Vissarion: the Siberian Christ

[starfruit]

By the way Brian, did you find out anything about the copyright and distribution policy? I don't know myself what they are like.
But it's written in the beginning of the book that the translation is not complete and that complements are welcome.

[ppetrov]

Hi everybody!

My name is Plamen and I am Bulgarian citizen.

I am a follower of Vissarion since 1998. In 2000 I visited the community in Siberia and lived there for 3 months. I was happy enough to visit Vissarion's house, to meet His wife and children...

For those who will be interested to learn more about Vissarion: unfortunately, most of the texts of His Teaching are available in Russian only. As far as I am informed, only the following two books have been translated into English:

(1) "THE LAST HOPE (Appeal to the Modern Humankind. About the Father and His Son)"

Available online for free download at:

http://www.vissarion.ru/down/LastHope.zip

A very important book. Read this one first!


(2) "THE TIME OF TURN"

Available as a HTML document at:

http://www.vissarion.ru/eng/index.html

(Click on the second banner)

The second book contains also graphics and it is probably even more fascinating than the first one, but still it may be hard for reading/understanding if you are not familiar with the text of the first book.

===

I'll be happy to help everyone who will be interested to learn more about Vissarion and His Teaching anyway I can. Unfortunately, my English is not perfect, but still understandable, I hope...

Yours truly,
Plamen Petrov

[I, Brian]

Hi Plamen, and welcome also to CR.

As for the books - I really don't know the copyright policy - but there does at least appear to be an English version around.

[alexa]

I don't want to offend anybody, but this looks to me as another totalitarian sect.

The quality of a person does not depend on technical knowledge. The heights of the human are not defined by what he achived in technology and science.

So, Sergei Torop or Vissarion, how do you prefer to call him, doesn't like people who think by themselves. Maybe, that's why he has imposed strict rules to his followers.

Was he without sin, till the morning he decided he's the Christ ?

I knew another totalitarian despot born in January 26.

[ppetrov]

Alexa:

It's nice to see someone from Canada taking part in this discussion. So thank you for stopping by!

Originally Posted by alexa

I don't want to offend anybody, but this looks to me as another totalitarian sect.

It may surprise you, but I think you are quite correct!

Well, yes... In my own eyes some of Vissarion's followers look like people from any other sect or cult, too... And please note I am a follower!

However, one should not try to judge about someone's Teaching looking at His followers only...

Originally Posted by alexa

So, Sergei Torop or Vissarion, how do you prefer to call him, doesn't like people who think by themselves. Maybe, that's why he has imposed strict rules to his followers.

Actually, Vissarion *encourages* people to think by themselves.

BUT: It is my understanding that people who are weaker (both intellectually and spiritually) always look for some "simple and strict rules", that's why He sometimes uses this form of communication...

Originally Posted by alexa

Was he without sin, till the morning he decided he's the Christ ? .

Please check out the following interview by Vissarion given for the American spiritual magazine "What Is Enlightenment?":

http://www.vissarion.org/?language=e...ext_album_id=6

The first question from this interview strictly matches your own question, I think...

My own comment:

It is my impression that you look for some "simple criterion" to "prove Him wrong" and "exclude" Him from your thinking instead of spending more time to analyze the whole event in detail.

I really wish everything to be as simple as you think (i.e. yet "another totalitarian despot", as you write below), but... well... this time things are a little bit more complicated, if I could say so with some sense of humor!

I myself spent a LOT of time reading and analyzing this event before I become fully aware He is the One who He pretends to be... But OK, everyone has his/her own path to the Truth.

Originally Posted by alexa

I knew another totalitarian despot born in January 26.

Vissarion was born on January 14, 1961.

Anyway, please note that even *if* He was born on January 26th, your remark proves... nothing!

With best wishes,
Plamen

[alexa]

Originally Posted by ppetrov

However, one should not try to judge about someone's Teaching looking at His followers only...

Hi ppetrov,

I read all the documentation available on the net before my previous post. Unfortunately, for some reason, the link you gave at the beginning doesn't work. It looks like somebody had tried to modify it and it can't be opened.

Actually, Vissarion *encourages* people to think by themselves.
BUT: It is my understanding that people who are weaker (both intellectually and spiritually) always look for some "simple and strict rules", that's why He sometimes uses this form of communication...

I'm afraid I'm not the 'sheep type', so yes, it's difficult for me to realize why others need rules to go ahead with their life.

Please check out the following interview by Vissarion given for the American spiritual magazine "What Is Enlightenment?":
http://www.vissarion.org/?language=e...ext_album_id=6

Please give me some time to read the info.

I really wish everything to be as simple as you think (i.e. yet "another totalitarian despot", as you write below), but... well... this time things are a little bit more complicated...

Well, I don't know anything simple about religion.

I myself spent a LOT of time reading and analyzing this event before I become fully aware He is the One who He pretends to be... But OK, everyone has his/her own path to the Truth.

The reincarnation is not typical for Christians. So, I cannot belive he is the reincarnation of Jesus. He could see the Christ in him, but in this case we are talking about something else.

Vissarion was born on January 14, 1961.Anyway, please note that even *if* He was born on January 26th, your remark proves... nothing!

I was reffering to another person (N. Ceausescu). I know he was atheist and maybe the two persons cannot be compared. I was thinking more at a cult of personality.

I have found very strange a person who decided to change the calender as simply as Vissarion did. After all there is not much time since his revelation. Again, let me check the link first and maybe I can find some answers there.

I do not judge anybody. I belive each of us is UNIQUE and has his/her own path to follow.

Regards,

alexa

[ppetrov]

Please check out the following interview by Vissarion given for the American spiritual magazine "What Is Enlightenment?":

http://www.vissarion.org/?language=e...ext_album_id=6

Originally Posted by alexa

Please give me some time to read the info.

OK, feel free to reply when you are ready!

Best regards,
P.P.

[alexa]

Hello ppetrov,

Thank you for the link. It helped me to make the conclusion.

I believe Vissarion belives he is the return of Jesus Christ.

Please don't take it personal, but I do not believe he is who he pretends to be.

On the whole, it is those who do not understand what is happening with themselves and fool themselves very sincerely.

This applies to him, even he doesn't realise it.

Regards,

alexa

[ppetrov]

Originally Posted by alexa

Thank you for the link. It helped me to make the conclusion.

I believe Vissarion belives he is the return of Jesus Christ.

Please don't take it personal, but I do not believe he is who he pretends to be.

Quote:

"On the whole, it is those who do not understand what is happening with themselves and fool themselves very sincerely."

This applies to him, even he doesn't realise it.

Well, what can I say...

You read a very brief interview and you already made a conclusion. Congratulations, then: this is your choice!

I decided to take the "hard path", and I read a LOT. (Also, I met Vissarion in person and I lived in Siberia for 3 months...)

Another quote from Vissarion's interview:

In order to bring someone to spirituality, certain references will not be enough. It is necessary that a great deal be studied in detail and that there be help to learn how to fulfill this great deal. Only then we can already talk about spirituality. It will not be enough to mention the short commandments of love where man is called upon to love one's neighbor like oneself and to love one's enemies. The now announced assertion, complementing these commandments in greater depth, will not suffice either: "From now on the person of faith should become incapable of even thinking bad of someone no matter the circumstances in progress. He or she ought to learn how to feel the pain of a broken twig even."
To succeed in solving the task assigned by the Great God a whole Doctrine is necessary that helps to look at these tasks and recognize them right. In this case - it is the Last Testament, expressed already in the four thousand pages of six books. And it is not finished. It will keep unfolding further because it contains the analysis of the constantly emerging specific life problems of man about how to build society, how to develop creativity and so forth.

Anyway, I do not want to FORCE anyone to accept my own faith and conclusion -- this will be wrong, of course.

It is only a little bit sad to see so many people ignoring Him instead of seeking the Truth all the way long...

I still hope some will decide to return to this topic later when they realize this Event needs more careful study before one decides to make his/her final decision...

Hopefully,
P.P.

[ppetrov]

The following link might be of potential interest to all readers of this thread:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.../bvjesus30.xml

For your convinience below I am attaching the full text of this article.

Best regards,
P.P.

===

Could this be the son of God?
(Filed: 01/09/2003)


The man they call Jesus of Siberia came to Britain looking for disciples to follow him up a mountainside. Candida Crewe was intrigued


A 41-year-old man dressed in a coarse, red velvet robe with scratchy gold braid takes his seat on a fine purple banquette in the Groucho Club. He wears thick socks under his sandals and carefully combs his long flowing hair before sitting down.

He smiles beatifically and speaks very slowly and quietly, in Russian. Even by the Groucho's standards, he looks unusual. Asked how he would like to be addressed, he insists, calmly, that he doesn't mind.

The man sitting opposite me is known variously as Vissarion, the Teacher, and Jesus of Siberia, and is indeed a dead ringer for the iconic images of Christ - beard and all. He claims to have around 80,000 devoted followers worldwide, all of whom believe that he really is the Messiah, so, despite my natural scepticism, it seems important not to make a faux pas, just in case. His profound expression, serene body language - lots of holy hand gestures - and his very long pauses before answering questions demand that he be taken seriously.

There are beads of sweat on his brow. Asked if he is finding London too warm, he replies, solemnly: "Just because there is lots of snow, it doesn't mean it's cold back home in Siberia."

Vissarion is in England for a week, staying in a chintzy B&B in north London, doing a bit of sightseeing, giving a talk at the London School of Economics, and meeting contacts in Glastonbury - all in the hope of attracting British disciples who might be open to his particular form of enlightenment. "I go where people are waiting to hear me," he explains.

A Bulgarian banker in London, who is giving up his job to live close to Vissarion, has paid for the trip, and Channel 4 are making a film about it. But the English, it seems, are proving difficult nuts to crack. He has been greeted not by crowds of people wanting to be saved, but by cynics who want answers to such questions as: when will the next comet hit the Earth? (Vissarion doesn't know, but acknowledges, with a smile, that such an apocalypse is inevitable)

Despite the lukewarm reception, Vissarion, born Sergei Torop in 1961, is determined to spread his gospel. In a nutshell, this appears to mix some elements from the Orthodox Church with a little Buddhism here, Taoism there, plus a large chunk of 21st-century environmentalism. One observer has described the teachings as an unholy blend of cosmology, Christianity and yoga and others have voiced fears for the safety of Vissarion's most devoted followers. Many religious sects have flourished in Russia in recent years, but the Vissarionites are notable for their arduous way of life and their utter dedication to the leader. Outsiders remain sceptical and find him, at best, an enigmatic new-age charmer, at worst, a sinister nutcase (although, according to the Russian Orthodox Church, he isn't siphoning off his followers' money), but the man must have something.

Vissarion lives 4,000ft and a four-hour walk up an icy mountain in Siberia. This is reached along a cratered dirt track and is a six-hour drive from the town of Abakan - which is itself a three-day, 2,300-mile train ride from Moscow. Five thousand of his most ardent followers (including his mother, who initially considered sending him to a psychiatrist when he told her he was the son of God) have joined him in what he has described as an "experimental ecological settlement" in 250 hectares of woodland. Among Vissarion's disciples, he claims, there are Germans, Italians, Russians, Bulgarians, Cubans and Swedes; many of them former teachers, doctors and educated urban professionals who have sold their homes and given up the comfortable city life to be close to their leader and live the peculiar existence that he expounds.

This is not a choice any person would make lightly. Temperatures in Siberia are often in the minus twenties or thirties; homes in the settlement are made of wood, with no central heating, electricity, or any means of communication with the outside world. The followers eat a strict vegan diet, which consists mainly of bread, berries and mushrooms. Breast-feeding mothers and infants are allowed sour milk products. Alcohol is permitted only in strict moderation.

"The way it is consumed in today's society is not welcome," Vissarion says, sipping a glass of water. "But there's not an absolute prohibition among my followers. It is used for medical reasons. If someone has huge psychological pressure and their nervous system is suffering, then it's possible to recommend the use of some dry and clean wine."

He does not deny that he enjoyed a glass of beer on the plane from Moscow to London. Does he not miss such pleasures at home? "Only at times when there's a certain inner feeling for that particular vitamin," he says.

Although never a regular churchgoer, nor familiar with the Bible, Vissarion says he realised he was the son of God and chose his current way of life at the age of 29. His parents (who separated when he was a child) worked in the building trade. He had always been a solitary figure, even at school, and studied engineering before joining the army, where he "learnt a lot about stupidity". Later, he worked in various factories and as a policeman in Minusinsk, Siberia.

"A lot of my colleagues wondered how on earth I ended up becoming a policeman," he says. "My behaviour was very different to other officers: I was often pensive and I wanted to forgive people and free them too easily. But it was an amazing experience. It taught me a lot of things I would never have learnt otherwise.

"I couldn't believe such things were possible in people. Alcoholism, for example. But after five years, I felt I couldn't go on as a policeman. I knew I had to stop, even if it meant I couldn't feed my children."

In the spring of 1990, Vissarion had what he calls "an awakening".

"I saw a programme on television that showed lots of destroyed churches and headstones, and this prompted me into action. Everything in me came out like a storm; I had this great thirst to transform everything in the world so that there wasn't so much grief. My understanding was that humankind really must start to live in a different way. A person must lose the capability to think about bad things, and I know how to teach people to do this. So people who follow my word are able to live for the better.

"I know the entire law of human development and the root of mistakes in human society. People are very, very scared of each other and in order to unite them, we have to think up a system that must do away with any egotistical thoughts. I'm the one who needs to form the future of mankind."

Such immodest aspirations became firmly fixed in his mind, and he worked tirelessly to set up his own self-sufficient society on a mountain in Petropavlovka, Siberia. Money is not used in his settlement; schools have been established; wood from the forest is chopped down for building houses; his followers grow vegetables and bake their own bread. Vissarion's wife and the mother of his six children, Luba, makes all of his clothes. The man is well looked after.

He met Luba, a kindergarten teacher, when he was 23, and realised that he wanted to spend his life with her. Despite his long study of human nature, the one area he hadn't explored, he says, was women.

"She was the one woman who would open the whole world of women to me," he says. "Through her, I knew I could understand all women; what women's weaknesses are. There are now lots of women in love with me."

When women fall in love with him, it is, he says, "more complex for me to help them. I feel more responsible in my communication with them. If there are demands made upon me, then I feel, within me, the necessity to distance myself in accordance with the law of harmony.

"For me, all people are equally close and I carry large responsibility for them all. So it is, I need to be free. My wife is now learning how correctly to see and regard me, to understand she's not the only woman in my life. There are a thousand others!"

After another sip of water, Jesus of Siberia is on his way, to spread his gospel elsewhere. So far, it's unclear whether he has managed to find any new followers in Britain who are willing to up sticks to the freezing mountains of Siberia for a diet of berries, mushrooms and quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. But he remains characteristically unfazed, smiling to the last. Asked if he has enjoyed visiting London, he replies, "I don't have such answers to life. I could be anywhere."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

[Käthe]

Originally Posted by aged hippy

On the Saturday or Sunday in question (4 - 5 weeks ago) i re-discovered a web-site that i'd done a bit of reading on about six months ago, the Gnostic web-site. This time at that web-site i found texts i had no idea existed, allegedly the original form of Christianity, as Jesus taught it to his disciples. And so i down-loaded some of them, and read them over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I was on holiday. Some of them, especially the basic teachings i found astounding.

Hmmmm, there seems to be an active Gnostic presence on these boards; can you share the address of this "Gnostic web-site" to which you refer?

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

"She was the one woman who would open the whole world of women to me," he says. "Through her, I knew I could understand all women; what women's weaknesses are. There are now lots of women in love with me."

When women fall in love with him, it is, he says, "more complex for me to help them. I feel more responsible in my communication with them. If there are demands made upon me, then I feel, within me, the necessity to distance myself in accordance with the law of harmony.

"For me, all people are equally close and I carry large responsibility for them all. So it is, I need to be free. My wife is now learning how correctly to see and regard me, to understand she's not the only woman in my life. There are a thousand others!"

Hmm, though I haven't read any of the links yet, what I've read about the guy in this thread sounded intriguing and rather appealing, until I came across the above passages. It could be that something is being lost in translation, or maybe it's just my dirty mind, but this sounds to me an awful lot like...well, do I really need to spell it out? If what's going on here is really what I'm taking it to mean, this guy's credibility has just sunk beneath the basement as far as I'm concerned. If one of his followers who posts here could direct me to a quote or article to counteract what this passage is implying, I am quite willing to have my mind changed and to reconsider the man's sincerity. Short of that, I've learned all I need to know.