Natalya Kobysheva - LEAD ME FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

© Natalya Kobysheva, 2021

ISBN 978-5-0053-1016-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Natalya Kobysheva

Lead me from Darkness to Light by Natalya Kobysheva. Moscow, 2018 – 60 pages ( Spiritual Search Series )

This book presents a recollection of five years of the author’s life, following her first encounter with Avatar Sathya Sai Baba, including all events, revelations and transformations related to Him.

Translated from the original Russian by Zulfia Arbon. Edited by Johan Maurer.

All rights reserved. Reproduction, reprint or any other use of the materials are permitted with an obligatory reference to the source.

Please send all queries and suggestions to the author at:

nat3332@yandex.ru

© Natalya Kobysheva, 2018

MEETING THE SUPREME GURU SATHYA SAI BABA

I was born happy. More than anything in the world I loved to laugh and I still do! As a child I used to enjoy giggles and jokes, laughing out loud with my schoolmates, even to the point of disrupting lessons. My parents adored me, and they did the best they could to express that love. When I was a teenager, I sometimes thought my mother was a bit too strict with me. I realized very soon, though, that it was just her way of expressing her love, and I stopped asking more of her.

My father was in the military, so our family moved often to his duty stations throughout Russia. My older sister was born in Tynda – a tiny town in Siberia. I was born four years later in Vladivostok, in 1980. Two years later, we moved to the Moscow region, and then to Moscow.

My parents were not religious at all. My sister, as long as I remember, has always believed in God, from her adolescence on. My relationship with God was somewhere in between.

After graduating from high school, I enrolled at the university, in the bridges and tunnels department of the school of engineering. A good friend of mine used to joke that women in search of good husbands should go to college. That’s how it turned out for me. Life soon showed me that the work of an engineer had no interest for me at all. I hadn’t put much effort into choosing the university; it was just the one that everyone around me already knew about. When I showed up at the admissions office and saw all the nameplates of the various departments, «Bridges and Tunnels» seemed the most attractive to me. And that’s how I became a bridge engineer.

However, that university was where I met my future husband Vadim. When we finished our studies, we became husband and wife. Destiny gave me a wonderful gift in Vadim; I could not imagine a better husband. As we were getting to know each other, I was captivated by his human qualities: he is kind, generous, intelligent, always calm and positive. His simplicity and openness often remind me of a child. I was never bored in his company – we both had a healthy sense of adventure. We found ourselves looking in the same direction, fascinated by the same things.

Vadim’s childhood could not be called happy: his mother died at an early age, and he was raised mainly by his grandmother. His grandmother considered herself an atheist, although it would be hard to find a more loving and kind person. It was she who was able to give her son, and then her grandson, a loving upbringing.

Vadim almost never loses his temper. With him, anger and irritability are so rare that right now I can’t recall any instances. Usually I’m the one who expresses these kinds of emotions, but when I catch sight of his good-natured face, there’s nothing for it but to calm down. Our occasional disagreements (usually started by me) end up being resolved through humor and understanding.

Even so, I don’t always let go easily. For example, our biggest problem is getting ready to travel – wherever we might be going. I start fussing and hurrying, but Vadim is all about «shanti,» serenity. He usually just waits until our two children and I are packed and ready to leave the house. That’s when he realizes it is time to get ready to leave. Only then does he put on his travel clothes, even when we’re in a real hurry. It used to knock me off balance to the point of tears. However, eventually I became more patient about all this, especially since it became obvious that my reactions were the main problem in these situations, and we’re never actually late!

And I thank God that this sort of trivial thing has been the biggest problem in our relationship.

I’ve never heard my husband using four-letter words; instead all I see from him is kindness and serenity. Since childhood he has never liked meat or fish. He became a vegetarian long before he got acquainted with Swami.

When we both turned 25, we had our first son, Misha. Six years later, our second son Fedya was born, in August 2011. When our younger son was about half a year old, around the New Year, my emotional state took a turn for the worse. A lot of things began to irritate and provoke me – especially fatigue and the constant pressure of living with my parents in the same apartment. Somehow I couldn’t relax – apparently I didn’t even know how to relax at that time.

At some point all these factors snowballed into serious illness. I spent time in hospital, but was discharged without a clear diagnosis. Doctors put me through further tests and examinations, but they just shrugged their shoulders – they could not explain why I was experiencing digestive tract inflammations, or why my whole body was in feverish pain, even as my temperature was normal. Eating was also painful, and I lost a lot of weight.

This was when my husband and I started looking for some alternative treatments. We began reading books by Sinelnikov, Lazarev, Malahov, and many others who wrote along similar lines. I fervently prayed to all the Orthodox saints, asking for help. Vadim tried searching online for practitioners of traditional healing methods that held promise of help. He found someone who seemed a likely candidate: a healer who lived in St Petersburg and whose course of treatment would require us to live there for two weeks. As it happened, we contacted him just as a new group of patients was forming for this course of treatment, and we agreed to join the group.

Normally, buying tickets from Moscow to St Petersburg is very routine. Express trains leave every twenty to thirty minutes. In those days you could even skip the ticket office, board the train, and arrange payment directly with the conductor. Our departure was a weekday – no holiday or weekend crowds – so we expected no trouble. However, to our amazement, not a single ticket on any train was available that day except for luxury accommodations costing 18,000 rubles per ticket, an astronomical price compared to 500 rubles for an ordinary ticket. It was either the expensive ticket or nothing.