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[Alexandr Korol]

They fall into the “corridor” for a time, and that’s why they suddenly seem to wake up and start seeing people from the outside — they immediately notice me. And then they go back into the world of people. I found that really interesting. Imagine, it turns out I was — let’s call it what people usually say — “in the “cosmos”.” I was “in the “cosmos”” at 19–20 years old. What does that mean? I was watching unusual films that seemed to chase me everywhere. Strange music, everything felt magical. I’d walk around with a camera, taking pictures of birds, people. And all the people who happened to cross paths with me during that time — while I was studying in university, while I was working — they were all unusual too. For some reason, they all talked about the meaning of life or about God, something like that. Not God as God, because at that time people didn’t really say that — at least young people around 19–20 in 2009–2010. It was more like, okay, there’s “cosmos,” some kind of force. They were hesitant to say the word God, because Orthodoxy was still something serious, something for grown-ups. And I spoke the same way back then — I just said that I felt there was some kind of force, that there was this unique world, that I saw the world from the outside, and that everyone else seemed to be asleep, and I couldn’t understand why they were all on autopilot. And all the people I came across back then, when I was writing my first books — that’s why I even started writing — among the people who appeared in my life, there were often those who saw the same thing. And they were shocked that I was writing about it. They liked talking with me, and when we spoke about it, it felt like we fell even deeper into that “corridor” and that “cosmos.” And something else unusual would happen: the people who entered that world, the undefined “corridor,” were often those who already had a family, a job, some sort of responsibilities. And then something critical happened to them, and that’s when they entered the “corridor.” And when they entered it, it was like their heart opened, and they became someone who just looked at everything from the outside and didn’t want anything — just observed, like me. And then they would start wanting to make plans again, and they would fall back into the world of the mind — that’s what I also called it. But when their mind broke down — when the structure of plans and how they lived fell apart, when that crisis happened and the mind shut down — they would enter the world “without mind.” And that’s why I called the “corridor” the world “without mind.” That’s how I saw it.