VLADIMIR VASILIEV: Russia's Mind Warrior is Set to Hit the U.K. by Trevor Robinson COMBAT - March 2000 The two warriors faced each other on the battlefield, sword in hand, looking death in the face, time standing still. A mixture of blood, fear and adrenalin coursing through their veins and their heavy breathing the only sound. In the timing of a moment, the first warrior attacks. Swinging his hefty sword high over his head in a crescent arc aimed at the second warrior's wa rrior's head. I have him, the first warrior thinks, rushing forwards, a split second away from total victory. The second warrior's left hand waves horizontally to his left, it is a gentle yet deliberate act. The first warrior, with a mixture of disbelief and astonishment cuts clean through the air, and in the same timing the second warrior cuts clean through him. h im. As the stricken warrior lies dying on the battlefield, he wonders how he could have missed. He dies with that thought. The victorious warrior already knew the answer to that question, for he was a Master in The System and his awesome awe some skills with psychic energy, the highest state in martial arts technique, would be shrouded in secrecy and mystery and kept from the world for hundreds of years to come. A MARTIAL JOURNEY
Before I talk about Psychic Energy, Ene rgy, there are a few things I must cover co ver to clear the way, as this is a very provocative and esoteric subject. This topic is vast and also very complicated so I will endeavor to keep it simple. The Martial Arts and religious paths have gone hand-in-hand, the Chinese Arts with the Tao and Buddhism, the Japanese Japane se Arts with Zen, Shinto and Buddhist Buddh ist sects, the Christian Knights of the Temple and the Crusaders, even the Indian Thugees were from a Religious Order. There are far more than I can mention here, other than to note the fact that the martial arts have always had a Spiritual aspect in fact the core of all martial arts is religion. The real warrior has always historically worked on the body, mind and spirit and there has always been talk of the Path, the Way of the Warrior and enlightenment. With the training of the mind, body, and spirit, for the true martial artist, this is a road to personal perfection, a continuing expansion of awareness and freedom in all aspects of the practitioner's life. In perfecting oneself, one perfects technique. On the path in The System, the martial artist learns that technique is to be a natural reaction and not a learned response (through kata, etc.) and so by tempering the psychology (mind) and intuitive (spiritual) aspects, he is able to master master his technique (and vice versa). For those individuals who continue their training long enough and thoroughly enough, they will go beyond technique to the next development, which are the principles or the how of the technique.
When he understands the principles, and there are around 30 principles in The System, there are no longer any techniques, only body movement --- the principles and natural relaxed body reactions that help the body think and provide all that is needed in spontaneous reaction to any dangerous threat. At this stage, it helps if you have been involved in martial art that uses natural relaxed body movement based on human, not pretended animal movements. After all, a rabbit does not make a good wolf! At this higher development, the mind and body are now freed from technique (if you're thinking you are in a state of then or activity). When freed, the mind stops thinking (nonintrospection of action). The mind is in a state o f now; and the body reacts in an interactive spontaneous relationship with the opponent, which is physical and psychological, and ultimately psychic as well. The Russian System dictates that only the natural response of the body will provide a proper defense. This is especially true when you are confronted with multiple attackers. As the martial artist moves towards the spiritual realm, the difference in the relationship between the defender and attacker fade, and the fight becomes merely a moving relationship of energy. The defender does not stop the attacker's movements, but lets them continue in a new direction using his strength with him, not against him. Through this, the attacker provides the defender with the tools to bring about the aggressor's defeat. The aggressor truly defeats himself through his own actions. The defender steals from his attacker's movements to the extent that every move the opponent makes is a mistake and a flawed action. To accomplish this, the defender must always go along with the attacker's movement, as I said before, it is an interactive spontaneous relationship and that means the opponent also reacts to what the defender is doing! Take note: you have to be in a constant continuous relationship with him in rapport to realize this. We are a lways in a relationship with our environment. If you disregard this, you will pay the consequences. The attacker must believe he is winning right up to the moment of his defeat (or he will change his movement). To accomplish this, the defender must become completely selfless or devoid of introspection, only then is he able to understand that it is not what the defender thinks he must do that is important, but the importance lies in wha t the attacker is doing moment by moment. And so the defender's movements (techniques) are a direct reaction to the attacker's movements and not the defender's idea of what he thinks he will do to the attacker. This principle applies even if the defender is attacking! At this level you are now working with timing, space, and energy. At this level, there is no such thing as conflict. You are able to step inside the fight itself and control the opponent in a safe space and the opponent's movements are no more than an energy influx. Of course you can explore all these levels as you could explore a multi-level building, you could practice Psychic Energy before you perfect your fighting maneuvers and you could understand it well, but it would be of little of no practical use to you without understanding all the levels completely. Now, I will cover the highest level.
PSYCHIC ENERGY
Thoughts are things. Where thought goes, so goes energy. The concepts of Ki (Japanese), Chi or Qi (Chinese), Prana (Indian) and all its other names the world over is woven so deeply into the tapestry of world culture, mystery and legend, that only the most myopic of people would think this energy did not exist. The consequences of their belief being overturned are huge. It would mean that the body does not end at the skin and all the implications of that. So, many people do not question that conviction. It would mean that the human aura, mesmerism, the laying on of hands and magic using the power of though-directed energy (witchcraft) is real, and that is too much for people in this over-technical world we live in. You see: if this energy is real what else is? Through training in the martial arts, we begin to pay more attention to aspects of experience that might have seemed peripheral, if not hard to believe before. We begin to start noticing and giving more credence to experiences such as meeting someone for the first time and instantly liking them or disliking them without knowing anything about them. We like their vibes, we can tell if someone is staring at us and when we look up (what makes you look?) we feel we know what they are feeling or that something is going to happen, the phone rings and we know who it is before we answer it. As we allow ourselves to develop new sensitivities, we begin to v iew the world quite differently. Dr. Victor Inyushin at Kazakh University in Russia has done extensive research with the human energy field since the 1950s. Using the results of these experiments, he sugg ests the existence of bioplasmic energy field composed of ions, free protons and free electrons. Since this is a state distinct from the four known states of matter solid, liquid, gases and plasma (by the way Liquid Crystal Diodes fall into this new category a s they are neither solid nor liquid), Inyushin suggests that the bioplasmic energy field is a fifth state of matter. His observations showed the bioplasmic particles are constantly renewed by chemical processes in the cells and are in constant motion. There appears to be a balance of positive and negative particles within the bioplasma that is relatively stable. If there is a severe shift in this balance, the health of the organism is affected. In spite of the normal stability of bioplasma, Inyushin has found that a significant amount of this energy is radiated into space. Streams of bioplasmic particles that have broken away from the organism can be measured moving through the air. It is these streams or strings of the unseen human form that the practitioner of The System manipulates and that in turn manipulates the opponent. Thus, we have plunged into a world of life energy fields and bioplasmic forms moving about and streaming off the body. If we look into the literature, this is not new. People have known about this phenomenon since the dawn of time. It is just that in our time, the phenomenon is being rediscovered. As this knowledge has developed and Newtonian physics has given way to relativity, electromagnetic and particle theories, we are more and more able to see connections between scientific objective descriptions of our world and the world of subjective human experience. So what does this energy feel like? Well, the best description I've been given so far was from my three and a half year old son, Dominic, who said it felt like fluff when I was, err,
testing it on him, he was giggling and being pushed back against a wall with the pressure. Personally, I don't expect anyone to just believe in this energy until they have experienced it for themselves, and everyone has a certain degree of ability with this energy. My first real experience of this energy was in 1995 when I took my 5-day black belt test in Ninjitsu. This test involved avoiding a sword strike to the top of my head while I was kneeling, with my eyes closed, and facing away from my Japanese Grandmaster, whose eyes were also closed (probably, so he didn't stop if I didn't move!) As he brought down the sword to my head, intending to kill me with it (mentally, I hope?), the object of the test was to see if you can pick up the force of the killer's intention. I passed the first time, thank God, there is no trick. If you wait to hear the sword it would have already hit you, your body feels the attacker's intention and your body throw you out of harm's way. Why this does not work for everybody is because people consciously override the body's reaction to escape until they reach a certain level. You must get rid of the 'self' (i.e. activity/introspection) so the body can hear the threat. Since the test and especially since practicing The System, I have gained new and greater abilities, such as making people miss punches, k icks and grabs, as well as making them fall over in mid-attack (all with no physical contact!), but what I can do pales in comparison to what I've seen in the outstanding abilities of the masters in the Russian Martial Art of The System. TRAINING IN PSYCHIC ENERGY
Vladimir Vasiliev is a Master in The System and he has an outstanding command of its use. Though he is so humble, I'm sure he would be the first to deny it! What I will relay now is on his personal account of the Psychic Training he received while he was with the Special Operations unit in Spetsnaz. In his own words: 'The goal of the training was to make you multi-functional. You were to be able to work effectively in any kind of situation and never fear it. Perhaps more importantly, you were expected to learn how to be creative and act spontaneously. Divergent thinking, being able to come up with unconventional and unusual responses and decisions in different situations was an absolute necessity. You had to be totally adaptable to survive in the unit. The key to this adaptability was the Psychic Training you received. You were expected to go well beyond the mere physical and psychological mastery to a point where intuition and that sixth sense, that we all have but seldom use, became a part of your daily life. Awareness, or tapping into your sixth sense, was a focus for many of the exercises. Training classes could run for five hours and in some, you'd be blindfolded for the entire time. You'd have to follow what was going on, do your exercises and come to an understanding of the principles the instructor was teaching without the use of sight. While sparring, the instructor would also walk around the class looking for trainees who weren't paying attention to the total environment they were working in. If he thought you weren't aware of his presence, he'd hit you with a stick over the head, this taught the trainee very quickly to be aware of where everyone was at all times.
At other times, we were brought up into pitch-black rooms and had to guess how many people were in it, if any. We'd also be blindfolded and have to identify colors just by touching colored blocks of paper. Again, awareness was to extend far beyond the normal five senses into the area of the psychic. Some instructors who were skilled at passing psychic en ergy would take a few glasses of water and charge them with energy. This was a charge grounded in a psychic form of energy. It was much like touch healing. They'd concentrate on the water and send energy into it through their fingers without touching it. The trainee would then have to come into the room and tell the instructor which classes had been charged with the energy. The purpose behind this exercise was to teach the trainee how, on a mission, to tell if their drink was poisoned. Poison has a much stronger energy than regular water and that energy is discernible to those who have learned to access and use their psychic abilities. Before sleep, we were also taught to picture everything around us. We became completely aware of how a room looked, sounded and smelled. We even became aware of a tactile, or touch perceptions. We put all this information into a mental picture and fell asleep. If anything at all changed in the room while you were sleeping, you were to awaken immediately and respond to any situation. The trainer would change something in the environment, sometimes even slightly, and we'd have to wake up or answer for it with our superiors. After much practice, we learned how to do this. We were also taught to sleep with our feet outside our blanket or bag. That way, if some threat presented itself we'd be able to get up immediately to respond. As above, I still sleep this way. My feet are never covered at night. Eventually, you came to understand and respect the extent of your lethal powers and learned to use them only when necessary or in pursuit of the necessary military goal. There is a strong moral side to the Russian Martial Art, as there is in many of the other martial arts around the world. To become a bully or use your powers in pursuit of in connection with evil, would be a disgrace, totally out of character for the warrior and would ultimately weaken the inner power. So there you have it an introduction to psychic energy. In my next article for Combat, I will relay more on Vladimir's physical and mental training in Spetsnaz, his philosophy of life, and more interesting aspects of the Russian Martial Art of The System. If you would like to see the methods of psychic energy in action for yourself as well as other aspects of The System, then you can find Vladimir Vasiliev's videos advertised elsewhere in this issue of Combat. For continuous training and seminars you can train with Trevor Robinson as I am the sole official Systema instructor for this country under Vladimir Vasiliev, please send a S.A.E. to; T. Robinson, 53 Longway, Barrow-inFurness, Cumbria, LA13 0DP or call 01229 430529 for training times of visit our websites at: www.russianmartialart.com (Vladimir's) or www.russianmartialartuk.freehosting.net (for my website).
