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[Alexandr Korol]

Not like in the movies, not as a voice, but feeling them, feeling what they were thinking. I wasn’t reading their minds, but I could sense what they were thinking. Not feeling their mood, but feeling their reaction in the exact moment when they were discovering something, or looking at something, or recalling something. I immediately felt it in myself as if it was mine. But I understood that it wasn’t mine. And that’s why I could feel anger, envy, or lust in a person, and I understood that it wasn’t my feelings, but the feelings of the person next to me.

I will say this: believe me, it wasn’t easy when I felt people who had very bad moods and thoughts, and when I felt someone who was completely sick or filled with fear, I would take all that on myself — I felt it all, and of course, I wanted to run away from those people. And also, on the contrary, if I suddenly felt immense love in someone, with boundless confidence and happiness, naturally, I really wanted to interact with such a person. It didn’t matter, even just texting online was very pleasant to me, because after that, the whole apartment would feel very beautiful, and it turned out that this person was very creative. That this person, their entire family was creative. I could feel it, like I was connecting to it. My perception of the world would change depending on the person I was seeing or talking to, or texting with. And also, on the contrary, I could feel fear, horror, some insecurity from talking with someone, texting with someone. I didn’t understand what it was, but then I started noticing, observing it from the outside and realizing that I felt people like that, and that it wasn’t me, it was that person’s thoughts, their fears. And, of course, I tried to avoid such people, because I was afraid I might get stuck in this world. And when all of this was happening, I remember it was probably 2009. In 2008, I remember meeting a girl, just a regular date, who, when we met, started talking about how she saw the world differently and so on. At that time, I didn’t really talk about such things. But she was already talking about strange, unusual things regarding spirituality. She was my age, but it seemed like she already understood all of this, while I, on the other hand, had no idea what was happening to me. And then I realized that she wouldn’t judge me because every time I wanted to tell someone what was happening to me and who I was, if that person was, as I call it, “with a mind,” an egoist, they would immediately attack, laugh, belittle everything, trivialize it.