yoga, a yoga of mystical symbols and mantras. The author gives us a fascinating introduction to some of the basic glyphs, explaining that when meditating on these symbols, one comes into resonance with Shakti, the creative energy of the cosmos.

In the end, Tausha dies alone in the woods. But the end turns out to be but another astonishing beginning in this transcendental tale, for his death simply inaugurated another phase of the mission. He appears to the group again, months after his death, matter-of-factly walking in the door as they were meditating, looking very corporeal in his astral form. He offered them now an even greater opportunity to live in the Flow, since he could in his new embodiment in the Light even better guide, protect and supply the group with energy than before.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of the book was not so much the story of Tausha and his life and teachings, stellar as these were, but the existential distillation in the end of Beliaev's own life and experience as he evolves beyond the personal touch of his teacher. In the end he was blessed with an awareness of something higher than the flow..the Presence. And he now clearly deserves the honour of being called a master healer and teacher in his own right.

"Tausha - The Life and Teachings of a Russian Mystic" is an incredibly rich and illuminating book. It's an original vision of tremendous depth and power, capturing the sublime in an exquisite prism of elegant prose. It truly deserves a place on the spiritual seeker's bookshelf beside the volumes of Castaneda, the tales of the Sufis and all other such works of authentic spiritual vision that the new global dawning of higher consciousness has brought forth.