I yesterday witnessed a strange and moving story of light and darkness:
In a previous blogpost, I mentioned a friend from Germany originally from Belarus. Two days ago, she told me that a friend of hers had contacted her “with the wish and courage to translate the English text of the biography of Sripada Srivallabha into Russian. She is a nun, and the Avatar Dattatreya is the main deity in her ministry… She is a pure soul and also speaks both languages well in the spiritual direction…”
I was thrilled that another step in the direction of the prophecy in the book that some hundred years after it was written it would be translated into many languages and go over the world.
When I read that this Russian lady is a nun related to Dattatreya, immediately images of Russian websites came to my mind where some years ago – it was in August 2016 – I had seen pictures of a beautiful ashram east of Moscow with a big golden statue of Dattatreya and other saints. (If you have the Google Chrome, go to the following pages -Russian- with automatic translation – I only use this browser for such cases…. you can download it here). I am not putting the images in this blogpost but please do see them.
They had done 108 sculptures of mahasiddhas and gods, they wanted to create a mandala of one hundred eight temples of unity of all religions. For this, they had created already a beautiful Avadhutta Dattatreya Temple, a Rishi Vasishtha Temple, a Temple of Seven Rishis and planned to do a Temple of Refuge. See here about their spiritual head, Swami Vishnudevananda Giri.
And here is another website about this Center of Vedic Culture ‘Divya Loka’ as a community of Russian-speaking followers of Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma).
When I told my friend of my findings, she sent me a picture of the destruction of the ashram by Russian autorities. I was shocked and googled for images of the ashram – and also of a TV report of NTV.ru entitled, in English translation, “The temple of Nizhny Novgorod sectarians razed to the ground”. And: “The bailiffs decided to demolish three so-called churches at once in an abandoned village in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where members of a strange religious community have recently settled. Services were held there by the newly-minted and self-proclaimed guru. He is known in the world as a former political officer of the Ukrainian army. Regular trances, hypnosis, and cruel punishments for the smallest offenses drove adherents crazy.” See here the printscreen of the Russian original website and here with English translation. You can read more background information on the original site. See also the page about a series of suicides related to this place in 2014.
I had to think of persecutions in the name of state and religion in present and past and of spiritual aberrations.
My friend wrote me that after the destruction of the ashram some of the monks were invited to Germany, and “Nothing new for Russia. The Roerich Museum was also closed.” (I had blogged about the museum before, see here and here.)
Thoughts came to me what Sri Kumar had repeatedly told us, that outer forms can be destroyed but the inner truth will manifest where time and space demand. That we do not build much outer structures to remain “light” and that we should try to live “normal temperament”, not creating special attention: “Much working can be done in silence provided there is ‘Normal Temperament’.”
I had a little exchange with the Russian lady. She is at the moment living in Nepal. She started reading the biography of Sripada Srivallabha and is willing to translate it. May the endeavour be blessed.