Piotr Karpenko

Before replying to this strange question of Karpenko’s, the old man began to look round as if he were searching for something, and then went towards the trunk of a fallen tree.

He sat down on it, and when we had seated ourselves, some on the tree and others simply on the ground, he turned to all of us and slowly began to speak. His reply to Karpenko’s question developed into a kind of lengthy sermon, of profound interest and significance.

The words then spoken by this old ez-ezounavouran I will also record, but only in the third series of my writings, in a chapter entitled ‘The astral body of man, its needs and possibilities of manifestation according to law’. Here, I will merely touch upon the results of the healing by this venerable man, which I verified by inquiries over many years.

From that time on Vitvitskaïa never had a recurrence or even any of the symptoms of the malady from which she had been suffering. Professor Skridlov did not know how to express his gratitude towards the old man who had cured him, probably for ever, of the sufferings which had tortured him for twelve years. And as for Yelov, a month later his trachoma was gone.

After this event, significant for all of us, we stayed there another three days, during which we split the wood, made the raft and prepared everything we had planned. Early in the morning of the fourth day the improvised raft was launched into the river and, boarding it, we began to move downstream.

At first our peculiar craft could not always move with the current alone, and at some places we had to push it, and at others even carry it, but the deeper the river became, the easier it was for the raft to move by itself, and at times, in spite of its load, it would fly along like one possessed.

We could not say that we felt completely secure, particularly when the raft passed through narrow places and collided against rocks, but later, when we were convinced of its sturdiness and of the efficacy of the device thought out by the engineer Samsanov, we were quite at ease and even began to crack jokes. This ingenious device of the engineer Samsanov was to attach two bourdiouks to the front and also to each side of the raft, to serve as buffers whenever it should strike boulders.

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