How to Stop Fearing Everything Will Fall Apart Without You

In this conversation with Tatyana Tsvetkova, I look at why people try to control everything: their partner, children, work, home, health, money and other people’s actions. And where the boundary lies between healthy control and a state that drains energy, creates tension and destroys relationships.

Why do we control the people close to us? When does care turn into pressure and manipulation? Where does our responsibility end and another person’s begin? This episode will help you understand which zone of control you are in, what really lies behind your urge to check and hold on to everything, and how not to let unhealthy control destroy you and your relationships with other people.

Where the desire to control everything comes from

Why do people start controlling everything — in relationships, in the family, with children, at work, at home? As if something is bound to go wrong unless you check, remind, keep an eye on it. And this often creates inner tension and conflict with other people.

– The topic of control and the desire to control. Where is a sound understanding of what can be controlled in life? Can you control anything in life at all, and where is it pointless? Can you, should you switch control on? Where does this feeling even come from in a person? After all, there are people who don’t particularly strive to control anything, while others have, you know, some kind of god complex. They think that if they don’t keep it under control… It makes me laugh, of course, but I remember flying on a plane and feeling that if I turned off the screen showing the altitude, the plane would fall. I’m exaggerating, of course, but in essence that is exactly what any control is: nothing depends on you, yet you think you are managing something.

– About your plane: yesterday morning I’m sitting by the pool at the hotel, the children are swimming, Damian is swimming in the big pool. And I see that neither Polina nor I am really watching him. And you realize that when you control like this, you aren’t controlling anything: the probability of something happening is two minutes, and that’s it. You didn’t keep watch — or didn’t keep watch for a minute — and that’s it. And the only thing I told myself at that moment, when I thought about it, was: if it is meant to happen, it will happen.

In general, if a person is meant to die at a particular moment in time, that is when they will die. Or with some shift: if not in the pool, they’ll choke, or their heart will stop. However much you try to reason about it or keep watch. Although, of course, at that very same moment I thought: what thoughts, emotions, what state would arise in me if such a thing happened? Would I try to fix it — constantly reliving it inside myself and trying to undo the very fact of the event? The only question is how fully I could live through it with my whole system and stay in my own trust. With that thought I stopped controlling him again and went back to my work.

I think a very important construct in your question is the link with what I have just told you. When you look at any question of control — and control is very different — what is the control about?

• Control over a husband and wife.
• Control in situations like the one I described with the children — so that nothing happens to a child.
• Strict control so that your flower doesn’t die or your dog doesn’t pee.

What is the control about? You always need to look wider — to look at two sides for yourself. The first side: why did this state about Damian arise in me at that moment at all? And the second point is to look from the other side. Right now I’m talking about the first aspect. Why did such a state arise in me? What kind of energy is this? Why did it appear? Maybe I picked up the energy from my wife or from the parents nearby who are standing and watching?

Or the child called me — “something is about to happen to me” — drew attention to himself, and you gave him energy. That, by the way, is also an important construct. Or the whole space said: “Watch the child” — after all, this is water, there is some danger in it. But what danger? Once again: what danger? Then there is danger everywhere for me: on any balcony, on any step, with a hammer, with nails, with a cup, with a glass, with a dog — with anything. You have endless, absolutely endless danger: with people in the city, in the car when you’re driving — danger all the time. Where did this energy fly in from, what kind of energy is it at all?

And then become aware: how do you relate to this energy? Are you ready to live through it, ready to stay with it? And what is your system of reasoning on this subject at all? This is very important. When I started looking, I came to the reasoning that any person, if they are meant to die, will die. Because I know: this is the most important point of support when it comes to death or a problem with another person. It is the most important thing you can come into contact with.

A healthy understanding of control

I know that death is not subject to control. And when you know that death is not subject to control, you understand that any other situation you find yourself in is not subject to you either.

If a bird needs to poop on my head right now, it will. Can you protect yourself from it? In theory you can put an umbrella over yourself. Only this umbrella is here not because of the bird, but because of the sun that was just shining. You can protect yourself from some things, but if a bird is meant to poop on you, it will do so the moment you step out from under the umbrella.

That is how a person perceives the position of control from these two sides. And, I’ll draw your attention, it makes no difference whether you are the one controlling or some other person is doing the controlling. If I see that another person is controlling, I then look at why a certain energy arises in them. And I have the option to explain this to them or not to explain it — or to say something to them sharply and firmly.

For example, in August Polina’s mother is coming to visit us, and she controls the children strictly — what happens to them. She controls them so strictly that she is ready to cause harm to other people as long as the children are not having a bad time. Roughly speaking, she won’t feed you, but she will feed the children.

Or take Polina: other people necessarily matter to her. She will feed herself first, then think about me and feed me. That is different from her mother’s position, because her mother will feed the children first. And, by the way, she will feed both you and me — her family — at about the same time. She will most likely feed strangers at the same time too. That’s different. And Polina very often forgets about me or about the people close to her in the family, because it is very important to her what will happen to other people.

This doesn’t mean it’s bad or good. I’m giving examples of different, very different ways energy arises.

Everyday control and consideration for others

For example, I control the lights at home: I turn them off, turn them on. It matters to me. To my wife it doesn’t matter: she only turns them on, and turns them off when the light bothers her. So she doesn’t control it; she doesn’t have that system of control.

What’s more, I turn lights on and off — and if I come to your home, I’ll turn off the lights just the same. This is very important. Or, for example, closing the bathroom door matters to me everywhere. Is that control — closing the bathroom door? It is energy. I will definitely close the bathroom door both at my place and in someone else’s space — at your home too. Or, for example, I’m a man, and I make sure the toilet seat isn’t left up. There are men who don’t care, and that immediately shows how much a person… what, Tanya? Thinks about other people.

I’ll draw your attention: first — how much he thinks about other people. Second — whether he himself is in the zone of control of certain things. And notice here: is this control positive or negative?

Let’s look at the situation with the raised seat — this is very important. When a man in someone else’s home or in his own — if he doesn’t live alone, and even if he lives alone, that’s also a very interesting point — doesn’t lower the seat, it means he isn’t controlling the situation. Obviously. It’s unlikely a man needs the seat to be up — that he is actually controlling it so that it stays up. He isn’t controlling it. But he creates a problem for other people, because women use this space, and men too.

In my own space, at least, if a male guest comes to see me and the seat was down, he is obliged to put it back. Unless it’s an automatic toilet. There are people who pay no attention to this. Is this control positive or negative?

Control for others’ benefit or for your own sake

And here, Tanya, we come to the most important topic in looking at control. Why does a person want to control? Or why do they want there to be no control?

In this case I would like this person to have control, because it is right toward women and toward everything that happens in general. Usually, when one of the men at my home doesn’t close the bathroom door, I say: “It’s immediately clear that you either live alone or don’t think about the fact that there are women and children in this house.” It’s immediately clear. I say it openly and very easily to men, including my friends.

Of course, I won’t say this to a stranger who happened to drop by. I’ll probably go and lower everything completely, lid included — it will be an automatic action for me. I’m not supposed to hang up a sign — we’re not in a restaurant. I could hang up a sign asking people to close the toilet, because my dog likes to drink from the toilet bowl. Okay. But I’m not going to hang up another sign — saying that there are women here. And in this case I will either tell him to keep it under control or control it myself — for the good of other people.

That is control for the good of other people. And then there is the case when you tell someone: “Control this process,” and you want them to control this process for your own sake. For example, my wife doesn’t close the bathroom door, and I tell her: “Close the bathroom door.” I’m asking her to control a certain process, to keep an eye on it. She says: “Sasha, I can’t keep track of it, I can’t manage it.” I say: “Keep track of it.”

What does she have to do? She has to introduce a state of control into her system, Tanya. Introduce it and stay in that state of control — and she doesn’t want to do that. And she thinks I want to control her, whereas I want to stop controlling the bathroom. Look: I want to stop spending energy on controlling the bathroom. This is very important, because for me it is a huge loss of energy.

In exactly the same way, if my dog isn’t shut in his crate in the evening, I start to worry, and I have to control it. And my children worry about only one thing — that they are happy, and that’s it. They say: “So that the dog is happy,” but they worry about their own state. It makes no difference to them that their dad is controlling this space and worrying about it.

And why do I worry? Because he could chew up a twenty-thousand-dollar sofa. Which, in fact, he recently did — he took a bite out of the sofa. Or chew up something else, or hurt himself, or get up to something else. What’s more, if he isn’t kept in a certain space and doesn’t follow certain routines — if he starts lying on the sofa, for example — he’ll get used to a pattern of behavior that shouldn’t exist. There are certain rules, there simply are rules, especially for an animal. It’s an animal, not a human. People have rules, let alone animals.

Is this control right or wrong, Tanya? Not everyone in my family likes my control. Let me put it this way: half don’t like it, half don’t care. Some of the children don’t care. The other children and my wife don’t like it, and my wife will see this control as a negative thing.

Healthy and unhealthy control

And here, Tanya, it is always important to go into the situation and really figure it out. Who does what, and why, for what purpose? Why did this state of control arise? Why do you want a person to keep track of this, pay attention to it and understand what is going on? And why do you need to turn off the light? Why is it normal in the modern world to turn off the light in your own home and in someone else’s, if the light shouldn’t be on in that room?

Actually, Tanya, this is a healthy way of seeing things. Even if a person has a lot of money and doesn’t care what it costs. What’s more, you never know how another family feels about it and what might come of it. You might leave a light on, and then the husband will tell his wife: “Your friends are eating up our electricity here.” Or he’ll say we’re spending too much on electricity — and they’ll quarrel over it. So, first, you can bring a problem into someone else’s home. And second, we still live in a world where this is a cost. And learning not to spend without reason is important. And it is also attention: learning some basic, simple things in life. And noticing these things — simply noticing them.

Because turning off the light is no problem. You can’t name any upside to leaving it on, but there are downsides. So why not take this action? And in the same way you need to learn to notice and do other things. And these, Tanya, need to be controlled. You need to control your state in relation to another person. You need to control this: you’ve met another person — do you perceive them or not?

But believe me, I don’t know a single person in the world who has managed to put this under control. I know a great many people who would like to put it under control. I myself would like to be in that state one hundred percent of the time — and I can’t: to constantly perceive another person as an infinite spiritual system. Every time you see any person, to immediately perceive them only as a spiritual system. I see that at times I still perceive a person within a very narrow category of perception. Then I can expand, look in ranges and everything else. Of course, I perceive a great many people spiritually, but still not one hundred percent. It is impossible to put this into a state of control.

What energy drives your control

Why? Because we come to the most important thing: what energy drives this control? Does a person have the energy to perform certain actions or to understand cause-and-effect relationships?

Sometimes, when another person asks you to turn off the light, you need to turn it off not because you need to save the world’s energy, but simply because another person asked you to. Or you thought about other people: you came to their home and wondered whether you should take off your shoes or not. People often say that in American culture people don’t take off their shoes at home. I see that half of Americans don’t take off their shoes and half do. Half of Americans ask: “Should I keep my shoes on or take them off?” And there are people for whom this question doesn’t even arise.

That is a matter of having certain knowledge. Clearly, it’s not a question of energy but of having certain knowledge and perception. But in exactly the same way, there is also having a certain energy for the very ability to control something.

That’s why the energy to control something arose in the person. For example, to endlessly control a child’s health or endlessly control a wife. Or something else.

When care becomes manipulation and control

– And what if a person has an endless need to control their wife or husband: where they are, who they talk to, how they talk? You say — care about the other person. For example, constantly reporting where you are, how you communicate, or sometimes not talking to certain people in order to spare your wife or husband.

– Look: it is one thing to spare someone and bring good, and quite another when you don’t communicate because it is manipulation. Or you don’t tell the truth because it is manipulation. In most such stories that I know, it becomes manipulation. You don’t tell the other person because you understand that certain circumstances will arise. And this is a question not of care, but of saving yourself from that very same person — from that same wife or that same husband. Simply saving yourself: I won’t talk to the other person because I don’t want to get this whole set of things from my wife or my husband afterward.

– And is that actually good for the other person?

– It isn’t good. And it isn’t good for you either, because you are manipulating. Look, an important point: sometimes you may, for example, not talk to someone. Let’s imagine a situation: your husband was controlling you in something, and you didn’t talk to certain people so as not to harm your husband or so that he wouldn’t ask anything. In essence, you’ll tell yourself: “Actually I’m doing this so as not to cause harm to myself personally.”

As soon as this arises, it is ego, and in this ego the fault is one hundred percent yours. The husband has no part in it at all.

I’ll draw your attention: the husband has no part in it. Karmically he doesn’t suffer from it at all, because this is exclusively your problem. This is a very important point; it is guaranteed to be so.

Here the question arises: what to do about it? And there are different sides here. There is the side when you truly act for the other person, out of love for them — you need to understand this: “This time I won’t meet these people, really out of respect for the other person.” And there is the case when you see: oops, this is manipulation. I just don’t want to face this tonight, spend an hour and a half sorting out these debates, or suffer because of it later, or suffer somewhere else. Oops, this is manipulation.

And then you start looking: what would be honest to do in relation to life in general? And honest does not mean rescuing the other person and playing along with them. Not at all. If there are tyrants on the other side, if someone is living in hell — a tyrant wife, for example, or a tyrant employer — that doesn’t mean you have to play along with that tyrant. It doesn’t mean you have to stay with them.

And conversely: when we say that another person is violating my own freedom, intruding on me — where is the boundary of this control, they have no right to do this — then this concern for one’s freedom, concern for one’s freedom in general, is basically ego, if you look at it. And probably there is no need to look at it from another angle. From the outset it needs to be looked at and studied as ego.

Indeed, there are moments when the impact, the influence of other people is so strong that it shuts you off from perception and thereby deprives you of free action. But the basic freedom a person talks about is ego. Because, in essence, for a person the existence of cause-and-effect relationships, the existence of the world’s karma, the existence of heredity, the existence of the physical body’s limitations — that is already a lack of freedom. People have been socially conditioned to feel precisely these things as a lack of freedom.

If a person says they don’t want to live by the laws of the Universe, that on the whole they don’t want to live by the principles of karma, that it makes no difference to them what happened before, and they live only within ten years of this life, or, doing bad things, says: “No big deal, I gave someone some money,” and they say: “You are intruding on my freedom by creating certain causes and effects for me,” — that is a big mistake. People break even ordinary laws — very clear, very simple ones that someone somewhere created and wrote down: don’t litter, don’t steal. These are simple, very understandable things.

And for a person to truly understand what freedom is, at the very least they must stop fighting karmic causes and effects. At the very least — be aware of them, in order to reason about this question at all.

But we live in a social society. For example, your employer does certain things, and you are obliged to work there: you have no other chances, you are feeding your whole family. Or you live in a country that has certain laws you disagree with — laws that are not exactly democratic. You hardly have to go out and argue with them in the name of truth. There are things where you have the right to be in a state that someone would call manipulation, but it is not manipulation, and you will never answer for it.

But here it is very important, Tanya, not to fall into this — you understand? Is this genuine manipulation? Or legitimate, socially legitimate? Or is it manipulation because I simply don’t want to face this? Of course, all such situations need to be examined, or at least acknowledged, with an adequate understanding of why I personally act this way.

And there is a system where you need to come and say: “No, I am going to meet these people, because they are my people and I like them.”

For example, my wife doesn’t like it when I vacation alone. She has roughly one position: first, everyone together, everyone together with the children. Then maybe the two of us, if it works out. But basically — everyone together. And this is a constant trigger for her. No other combinations exist.

Why we are afraid to give someone a choice

For example, she herself doesn’t want to go anywhere alone, to vacation — she has never once in her life asked for it. She doesn’t vacation anywhere with her friends, doesn’t go away somewhere for a week with a girlfriend. Has she ever gone away somewhere with you for a week? Have you heard such suggestions from her?

– No. And actually, I’m sure that quite possibly she would worry the whole week and wouldn’t enjoy the trip.

– If she suggested it to you, you might even consider it?

– Yes, gladly. I’d say: “Let’s go somewhere for two days.”

– And it’s interesting that none of you has ever suggested this to her.

– It never even occurred to me.

– I asked our friend Anya Gurina: “Anya, have you ever suggested it to Polina? You are so easygoing, you meet up with all your girlfriends. Why have you, being so great, never once suggested that Polina do this? If she can’t do it herself, why don’t you suggest it to her? Why? If you suggest it and insist, she’ll agree, I just know it.” — “Yes, but I just don’t know whether she would like it afterward.”

It’s amazing how you all simply tremble before her. Oh my God! Can you imagine how much her spiritual being constrains things? You can’t approach her with this question, you don’t even tempt your fate, you don’t want to face it. And what are you afraid of facing?

You are afraid of facing responsibility — as if, by suggesting it, you take responsibility upon yourself and will have to answer for all the consequences that befall her.

Although in fact, if you are afraid of facing the consequences, that is already manipulation on your part. Because the only thing that exists here is that she is responsible for herself. She is an adult.

Of course, if she decided to go somewhere with you, that is her business, not yours. That is exactly why I easily suggest different actions to all kinds of people, understanding certain consequences on both sides. I suggest completely different actions, simply across broad ranges, because I know: this is the other person’s responsibility, it is their responsibility. What’s more, I will explain to everyone very easily, broadly, reasonably, whose responsibility is whose, and will try to leave it with them quickly, so that there is no dependence either on me or of me on anyone.

I have always said: my spiritual being cannot be dependent on anyone, and that is an enormous good. Therefore it doesn’t create dependencies further either: I don’t create dependence on myself.

So, my wife doesn’t consider vacationing alone for herself, and my vacationing alone provokes a certain negative reaction in her. Is that a state of control, Tanya? Of course, it is control over another person. What’s more, I’m afraid to tell her about it, afraid to talk about it. Sometimes I have to invent things, make things up. We have been married for a long time, and for many years I would periodically tell her: “I also have a very important meeting or event there.” I had to bring someone else in. I had to explain why I simply needed to go to Italy. That is manipulation. Why did I need that?

Someone will say that this is normal: a man explains things to a woman and so on. Wait a second. Hundreds or thousands of events happen in my life every day, and for some reason nine hundred and ninety-nine of them — ninety-nine percent of all events — don’t interest her. And they are often far more important than my trip to another country. Let’s be honest: they simply don’t interest her. She isn’t even interested in who sits in my meetings and what kind of people they are. And I interact with an incredible number of people. Clearly my trip to some other country brings ab-so-lute-ly nothing.

And here the next story comes up. It is always important to look further: why does this arise in a person? Maybe the person would also like to go like that, but wouldn’t want to give the other person the opportunity to do it. Maybe the person would also like to experience that state, but can’t allow themselves to live it. Many people can’t allow themselves to live it. They protest.

I remember buying a Russian wolfhound — my mother is going to get it in this video again. I remember where it was: I’m driving to Los Altos and telling my mom: “Mom, we’ve decided to buy a dog, a Russian wolfhound.” She goes: “Are you out of your mind? God forbid! Do you even know what you are doing?” And so on. Because she can’t allow herself to do it. I told her: “Stop! We’re not discussing the dog anymore. You are absolutely forbidden to mention any difficulty about dogs to me in our conversations.”

This dog hasn’t caused me any dif-fi-cul-ties at all. And this dog is definitely easier than organizing this shoot. Everyone thinks it’s some trifle — my mother and my wife are hardly interested in how to organize a shoot like this. You simply can’t see the whole backstage here: how to organize the process itself, then upload everything to the editors, publish it, do everything completely. They can’t even imagine it — or they pretend they don’t understand what it is. But a dog they understand a little, and that’s why the dog causes difficulties.

You’ll agree, Tanya, if I bought chickens, you’d laugh: “Sasha bought ten chickens.” Or even ten sheep. If Volchek bought ten sheep, for him it’s obviously like having a coffee. Just some very simple, easy, elementary action, because there are a huge number of such actions.

But some actions of another person are more than people can cope with, and this state of control is triggered in them. And that’s why my mother has the right to express her indignation to me. That is control. Control over what? Over the space, over a feeling, over me or over something else? Although what influence does my mother have on me? And if you look at our social life, she will say: “Sasha, where am I controlling you? You’re over there and I’m over here.”

How to work with control

But still, what is it? What can it be called? So, Tanya, when this arises in a family between a man and a woman, when it arises with children, it is very important first of all to pay attention to yourself — or to the child who has something going on. What kind of energy is this really?

Freedom vs. control: where is the boundary?

There is a very famous saying: a person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins. It sounds wise, philosophically correct. But if you look and understand it for real, you see a very big mistake and inconsistencies in it.

When we talk about real freedom, about your real freedom, it is important to understand: when you act from a state of freedom, you set an impact in motion, including on other people. Is your freedom capable of changing another person’s life? Is your free action capable of affecting other people’s lives, their path, their karmic causes and effects? That is the question you need to work on.

Not this: I live in my freedom, and if I don’t touch anyone, everything is fine. “I don’t touch anyone” is a kind of abstraction: how do you define it, how do you count it?

So when we talk about the situation of controlling other people — that other people need to be controlled — some say: without touching the other person’s freedom, without influencing the other person. This is a big question that every person should study daily.

Yesterday we were driving in the car, and my daughter started shouting right at me: “What, I can’t be emotional?” I told her: “You can be emotional, but you must remember that there is another person, and your emotions are not an excuse. And you can’t end a conversation just because you started crying. And actually, you are crying because you feel sorry for yourself.”

One hundred percent of tears in the world are self-pity. Well, ninety-nine. The “I” has narrowed the astral body — and that’s it. Tears are self-pity, the underdevelopment of your spiritual system, of the “I” and the astral body. That’s all! I’m not talking now about tears when someone has driven a knife into your leg — there’s nothing to discuss there. This is simply self-pity that has arisen inside.

I understand: she’s a child. I understand her state, I understand her psychological profile, I understand how our spiritual systems interact, I understand all the psychophysics. What’s more, I understand that her spiritual being is a developed spiritual system, and not an eleven-year-old girl, Vita Volchek, who is sharply shouting at me from behind. I see what energy she is transmitting. I simply threw this energy somewhere else so as not to transmit it back to her. Because I can turn this energy back on her, and she will feel bad, she will get sick. Why would I do that? What’s more, I’m her dad, I have an interest in this not happening. So I went on behaving very calmly.

Then my wife joins in, in the car, and says: “Stop picking on her already.” And off it went — a clash of titans, a clash of everything: the children and everything else.

What genuine, healthy control means

Tanya, I’ll draw your attention: in this kind of control the most important thing is to control the situation. And this is called natural, real control. And now you and I move on to what real control is.

Real human control of truth is when you are able to perceive absolutely everything.

When you know that it will rain in ten minutes, and you say: “Sasha, listen, it’s going to rain, it’s time for us to go.” Is that control? No, Tanya, that is real consciousness. The word “control” is close to it. It is good control, Tanya — incredibly great, cool, super cool control. When you feel the space and feel: that’s enough now, the energy is about to run out, now something needs to change. That is what seeing the space is.

This morning I led the Life group: I led a meditation, sat down — and, can you imagine, I couldn’t collect myself, couldn’t say a word. A huge flow of energy was simply moving. I had no tongue. I thought: what is happening to me? I couldn’t read the question. My voice changed, my voice disappeared. I just sat there and couldn’t collect myself. What was I trying to do? I was trying to naturally control the situation. What is that? Holding a large number of spaces. And I couldn’t do it.

Real human control is very important. If we truly felt our physical body, you would know whether you need to drink coffee or not, drink water or not, eat a tomato or not, whether you should eat buckwheat today or not, or whether you need to take a break right now at all. Or you would know that it’s better not to enter this room now — your mood might change. Or that on this particular day you shouldn’t get behind the wheel, or that today it’s better to stay at home, or that it’s better not to talk to this client, or that you need to tell this client certain things. Is that control, or is it broad consciousness?

If you and I look, a great many people in the world with a broad intent and broad perception are called super-controllers. But this is simply a person who is in a real system of perception. They perceive a huge amount of everything at the same time. And for them this is freedom, for them this is ease. They spend no time on it at all: they feel it, they live in it. They are in these spaces in advance, they sense them all, they see them.

Strictly controlling a partner and denying their freedom

You were asking, of course, about other people — about controllers who squeeze their employees in a vise and want them to endlessly do only certain actions. About people who track the locations of their wives or husbands, listen to their calls, read their private messages, and don’t want to give the person any freedom at all.

I want to tell you, Tanya: in this case these people have no interest in the other person at all. From the outside, people think he or she simply loves very much, is in love. In reality the person is interested only in themselves.

Look, so that I don’t drift off and kill your question — you were asking about this zone after all — I still wanted to bring up that there is also a very healthy side to control, like with the toilet. But in this case people are interested only in themselves. And these people, who are interested only in themselves, see controllers in other people, because they are sure, Tanya — deeply convinced — that all other people are exactly the same.

There are people who by their nature, by their system, are very strongly permeated by the ego-computer. There is the level of shadows described by Valery Lomovtsev: inside them there is simply an exaltation of shadows. Worlds are present too, of course, but the shadows are in endless exaltation, all the time. The person is in an ego state all the time and can’t switch at all. It is one thing when people are sometimes in extreme ego and sometimes come out of it, and they have such a powerful flow. And there are people who are endlessly in ego, in the ego system.

So, Tanya, know one simple thing: these people perceive all other people as being the same as themselves.

This is an incredible truth that everyone needs to see, everyone needs to realize for themselves and simply accept within: the person on the other side perceives everyone else in exactly this way.

I remember I had different perceptions of people, and I met a certain person in my life. She was helping me resolve a business issue in terms of psychological influence on another person. And she told me: “Alexander, you think other people think the way you do. This person thinks: one, two, three. And you think: lizard, squirrel, orange. These are different systems of thinking. And every time you think that the squirrel comes after the lizard. But the person never even had a lizard.”

He has a completely different system of measurement, a different system of thinking, a different system of intent. There are people who will never in their system give birth to an impulse of humanity toward another person. Tanya, never. There are people who will never see beauty, will never be able to look deep into another person’s eyes. There are people who will never be able to be moved by the beauty of a painting or an interior, to perceive another person, their other spiritual world, their spaces — those fairy-tale starry worlds. They will always see money or a backside, will always see something very strange — or fear, simply endless fear.

There are people who spend thirty percent of their time in war and fear. It’s like a film playing in him, and you think: what is happening to him? And he simply has war and fear. It seems to you that he is sick, stupid, mocking you. He isn’t mocking you — a thirty-percent cartoon is simply playing in him all the time. Whatever he does, the cartoon is playing all the time.

There are levels studied in medicine — psychophysical ones and so on. And there are things that haven’t been studied — invisible, unclear. Judging such a person’s perception is like judging the perception of a drunk. The person sees only themselves. And whatever I tell him, whatever I say about him handling control the wrong way, he will think I’m reasoning by his system of thinking and speaking only for my own sake. He, after all, knows that he himself wants things only for his own sake.

So when we study other people — the world’s rulers, various people who run countries, companies, who voice opinions — we always need to look at their level of motivation: what is present in them at all, what they actually want, what structures, what systems are in them. And then you can come to truly understand another person and truly look at them. At that moment a wife will look at her husband differently, a husband at his wife. If a person is watching this video and wants to figure this out, they will have the opportunity to look at a person differently.

And at least understand that even if the other person is that super-egoist you were asking about, Tanya, he is simply afflicted by it. He is afflicted by this system.

And distinguish the concept of love very clearly and distinctly. This love for children — how much I hear about love for children, about how a person loves another person. Through what? Through gifts, through actions or through spending time together? Or is it control? Or is it living out some time for oneself, because the person simply needs it?

Why a controlling person thinks about themselves

I had a story like this — maybe it’s not the most pleasant example, but that story happened. Every evening my wife reads books to the children — for fifteen years now, since the first child, every evening to this day. And a couple of years ago I came to her and said: “Listen, Polina, I would like, maybe, to spend time with the children in the evenings.” — “So spend it!” I said: “But I don’t have the strength, I can’t, I need help. I can’t do it the way you do.” She looked at me like that and said: “That’s your problem.” And went off to read.

I said: “Listen, I need help with this, I need to spend time with them. I would like something to change. For that you have to give up a certain pattern of behavior with them.” And she said a very interesting phrase to me that opened my eyes to everything. After that it’s pointless to discuss this topic. She told me: “Well, maybe this moment is one of the only moments in life that I really enjoy.”

And at that moment you understand everything, everything immediately falls into place, you put everything where it belongs. She does this exclusively for herself. It is her life and her time. That’s it. That’s why it has been happening every day for fifteen years. If it were time for others… Two of the children no longer listen to it, and it turns out that she isn’t spending time with them at that moment. Although we could have come up with some ritual where all of us are together, six people. Or if the children were what mattered, she would come up with a ritual where the other children take part too. But, as it turns out, no.

This is exactly the topic a person needs to sort out for themselves. And it is very hard. How do I get into it? I don’t even have the means to influence it: to influence it, I would have to change whole worlds of my own. And for me it is just one action. And I treat this action the same way as needing to water some plant in the evening, or make dinner, or work on some projects, or make a call, or hold meetings, or do meditations, practices — and a trillion other things. For me they are all in roughly the same chain: calling someone, sleeping.

I remember someone saying: “I read a lot.” I said: “And I don’t read much, because I chose to use that time for sleep. I don’t read at eleven at night because I’m asleep.” You have the possibility of choice. Some choose sports, some — television, some — something else. Every person makes a choice. I always say: every person has the possibility of choice. I simply choose to sleep.

And when the children don’t go to bed — they go to bed very well in our house, but suddenly, say, at eight thirty — my wife says: “So, are you going to go and spend time with them?” And I think: “Well, maybe I’ll go to bed, I have to get up at six tomorrow morning.” I always get up at five or six in the morning — now at six — and then my meeting starts and so on. I’ll go to sleep after all. I choose to sleep. That’s all. It’s my choice. I’m very conscious about it. I don’t deceive myself.

Did I want to? Look, wouldn’t it be great, Tanya, to learn to remember that in the evening there is one united family? You’ll agree it would be great. In our family it was always customary to have lunch, dinner and breakfast together — all of us together. Always. And even when I had started working after university, my mom, my dad and I would come home, and my mom would make lunch. Polina likes to tell me: “It’s just that your mom didn’t work, and in my family everyone always worked.” But it’s incredibly great to instill such a quality at all. I would come home myself, and it was always an incredible time together.

And on the one hand, it is very easy. For me it is very easy — just like putting knives at the table for the children for fifteen years in a row, knives they don’t use. By the way, the day before yesterday I told them that I will keep putting knives out for them even if they don’t use them. They find this interesting. And a person goes: “Oh, well, okay, maybe we’ll look at it at that moment.” But for someone else, Tanya, this is incredible work, and the other person can’t understand it or live through it.

And this is the very essence of family, the essence of relationships, the essence of a man and a woman — to try to figure this out together. But you and I know perfectly well that if the other person gets very stuck on something and isn’t ready to deal with it, it simply won’t happen. That’s why it doesn’t happen in our family.

A person’s central transformation

There are still things that can happen only if everyone makes an effort.

You know, there is a good saying: if at least one person in the world touches the energy of love, they are capable of transforming the entire Universe. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, all people need to make an effort. Many things will have to be done by all people. One person will not be enough.

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