About the Book
All my life I have yearned for spiritual experiences, to go beyond the narrow limits of my five senses. How does it feel to be enlightened? What lies in wait for me in the out-of-body dimensions? My business trip to India triggered events that enabled me to find answers to these questions. I wrote this book to share these experiences with you, dear readers, heart to heart, soul to soul. In my book I describe two consciousness and out-of-body exploration courses that I took at the Monroe Institute in the US and Spain. My experience of Afterlife and Beyond-the body-dimensions were life-changing. I also write about my visits to Auroville in South India, a unique community of about 2000 people from all over the world striving to live in the spirit of human unity. .......................................................................... Here is an editorial review of my book: A snow-filled childhood in Moscow, a life-changing experience in India, an atavistic connection with a guru in Germany, out-of-body explorations in Virginia, a discovery of the after-life in Spain, a momentous love story that starts in Cameroon and finds its way to a Sufi session in Geneva. These are some of the stations to which you will be transported in Dmitri Boulakovski's Spiritual Adventures of a Part-Time Yogi. Refreshingly sincere, incredibly uplifting and delightfully readable. You will relish in this true story of spiritual search and growth, told simply yet elegantly with humor and humility. Absolutely unputdownable. GCB. ........................................................................... You are welcome to read an excerpt from my book and decide if you wish to purchase it: Who Am I? As so many before me, I have often pondered the question "Who am I?" To me this was an existential rather than a philosophical matter. The answer came from a spiritual teacher I once conversed with over the phone. He asked me, "What do you see around you in your room?" "I see my bookshelves, my posters, the walls, the ceiling, my computer." "Splendid!" he remarked. "And now, close your eyes and tell me what you see." "Darkness," I replied. "Excellent!" His voice was almost ecstatic. "What is it that has not changed?" "I guess something that perceives both the room and the darkness," I uttered somewhat hesitantly. "Exactly! Awareness!" He exclaimed. "Awareness! That is what has not changed and therefore awareness is the real you!" During a workshop that I attended in Virginia at the Monroe Institute to explore various states of consciousness, I experienced, in a state of deep meditation, a complete dissolution of my body into a luminous light. Although all form vanished, I still retained the capacity to perceive the luminosity, the radiance and the bliss. I became pure consciousness, a minute spot of intense and overwhelming awareness of infinite joy and fulfillment. "That is who I really am," descended on me at that moment, "a spark of consciousness that knows no birth, no death, that may dwell in an earthly body able to explore physical dimensions or may exist intangibly beyond space and time." This led me to the next question, "What has brought this spark of consciousness here, on planet Earth, and why?" As I look back, I realize that, throughout my life, this question has been, consciously or unconsciously, the force that drives my spiritual quest. ......................................................................... I hope you will enjoy the rest of the book.
About the Author :
Dmitri Boulakovski lives in Switzerland, in a small village on the shores of Lake Geneva. Traveling the world as a conference interpreter he never missed an opportunity to explore the spiritual wealth of diverse cultures and traditions. .......................................................................... Here is an excerpt from his book describing his adolescence: Football took over my life, in fact became my life, the reference point for my relationships, friendships and plans for the future. It was at that point that my mother - an opera singer by training who had the angelic patience needed to teach me the art of playing the piano - put it to me in exasperation: "You barely ever come near the piano these days. You have to make up your mind, once and for all. Which is it going to be, the piano or football?" After all the effort that had gone into my piano lessons, she was sure I would opt for the piano; but it was bad timing. In a couple of days, I was to take part in the most important match of the season. After a short pause, and a long sigh, I expressed my preference for the art of the feet and not the hands. That came as a big shock for my Mom. She practically stopped talking to me. She felt betrayed, and I felt bad. It took months for the awkwardness between us to pass. I still played the piano every now and then, but it was more to please her than anything. Now, a few years later, things had changed. My footballing obsession had faded into the background. I had changed schools from one of the very worst in town to one of the very best, courtesy of my Mom. In my new school, I had a lot of catching up to do. I abandoned football, old habits and old friends. My brother was no longer home, my parents were at work and, my homework done, I needed to fill my life with something else. I took to reading. With the same passion I used to have for football, I now started devouring all the books I could lay my hands on in our home library. It was then that I rediscovered the piano. I would put my book aside, savoring for a minute or two the part I had just read, then touch the keyboard, play just one note or a chord, sharing with the silence of the room the mood the book had brought on: my sadness, my joy or my anguish. I would let the sound float out, softly bounce off the walls and drift slowly into the early darkness of a winter day beyond the window, then fade into the incessant cascade of snowflakes falling and covering the ground.
