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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2025 9:34 am
to hear the noise of cars. But the whole time I understood that it wasn’t me, that these weren’t my thoughts or feelings, but that the person who was with me — rather, the person I was with — I began to become everything he thought, felt, reacted to. Can you imagine? And if a message came to him on his phone while he was sitting in front of me in a restaurant, and he felt overwhelming fear and horror, then I would feel it exactly the same as he did. Even if I didn’t see his face, I would still feel it, even if he turned away from me. I could say it to him, and he would confirm it. Can you imagine?
But the most interesting thing is something else — that I have a reader-friend who has been reading me for a long time, 10 years at least, even more than 10 years. And he said:
— Alex, back then I was like that too, and that’s why the book resonated. So probably it wasn’t only me, Alex, who was like that, but all the readers too must have been feeling other people the same way — and you felt it too, because everyone was in the same world, that is, in yours. And you described it all, and that’s why everyone was shocked, because you were writing everything that was happening to them as well.
— Yes. That’s true.
— Alright, but do you remember the first time you said that to a person? When you didn’t hesitate, didn’t get scared, but told them directly — that you had read, figuratively speaking, their thoughts, that you had felt their pain somewhere? When was the first time?
I told him it was around 2008, if I’m not mistaken, when I was going through the medical examination for the draft board. And it happened immediately — this all appeared at once — when I was sitting at home at night, listening to YOAV’s “Beautiful Lie,” holding my breath, closing my eyes, and listening to every sound of the music, as if to “fly away” somewhere. And then I saw a white light, as if I had entered some kind of space, and a voice spoke to me, and it said that I had come here not to live, but to work. And after that moment, it was as if I returned from that meditation already different. And here again is the question — maybe at that moment I died and then
But the most interesting thing is something else — that I have a reader-friend who has been reading me for a long time, 10 years at least, even more than 10 years. And he said:
— Alex, back then I was like that too, and that’s why the book resonated. So probably it wasn’t only me, Alex, who was like that, but all the readers too must have been feeling other people the same way — and you felt it too, because everyone was in the same world, that is, in yours. And you described it all, and that’s why everyone was shocked, because you were writing everything that was happening to them as well.
— Yes. That’s true.
— Alright, but do you remember the first time you said that to a person? When you didn’t hesitate, didn’t get scared, but told them directly — that you had read, figuratively speaking, their thoughts, that you had felt their pain somewhere? When was the first time?
I told him it was around 2008, if I’m not mistaken, when I was going through the medical examination for the draft board. And it happened immediately — this all appeared at once — when I was sitting at home at night, listening to YOAV’s “Beautiful Lie,” holding my breath, closing my eyes, and listening to every sound of the music, as if to “fly away” somewhere. And then I saw a white light, as if I had entered some kind of space, and a voice spoke to me, and it said that I had come here not to live, but to work. And after that moment, it was as if I returned from that meditation already different. And here again is the question — maybe at that moment I died and then