2nd subgroup: these are those who, considering themselves Christians, sincerely believe that their supernatural abilities have been received by them from God. My personal experience shows that it is almost impossible to convince such people that their psychic abilities have nothing to do with God and, moreover, that their origin is undoubtedly demonic. Such "healers" sometimes diligently go to church, pray at home, observe some other church regulations, and even send their patients to be baptized or receive communion. At the same time, they naively believe that all this confirms and guarantees the divinity of the origin of their healing gift. However, it should be remembered that neither the reading of prayers nor any ritual actions is a guarantee that the person performing them is pleasing to God. Such a guarantee can be:

first, only a God-pleasing and, moreover, in the full sense ascetic life, a life in keeping all the Commandments of God, for God said: "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and thus teach men, shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:19);

secondly, living in full accord with the teaching of the Church, as Christ Himself testifies: "He who hears you (that is, the apostles and their disciples, the teachers of the Church. — Author.) He hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me; but he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me" (Luke 10:16).

None of the so-called "Orthodox healers" has the slightest relation to such a life, and the fact that they, in performing their manipulations, use the reading of Orthodox prayers, surrounding themselves with crosses, icons and candles, should not confuse and deceive us, because the prayers of such people are an abomination before God, as the Creator Himself says through the prophet Isaiah: "And when you stretch out your hands, I shut My eyes from you; and when ye multiply your supplications, I hear not" (Isaiah 1:15), and the Psalmist adds: "... let his prayer be for sin" (Psalm 108:7). As we can see, not every prayer is accepted by God.

I will give an example of how sometimes "supernatural abilities" can be instantly revealed in people, and how deftly demons know how to use almost universal (atheists did not work in vain!) spiritual illiteracy.

At the very beginning of "perestroika," a middle-aged woman from the Komi Republic came to me for confession, who about a year ago had visited a church for the first time in her life, where she had bought several icons and prayer books. At home, she hung the icons in the corner and was just about to pray, when suddenly her neighbors, an elderly couple, came to her. Seeing icons in the corner, they began to wonder: what is it? As the woman explained, no one from their village had ever been to the church, because the nearest one was at least three hundred kilometers away. She answered their questions as best she could and offered to pray together using the prayer book she had just bought. The neighbors stood next to her, and for the first time in her life she began to read prayers for him. The next day they came again and said that both of them had gone away from her pains after her prayers the day before: in her husband's ear,

and in the wife's lower back.

Of course, God's mercy is immeasurable. In a situation where the inhabitants of a remote village had no one to hear about God from, He could at some point send His help through a completely non-church woman in order to call people to Him. But the trouble is that after this incident, the villagers began to turn not to God, but to this woman, who became famous as a "healer" - the neighbors began to send all their acquaintances to her for help. And it did not even occur to her that the evil one could plot his intrigues here. In addition, she knew neither the Commandments of God, nor the essence of Christian teaching, nor the purpose of Christian life. Up to the age of 47, she lived the life of the most ordinary Soviet person, with all the features of his thinking, culture, worldview and way of life. It is quite understandable that over the years this woman has accumulated many sins, including mortal ones, but she never repented of them and did not even know about the need for confession, as well as many years of work to eradicate sinful habits and attachments. This helped the demons to convince the woman that it was she who was chosen by the Lord Himself to heal people through her. The idea that she was unworthy of this with all her sins did not even occur to her.

It should be noted that in our time demons act especially cunningly. They live in many, but not in all they manifest themselves explicitly, being content with imperceptible mental suggestions, with which they direct people to sin, slowly and gradually, year after year, taking possession of man's will, feelings, and thoughts.

In this case, seeing the woman's conversion to God, the demons were in a panic: their work was in danger. They were well aware that if the "patient" prayed and lived according to the Commandments, strengthened in her faith, she would eventually be able to free herself from their power. And in order to push her away from the path of salvation, they decided to use the old tried and tested technique - to make a "holy healer" out of her. However, the Lord did not leave her without admonition, giving her the opportunity to make a voluntary choice. She suddenly "accidentally" found herself in our church on the very day when, in a conversation before confession, I told about such tricks of demons. After the service, she came up to me and told me her case, trying to find out if her unexpected "abilities" belonged to the same series of demonic phenomena that I was talking about. This woman believed that the purity of her work was guaranteed by the fact that she did not read anything except prayers from the Orthodox prayer book and did not take any other actions. Naturally, she believed that she had received the power to heal from God, and unexpectedly and for free. It was not easy to talk to her. She really did not want to part with the role of a "healer" in order to turn into an ordinary, unremarkable woman again. It is not difficult to guess where this road will lead if she does not want to follow the advice to give up healing.

ON THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC

ABILITIES IN THE "UNCONSCIOUS"

SORCERERS"