Page 19 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

But for some reason I did not fall; the law of gravity did not apply to me, which I

could not understand. I kept expecting some “nasty trick”, but nothing happened. I
“floated” in the air as if it were a dense substance. This feeling was absolutely incredible.
My whole essence was filled with unbelievable delight and something in my breast
continued to push me upwards. I ascended above houses, sky-rocketing higher and
higher, all the time feeling this force impelling me higher.

The surface of the earth moved away; buildings looked like toy cottages peeping
out through the gaps between the clouds. And all the time there was a question in my
consciousness—how long would it last and wouldn’t I fall down on our sinful earth, as
had happened before to those born without wings? When I awoke in the morning in my
bed, I did not understand what had happened. What a strange “dream” I had had, so
strange, that I could not even determine what was dream and what was reality. The
answer remained a deep dark secret for me. The clue came from a source that hadn’t
even occurred to me.

Sometime thereafter, my mother and I had occasion to visit Moscow and return

home by air. Our scheduled landing was at Mineralnye Vody Airport above the district
where my family had lived since 1967. The planes landing there always passed over
houses, including ours. We had be-come used to the sounds of landing planes and no
one paid attention to them.

In July of 1972 I had my first opportunity to observe the earth from the porthole of
an air-plane. I had a window seat on the starboard of the plane. My nose was absolutely
“glued” to the plexiglass porthole. As the ground came slowly into view I suddenly saw
our house in the gaps be-tween the clouds, and something unbelievable happened. The
houses looked exactly as they did in my “dream”! I was shocked, when I realized this.
However, my response was quite natural—any other reaction would have been
impossible. I had unexpectedly gotten a real-life confirmation of what had happened in

my “dream”, no matter how strange it was.

There were a lot of “fortuities” in my life. However, when there are too many of
them, one cannot help wondering—are they really fortuities? Did it have to happen that
my father was given a flat in the town of Mineralnye Vody? He could have gotten it in
any other city. My father did not want to move anywhere from Kislovodsk. He was born
there, his children were born there, all his friends lived there and my brother attended
school there. Not to mention that Kislovodsk was a wonderful city located in one of the
most beautiful corners of the Northern Caucasus.

And once we were there, he had no choice. In the foreseeable future, the building
company, where he worked, did not plan to erect any more dwellings in Kislovodsk.
And to live in those conditions that we endured in our first Kislovodsk dwelling was
simply unthinkable, so my father consented to move to another town in the region after
discussing it with the whole family.

I still remember how all our things were loaded onto an open truck. We all sat down
on bundles and suitcases and went to the new place. A May breeze blew in our faces.
The truck rushed with a “mad” speed (as it seemed to us then). For us children, this trip
was a real adventure. Thus we appeared in the town of Mineralnye Vody. There was a
large airport, which was just outside of town. Due to the proximity of the Zmeika

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