Cosmologies of Suffering: Post Communist Transformation,Sacral Communication, and Healing, edited by Agita Lūse and

Imre Lázár

This book first published 2007 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British

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Copyright © 2007 by Agita Lūse and Imre Lázár and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the copyright owner.ISBN 1-84718-258-5; ISBN 13: 9781847182586

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CHAPTER THREE

DOWNLOADING COSMIC ENERGY:INTERSECTION OF FAITH-BASED AND HEALTH-CARE PRACTICES (THE NOVOSIBIRSK CASE)

TATIANA BARCHUNOVA

„Nun kann aber kein Volkbeschliessen, in seinen denGlauben betreffendenEinsichten (der Aufklaerung)niemals weiterfortzuschreiben, mithin auchsich in Ansehung desKirchenwesens nie zureformieren: weildies ist derMenschheit in seiner eigenenPerson, mithin dem hoechstenRecht desselben entgegen seinwuerde".

—Immanuel Kant. Die Metaphysik derSitten

The subject of this paper is the relationshipbetween current health care practices in Russia,and metaphysical ideas expressed in religious andparareligious doctrines. I am going to show that

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under post-socialism the attitude to human body,disease, and methods of coping with disease ischanging. There are three important things thatare worth mentioning in this context: (1) Thegrowth of the value of the human body and healthin Russia; (2) The awareness of health-care as thearea of individual agency; (3) the degradation ofthe system of state-sponsored health care:technologically advanced health-care services arebecoming commercialised and unaffordable to asubstantial contingent of the populace. Here, Iwill be dealing with the first two points.

In Russia the value of the human body andhealth has been traditionally low (Vishnevskii1998). Overcoming this attitude demands specialreassessment of an individual’s physical wellnessand emotional stability. One resource for thisreassessment is often found in religion. The moreso that religious experience is becoming anessential part of social practices, includingdiscursive practices. By religion here I do notmean only involvement in the dominant religiousinstitutions but also the phenomenon of diffusedreligiosity. In spite of the efforts ofinstitutionalized religions to oppose the truereligious experience to the sectarian escapism andmanipulation and project alarmist attitudes to the“alternative” forms of religious practices, thelatter occupy an important part in human livesintersecting with all kind of other practices:educational, medical, consumerist, cultural, etc.A good illustration of this diffused religiosityis the contents of the governmental radio-station“Radio Russia”. On the one hand the radio informsits listeners about the major Christian Orthodox

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holidays and arranges radio consultations withOrthodox priests. On the other hand, the Russianradio audience is exposed to a cycle of talks “TheUnknown Planet” dealing with all kind of esotericalknowledge I will be analysing below. Thus, onAugust 10, 2006 the presenter of the programquoted with a sympathy from a letter sent to theprogram: “All diseases are produced by the leakageof the pure energy…”. Also, every summer eveningof the year 2006 the audience was exposed to aseries of conversations with Moscowpsychotherapist Alexander Danilin called “Silverthreads” who was transferring animisticrevelations he received from Siberian woman Katyathat sounded to me very similar to the revelationsone of the heroes of the text below has receivedfrom a beautiful Siberian girl Anastasia.

Therefore, on the one hand we have to deal withalarmism related to cults and sects, and on theother hand we observe the normalisation of theesoteric practices and discourses, reinforced byglobalisation of religion. This situation isamazingly similar to what is happening in thesphere of drug consumption. The moral panicrelated to drug addiction goes hand in hand withglobalisation of drug production, consumption,discursive, and practical enculturation. Thus,what is considered to be a deviation is becoming acommon practice. The obvious systemic nature ofthese phenomena is a challenge to any researcherbecause of the inconsistency of natural const-raints of any individual research with itstemporal, territorial and methodological limita-tions.

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In my research I tried to face theselimitations and ideological debates by designing arelatively neutral concept that helped me to avoidthe controversies suggested by hot publicdiscussions of the dangers of sectarianism, but tolook at the actual practices.

The present paper is based on 26 in-depthinterviews with believers of various religiousaffiliations. Most of them were baptized into theOrthodox Christian Church. However, their questfor spiritual growth and self-cultivation is notconfined to the framework of the Orthodoxcommunity. They belong to a category of believerswhom I call nomadic believers. This category isclose to what is sometimes called Sheilaism –highly individualistic and non-clerical form ofreligious quests (Bellah 1986).

The interviewing was structured by the concept“faith-based communities of practice” I designedalong the lines of two researches: the research ofsocial capital presented in the book by RobertPutnam “Bowling Alone” (Putnam 2000), and theresearch by two Stanford anthropologists – JeanLave and Etienne Wenger (Lave and Wenger 1991;Wenger 1998). The questions I asked were aboutwhat my interviewees actually did in the frameworkof a particular community of practice, what theylearnt from this practice and how they justifiedthe meaning of what they were doing. Since Ialready used this model in my other empiricalresearch I am referring the reader elsewhere(Barchunova 2003).

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Religious landscape of Novosibirsk:Science and religion

When the problem of science and religion isbeing discussed the word “and” is usuallyunderstood as a disjunction: science and religionare being approached as two separate, often timesas inconsistent realms. Here, I am going to talkabout science as a kind of a religious endeavour.My point is that the perception of science as asort of a sacred activity under socialismfacilitated an openness to the religiousexperiences under transition. The outburst ofreligious activities in the 1990s – the so-calledspiritual revival of Russia – is usuallyattributed to the “spiritual vacuum” of theprevious decades. I will try to show that there ismore continuity than previously supposed betweenthe “spiritual condition” of the decades precedingthe transformation and spiritual quests of the1990s and on.

The case I am using to prove my thesis is thecity of Novosibirsk, the centre of the SiberianFederal Okrug (county). The population of thisindustrial centre is about one and a half million.The city came into being as part of the project ofthe Trans-Siberian railroad in the beginning ofthe 20th century, and from the very beginning itdeveloped as an administrative and technologicalunit. During World War II, as industrialenterprises and medical and artistic institutionswere being evacuated from the Western part of theUSSR, Novosibirsk massively increased itsintellectual and technical potential. Therefore,when in 1958 the Soviet government issued a decree

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for the creation of an academic centre inNovosibirsk, the local human resources were richenough to constitute the basis for the centre.Though most of the research institutes andengineering facilities of the Siberian Division ofthe Academy of Sciences of the USSR had beencreated in the 1960s and 1970s from scratch, asolid technical basis had already been establishedbefore that time.

Faith in ProgressThe religious mobilization of the 1990s is

often viewed as developing in a spiritual vacuumconstituted by the demise of the communistideology. The idea of a spiritual vacuum suggeststhat communism had an ideological monopoly, andthat a spiritual emptiness emerged at the momentof communism’s crisis. However, the situation wasmuch more complicated.

Communism as an ideology, as Michal Buchowski(Buchowski 2001) and many other writers haveargued, had usurped the cultural space ofreligion. It developed its own doctrines,prophets, cults, and rituals. The homogenizingatheistic propaganda, the physical destruction ofthe priesthood and sacred places, and thepersecution of believers reduced the social spaceand the significance of religious institutions perse.

However, this usurpation meant neither thedeath of the religious mind nor the unification ofbeliefs. The initial faith in a communist utopiaof the 1920s and 1930s (Hagemeister 1997), was bythe 1960s, substituted for an attitude that I call

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ironic belief. It was not just a double mind thatcombined scepticism towards political leaders (thecommunist “priests”), formal loyalties, andobservation of communist rituals such asdemonstrations and political meetings. Thepolitical irony (stiob) (Yurchak 2005: 265 ff) wasalso combined with a collective identity of thefirst, primary, and foremost socialist country inthe world.

The constituting element of the communistdoctrine was progressivism. Though juxtaposingthis doctrine with the deficiencies of the socialsafety system, including medical care, could onlyreinforce scepticism, there remained one aspect ofthe communist belief system that persisted. It wasbelief in science as a means of achievingprogress. Science was approached not only as aflawless instrument to solve any and all problemsas an area of disinterested service to the Truth.Novosibirsk is a perfect model to study the Sovietshrines of Knowledge and the project of what Icall the Soviet Enlightenment (Josephson 1997).Though one of the reasons for instituting theabove mentioned Novosibirsk Academic Centre was tooptimise the functioning of the Military complex,the official propaganda promoted the glorificationof intellectual ideals, the power of knowledge,and the heroism of those who abandoned the comfortof Moscow and Leningrad for freedom of life andthought in Siberia. Novosibirsk Akademgorodokbecame a Mecca for journalists who created animage of an omniscient and omnipotent scientistwho holds the future of humanity in his hands.

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However, the professional devotion ofscientists and reverence for learned people havenot been only the ideological constructs but alsoconstituted an element of public feelings andattitudes. Scientists were perceived as people onwhom, according to one of my informants,“everything was founded and based”. These feelingswere represented in all kinds of public discourse:journalism, films, fiction. The notion of anomnipotent and omniscient Scientist was supportedby a special status of scientists in thedistribution system of the deficit economy. Theration1 in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok was much moregenerous than in the other regions of Novosibirskand other Siberian cities and was stratifiedaccording to academic degrees.

In exchange for this special status thegovernment demanded that five-year plans fordiscoveries and other scientific achievements befulfilled, along with complete devotion andideological loyalty. However, this “socialcontract” seemed to be more of a one-sided ratherthan two-sided agreement: the researchers did notalways observe it, since a liberated scientificmind was prone to develop a critical attitude to

1Notes? The ration system in the deficit economy of socialismmeant that most of the foodstuff such as meat, butter,oil, eggs, as well as consumer goods such as fabric,shoes, fur coats etc. were limited and available onlythrough distribution points that sometimes were calledby euphemism "department of orders" (stol zakazov).

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the dominant ideology and result in non-communistbeliefs.

Novosibirsk Academic Centre became renowned notonly for scientific discoveries but also fordissident actions and non/anti-communist beliefs.The influential alternatives to the dominantideology were nationalistic “Memory” movement, andtheosophy (Nikolai Rerikh /Nikolas Roerich, ElenaRerikh/ Helena Roerich, Elena Blavatskaia/ HelenaBlavatsky) which, among Novosibirsk followers, isnormally called “Live Ethic”. Novosibirsk has oneof the biggest collections of Rerikh/ Roerich’spaintings. This exhibit stimulates interest in theLive Ethic and is the subject of arguments betweenthe state-sponsored Art Gallery and the Rerikh/Roerich Society.

Thus, when freedom of conscience was introducedduring perestroika, the spiritual soil had alreadybeen fertilized by quests for the meaning of lifeby those who had not been satisfied by theframework set by the official ideology and hadbeen looking for alternative approaches.

Official approach to health care andalternative practices

Under socialism, official medical doctrine wasbased on a scientistic attitude to the human body(Vishnevskii 1998: 112 ff). According to thisdoctrine the proper balance of labour and rest, aswell as the consumption of essential provisionsand vitamins, guarantees perfect health (see, forinstance: Lukyanov 1954). The major instrument forcoping with disease is medication and, in an

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emergency, intensive medical treatment or surgeryin a hospital. However, in many cases thispositivistic approach did not work, and patientswere compelled to look for alternative medicalhelp or to apply “traditional” (popular) medicalmeans such as herbal therapy, using all kinds ofmanuals or following the advice of moreexperienced people. An important mechanism forfinding an alternative expert or means oftreatment was networking. The alternative expertsranged from “babka”, an aged female expert,without official professional training,specialized in certain types of disorders such ascongenital deficiencies, stammering etc., to amedical doctor who has elaborated his/her ownmethods of diagnostics and treatment of systemichealth disorders.

In Novosibirsk there were several informalmedical consultants who would be now called“healers”. They dealt with severe health disorderssuch as asthma, infertility, cardiovascular andimmune disorders, alcohol addictions etc. Theirapproaches to the human body were founded onalternative philosophies of life that prescribedascetic practices. The latter were not confined todiet and physical exercises, but includedmeditation and emotional self-control procedures.These philosophies emphasized a systemicconnection between body and soul and integrity ofhumanity and nature. They appealed to a spiritualand agential personality able to control herinstincts. They were inconsistent with theofficially accepted utilitarian and consumeristattitude launched by Nikita Krushchev (Reddaway,Glinski 2001: 262) that was centred on the concept

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of the ever growing needs of the populace andtheir satisfaction. The general doctrine of thesephilosophies, the so-called healthy style of life,was centred on self-constraint, sharing resources,fasting, and deliberate reduction of those foodelements that under the economy of shortage werethe object of rationing and, therefore, the symbolof prestige and status, such as caviar, butter,chocolate, meat and salami, imported tropicalfruit etc. Healthy food belonged to the “first-order” or natural, products: locally grownvegetables and berries, unleavened bread,unprocessed cereal etc. The consumption of thefirst-order products was said to refine the bodyfrom “dross”, to improve the sense of smell andother sensory mechanisms, to boost its motorfunctioning, and therefore, open the body“channels” for the influx of natural (cosmic)Energy and compensate for the lack of secondaryhard proteins such as cheese, cooked meat, caviar,and butter .

The emotional reward for the adepts of thesesystems of “natural health care” elaborated byKonstantin Buteiko, Irina Vasilieva (Novosibirsk),Galina Shatalova (Moscow) and others consisted inan ability to cope with one’s consumeristtemptations and to enjoy increased physicalabilities (tolerance to cold, thirst and hunger),sense of experiment, and sharing the effects ofliving according to a particular system withothers.

The writings elaborating these philosophieswere available mostly through Samizdat (“self-printing” or “self-publishing” in Russian), an

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underground system of production and distributionof written texts.

Post-socialist modifications: ReligiousConsumption versus Creativity

Perestroika provided the legal basis for theopen practice of all religions and unlocked theborders for new missionary groups from the Eastand West. The peak of their activities was between1991 and 1993. Mass conversions of this periodwere followed by a decline of religious activitiesdue to several reasons that are more or lesscommon in all post-socialist countries such as thedemobilization process typical for any socialmovements, the disappointments of neophytes, andthe enactment of stricter legal norms compared tothose enacted immediately after the collapse ofthe USSR (for a more detailed analysis see:Barchunova 2005).

This new religious freedom has producedmultifaceted effects. One of them is the emergenceof a market offering health-care programmesunderpinned by religious and ethical concepts.Here, I will discuss one of the issues related tothe emergence of this market: Is the consumptionof the products offered at this market consistentwith individual agency? Under socialism one couldaccess alternative health care manuals andtechniques either through Samizdat or through raredirect contacts between the creator of a healthcare system and his/her followers. Thus, one of myinterviewees, Tamara, aged 60, started practicingYoga in the 1970s, in order to improve her health.Her first introduction to Hatha Yoga was through a

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typed manuscript that included a description ofexercises that helped her to cope with herproblems. She got involved in the typing anddistribution of the manuscript. Then, when in thebeginning of the 1990s she joined the KrishnaConsciousness group the relevant literature wasavailable through the group’s leaders.

Now the situation is different. All kinds ofreligious books are printed by officiallyregistered publishers and sold through bookstoresand religious organizations. Many big bookstoresnow have special departments for religion, and so-called Esoterica. Meditative texts, prayers,sermons, exercise manuals, and cult music are alsoavailable on audio- and video-tapes, DVDs, andCDs, as well as through the Internet. The idiom“healthy way of life” that used to be a sloganrepresenting a popular stance has become the titleof a newspaper, on a par with another newspaperThe Planet Health.

Besides bookstores there is now anotherimportant intermediary between faith-based healersand believers. It is health-care entrepreneurship:clubs or associations some of which function ascommercial distribution chains. Besides books,they also sell amulets, “ecologically pure”products, and offer training in medical andeducational services. One of the most well-knownNovosibirsk chains of this kind is the companyEpam that produces medicine on the basis of honeyand other apian products.

Many organizations that offer “natural” medicalservices call themselves institutes, academies,and universities because the authority of Academic

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Knowledge is still very high. The SiberianHumanitarian and Ecological Institute is one ofthose. The Institute publishes a newspaper calledBe Healthy, Man! Its editorial2 entitled “Educationas a Health Protection” is written in the genre ofsermon:

“Health is integrity (Spirit, Soul, and Body),unity, consistency of all organs and little cellsof human, all his functions and functionalsystems. Health reveals itself in the correctbehaviour of man in real situations…”.

It is necessary to overcome one’s imperfections(pride, envy, grievances, fear, profit seeking,hypocrisy, laziness, etc.) and only after that onecan acquire stability and endurance, necessary forproblem solving.

Other articles of this newspaper suggest theacquisition of virtuous knowledge under theguidance of members of the Institute and itspartnership organizations. On par withadvertisement for educational and health-careprogrammes, the newspaper advertises a magic mineral(“shungit”, a kind of a black chalk) which isbeing excavated in the North-West of Russia andbrought to Novosibirsk by those involved in theInstitute. According to my informant, Julia, thesale of this magic mineral is arranged alongnetwork marketing model similar to the one whichHerbalife, Mary Kay, Oriflame and other companiesemploy for the distribution of their products.

In order to attract clients, the editors usecommon and familiar symbolic resources. The front

2 No. 2, 2003.

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page of the newspaper is decorated by areproduction of an icon of the Mother of God. Thenewspaper’s discourse represents a paradigmaticinstance of the current jargon for new faith-basedprojects. The key word here is energy (energiya orenergetika in Russian) which is ascribed thestatus of the Ultimate Reality:

“Our life depends on how we think… The energy ofthought is the most powerful among the energies ofthe world… The Integrated thought or the Soborny[Communal] Reason, embracing great masses of thepopulation, can produce miracles both in thesociety and Nature. By the power of thought, bythe power of our psychic energy— to establishLight on the Earth!”

The appeal to the Energy of the Cosmos, or tothe Cosmic Law is one of the key concepts appliedto justify the value of the body. Says myinterviewee Tamara:

“When Christ came to the Earth He brought us,people, not spirituality yet… but only ethics. Hesaid: don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commitadultery, love your neighbour. This is like amanual for a washing machine or a fridge: theprescriptions one has to observe for the washingmachine so that it will function. What Christ hasgiven us, is the rules about how to behave, inorder not to get sick. There exist cosmic laws. Wehave not created them, they exist independently ofus and if we don‘t know them we are not free fromresponsibility. When you break the cosmic law—youget sick… Let‘s take the rule „Love yourneighbour“. You should love. You should love your

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own body as well… you should not drink or smoke.Don‘t murder it! Don‘t murder your own body…”.

The lack of harmony between the Cosmic Energyand the human being, according to my interviewees,results in diseases. My interviewee Yuri, aged 36,who belongs to one of the religious communitiescategorized by the Orthodox Church as atotalitarian sect, argues:

“All energies which are around us emanate from theCreator. There is a Spirit of Life which fills us,it transfuses the Universe… It is the spirit oflife, emitted by the One…. There is anotherenergy, the Holy Spirit, which emanates from theHeavenly Father. It is the energy that nurturesthe human soul. Those are two different spiritsemanated from two different sources. And we arefilled with these vibrations… If we perceive themin a harmonious way and are being filled withthem, everything is fine. And if we don’t, then weget sick…”.

One of the most successful health-entrepreneurship projects in Novosibirsk is anetwork of clubs started by a businessman,Vladimir Megre. It is a network of clubs which arecalled, depending on their venue, either“Anastasia” or “Cedar”. This network also sellsall kinds of natural products such as amuletsproduced from Siberian cedar, souvenir boxes madeof birch bark, cedar nuts and oil, wooden panelsfor saunas, films and audio-tapes. Megre alsopromotes his business in the West (Austria,Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, andSwitzerland).3

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However, the first among best-selling items isa set of nine books written by Megre. The bookshave been translated into sixteen languages bynow.4 According to some estimates, his books havebeen published in several million copies. Topromote his products Megre hired artists of Saint-Petersburg theatres who arranged a road-show basedon the plot of the first two books. Theprotagonist of the books is Megre himself. Inthese books he describes his encounter with adeity embodied in a beautiful young woman Anas-tasia whom he met on one of his trade expeditionsto the North. Anastasia has exposed him to adoctrine of a healthy way of life. Its key conceptis the concept of an ancestral estate. A woman hasto conceive a child and give birth in herancestral estate. A child being born in adifferent environment is doomed to diseases.

Anastasia filled a gap in the pantheon ofpopular Russian deities. She is a patron ofgardeners, i. e. dacha owners.5 It is the gardenerswho are creating their own “space of love” (Megre2003: 65) that makes their life safe and

3 http://www.anastasia-de.com/Zedernprodukte/Zedernprodukte.htm4http://www.anastasia-de.com/Buecher_andere/Buecher_andere.htm; http://www.bunkahle.com/Anastasia5 Dacha (from the Russian verb “to give”) “is a Russianword for a house in the countryside. It is usuallyoccupied part of the year by its owner or rented out tourban residents as a summer retreat. Dachas are verycommon in Russia, and are also widespread in someformer republics of the Soviet Union. Anyone whooccupies a dacha for the time being is called dachnik” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha).

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independent. Only life in a garden (i.e., indacha) where human beings are self-sufficient canthey be both happy and healthy.

The idea of the patroness of dachniki (gardenowners) proved to be very fruitful. It has gaineda lot of followers not only in Novosibirsk, but inmany Russian cities and towns (Moscow, Kemerovo,Vladimir, Yaroslavl’, Irkutsk etc.). The reasonfor the success of his enterprise is that Megreused the essential concepts of the so-called NewAge religions (for instance, the concept ofEnergy) to justify the meaning of the urbangardening. Dacha for Russians has always been amultifunctional and polysemantic locus of leisure,romantic reunion with nature, intergenerationalcohesion, and household economy (Lovell 2003,Borchardt 2003,. In the 1990s dacha became one ofthe most essential survival kits. Since at thattime a substantial part of townsfolk got involvedinto gardening and for some of them it was acompletely novel experience, the blessing of theirnew sphere of agency by goddess Anastasia soundedtimely and relevant.6

Megre’s followers range from readers whosympathize with his ideas and follow one oranother of his recommendations, to the mostdevoted enthusiasts. Thus, one of his

6 The interest in Megre’s writings seems to bedeclining over the last two or three years. The reasonfor declining seems to be multiple: emergence of newsocial problems, of new prophets as well as thealarmist attitude of the Christian Orthodoxy towardsany alternative spiritual stances and practices. TheOrthodoxy included “Anastasia cult” into the list of“dangerous sects”.

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sympathizers, Lidia, aged 70, thinks that if onekeeps seeds in the mouth before one plants them inthe earth, the earth will absorb the diseases ofone’s body. Megre’s devotees in Novosibirsk haveunited around two projects. One of the projectsincludes a community of ancestral estates which isalready in the process of construction. The otherproject is in the process of constituting the coregroup and looking for the optimal location of acommunity of ancestral estates.

Now, the question arises: do the services offaith oriented health-care entrepreneurs undermineindividual agency and creativity? Yes, and no.Yes, because the advertisement of medicines,health-care services and devices suggest non-agential ways to become and remain healthy. No,because the experience of my intervieweestestifies to the opposite; that is, they keepexperimenting with their own bodies to test thespiritual doctrines and the veracity of theprophets through following their practicalprescriptions. When inconsistencies arise betweenthe doctrine and experience, they give up thedoctrine and proceed with a different faith systemand faith-based community. What the OrthodoxChurch experts identify as totalitarian sects canbe in fact forms of sociality for nomadic believerswho are open to all kind of new bodily and socialexperiences. My interviewee Tamara left KrishnaConsciousness since she had doubts if the strictvegetarianism it recommended was feasible in theSiberian climate and also because she felt thatgender inequality in the group was inconsistentwith her own notion of a religious community. My

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interviewee Leo who was oscillating betweenOrthodox Christianity and Judaism joined a Jewishcommunity as it was more dynamic, but finally gaveit up because he disagreed with the death penaltyfor adultery. My interviewee Galina along withbelonging to the Anastasia movement is alsoattending meditations of another faith-basedcommunity and is interested in all kinds of“esoteric” knowledge available on the market.

ConclusionI tried to address here only one aspect of the

problem of the relationship between health-careand faith: what are the reasons for thedesecularization of health-care in a big city witha huge academic stratum and all kind of modernfacilities for diagnostics and treatment ofvarious diseases? Why, instead of, or besides,going through tomo-, mammo- and x-graphicanalyses, educated people come together in ameditation “to download the Cosmic Energy” orattend classes at the School of Astrology? Why arethey not content with offering prayers under theguidance of a priest in a sanctified temple?

The explanans of this phenomenon covers a wholeset of presuppositions. Some of them I am takingfor granted. Those are: the crisis of the statesocial safety system, which makes most of thesefacilities unaffordable to the majority of thepopulace; the increased uncertainty of thetransition period that puts a regular citizen notin the modern situation of risk and trust, butback to the pre-modern condition based on danger,hope or confidence (Luhmann 1993: Seligman 1997:

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Ch. 1; Sztompka 1999: 24). Also there areepistemological reasons for the meta-physicalsearch: it is scientists who, more than anybodyelse, are familiar with the limits of science andtechnology, in spite of the ever growing knowledgeof the universe.

My own observations and research have revealedthat faith-based health-care practices range fromsmall personal efforts, to highly developedprojects such as construction of suburban housingwith all the infrastructure for independentliving. The most important aspect of thesepractices is that they cover the cognitive gap inthe instrumental knowledge of the connectionbetween the human soul and flesh that the newbelievers don’t find in the other forms ofcognition.

I have shown here that these faith-basedpractices are not emerging in a totally secularenvironment. For many generations, the Russianconceptualisation of life was based on faith inprogress. This faith has been resumed by newbelievers in the concept of individual progress.Their faith discourse is often isomorphic with itspractical embodiment in the rhetoric of individualspiritual progress specifically constituted by thereligious oppositions of darkness and light, eviland good, negative and positive, which is enactedthrough extreme bodily practices and experienceslike hot baths and cold (icy) showers; abstainingfrom eating and drinking; drinking urine; walkingbarefoot in winter etc. All of these oppositionsare subsumed as an opposition of natural (primary)versus artificial (secondary). The naturalizationof one’s lifestyle is supposed to provide an

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access to the Energy of the Cosmos and thus toprovide resistance to the evil effects ofcivilization. It is very doubtful that anyestablished church would support such a Gnostic-like theology and practice.

When I was finishing this paper my five-yearold friend and dacha neighbour stopped by and toldme: “Aunty Tanya, when people are born they are acrocodile, or a bear, or a monkey, or a wolf, or ahare, or a squirrel, or a lion. Can you, please,find in your computer who I was”. As her motherexplained to me, Katia was interested in the so-called Eastern calendar, according to which youare born in the year of a horse, or a dragon, or amouse etc. Katia’s question suggests that the“popular esoteric knowledge” she acquires throughTV seems to be one of the sources for her identityquests. It will be interesting to see if by thetime she develops health problems she will proceedwith “downloading energy” or similar practices.

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