that was when the pandemic started. Yes, exactly, from the pandemic. And something unusual happened: right during the pandemic in 2020, I, on the contrary, disappeared. I was practically gone from social media, I left it entirely, didn’t even want to make videos, didn’t respond to comments, I blocked and closed everything. And suddenly, it’s like a hundred thousand people appeared out of nowhere who — it felt like they all read my books — but they, without hesitation, started calling themselves Freemason-sorcerers and began hosting all kinds of marathons, family constellations, personal growth consultations, or whatever it’s called. And I thought, “Wow!” And then they all start showing off how they ride around in Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, Lamborghinis. And I think, “And here I am sitting in a swamp in Karelia. I believe in God, I believe Russia has a future, that Karelia is part of that future, and I don’t care that I spent all my money to come here and now I’m broke, living in poverty.” So I had thoughts like, could I have bought an apartment in Dubai with that money, like everyone else? Yes, I was tempted, I’ll admit it honestly. The demon tempted me hard, truly... I’ll say this: thank God I didn’t give in. Really. It was a very hard trial.
And going back to your question — back then, when I had doubts, I doubted for only one reason: since childhood, I believed there must be a bright future — a noble, radiant future, like in fairy tales about kings. As if everything should be beautiful, a golden age. But what I see is that with every year, the world turns more and more into some kind of madness, darkness, a darkness of vices. And people start reading back to me or pointing their fingers saying, “Hey, you wrote in your books about all that — so what? Where is it all?” And they make these remarks to me, and then the next day they film a video: “Hello, I’m a Freemason, psychic, coach, I’m going to teach everyone now, let’s go.” And I just sit there and don’t even understand what’s happening anymore. It’s like the world flipped into a million false prophets, and now I’m even scared to write books, because every fraud now calls themselves a writer. Then all these bloggers, coaches, psychics, astrologers, and all sorts of other things. And I’m like, “Wow, just 10 years ago everyone was scared of my books, just because they were afraid of the word ‘meditation’.” And now they point fingers at me like I don’t know what meditation is, while they’re all masters number one in the world. I’m like, “Wow, what happened to the world.” And I really did start thinking back