AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh 2 www.allatra.org

AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh
(sounding like “hell” in Russian) means “to swallow”, “to devour” or “to gobble”. The
ancients regarded this material world as that very place which contemporary religions
call the hell, and this world was depicted as a monster gobbling people, their fortunes
and souls. At that, if a person persistently craves for saving his or her Soul, works on
self-improvement daily, this give him or her a chance to overstep the bounds of the
material world forever, to escape from sufferings and permanent reincarnations.
In order to save his or her Soul, a person should be driven by such craving. It should be
the person’s only predominant desire in his or her life, irrespective of life circumstances.
However, as a rule, even when a person steps on the spiritual path, he or she follows it,
carrying a load of numerous banal, earthly wishes which tempt and make it difficult for
him or her to adhere to that only main desire originating from the Spiritual nature.
Therefore, questions asked by such person often come from his or her mind.
There is a good parable in this respect. “A young man once came to a Sage who was
sitting in the lotus pose at a river bank. He decided to present his respects to the sage and
to show with his entire appearance and mind that he was ready to be his disciple. The
young man considered it necessary to ask a question which, as he thought, the Sage
would certainly answer, and thus would pay attention to him. The young man asked:
“What should I do in order to become Wise and to save my Soul?” Yet, against the
expectations, the Sage did not reply anything neither to him, nor to rest of the people
who approached him nearly all day long, asking their questions, complaining about
problems or simply expressing their respect to him. The young man decided to show his
persistence and so, every time when somebody asked the Sage about something, he
repeated his important question again and again. But the Sage was keeping silence.
When the evening approached, a poor man carrying a heavy load came up to the Sage,
who was still sitting in the lotus pose, and asked what road he needed to take in order to
reach the nearest town. The Sage quickly rose to his feet, hoisted the poor man’s load
onto his back, took him to the road, indicated the needed direction and explained in
detail how to get to the town. Then, he returned and set to meditate again. The young
man was so amazed with what had happened that he started desperately asking the Sage:
“How is that? Why have you responded to this man’s mundane request and spared him
so much time, while I’ve been asking you a more important question about the Soul
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