Page 62 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

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

of maneuvers. These days I came home after midnight and in the early morning had to

be in the unit and after dinner again to mount guard. Normally, an officer on duty has
his rest from eight o’clock in the morning to twelve o’clock. During inspections it was
not possible to rest even in prescribed time.

After several duties of the like, one keeps himself from complete disconnection
only by the force of his will. When an officer finishes his duty he must give up his fire-
arms. According to the instruction, he must unload his pistol and do a control pressure
on the trigger, aiming the pistol at the floor or ceiling at angle of 45 degrees.

When I prepared my weapon for handing over, an officer distracted me with a
question. On answering his question, I went back to the interrupted business. As I had
in my head the picture of what I wanted to do before I had been distracted by the
question, I pulled the breech-block of the pistol, directed it to the floor, and, pressed the
trigger. There was a shot; a bullet rebounded from the floor and entered into the ceiling.

A deathly silence set in amongst the staff. The frightened unit commander rushed out of
his office. He and many others thought at first that someone either shot someone else, or
committed suicide.

Puzzled I looked at my pistol and could not understand how a cartridge could
appear in the barrel, when I pulled out the magazine! An uncompleted action appeared
completed in my head. This time everything ended quite well, no one suffered—only the
officer on duty was frightened a lot, although the bullet hit the floor between my feet. I
was told off for inaccurate weapon handling and the issue was settled. I was lucky that
even being distracted I done the check-up of my weapon according to the instructions,
otherwise, a stray bullet could easily have hit someone in a room full of people...

In May I got promoted to the next military rank and became a senior lieutenant.

The unit commander and the officer from the staff of the military district asked me to
stay in the army. I promised to think about it, but it was rather a manifestation of courtesy
than the inner hesitation of my soul. In due time, I was transferred to the reserve and left
for Kharkov.

7. Miracles go on

Oddly enough, it was this unexpected turn of fate, my service in the army instead
of my work in a research institute, which allowed me an enormous break-through in my
comprehension of both nature and my abilities. Who knows, what would have happened
with all this, if by will of fate or more precisely, my dean’s, I did not get to wear officers’
shoulder straps. Would I ever have “found” a person quite as sensitive to my influence

as my landlady?! Maybe I would, maybe not. Thanks to the fact that I found myself in
the army, I succeeded in finding methods of qualitatively changing the human brain,
creating new sense organs, which nature did not create, and many other things. Although
I had thought that my assignment to the armed forces would become the grave of my
scientific career, in fact, it was in the army where I began it. There I found the way to
true cognition of nature...

* * *
On my return to Kharkov, I accepted the offer of a person, who I knew before my
military service, and began to work in the department he headed; the department of the

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