Conscious Media Network Leonid Sharashkin

(Transcript)
http://www.cmn.tv/trans cripts /trans cript-leonid-s haras hkin/

February 06, 2011

Leonid Sharashkin: On Anastasia and the Ringing Cedars Series

Regina Meredith: This was one of my favorite interviews of the year. Many of us know
that something is terribly wrong with the unnatural way in which we are living on the
Earth. We have created an artificial environment for life in virtually every way including,
and especially, our food supplies. The deepening crisis of manufactured food and its
effects on the human body and mind is evidenced everywhere. Leonid Isharashkin is a
life-long gardener from Russia that is also the publisher of the English edition of The
Ringing Cedar series of books, about the wisdom of a Siberian woman named
Anastasia. The stories are profound and have left everybody wondering who Anastasia
is.
Regina Meredith: I first became aware of the work that you representnow, I have to
clarify that a little later on; you represent a lot of thingsbut, The Ringing Cedar series,
from a girlfriend that said have you read The Ringing Cedar series, yet, and heard about
the wisdom of Anastasia? I had to admit I hadnt. So, when I came to the conference I
was thrilled to see that you were here, and that series of books, and I got an immediate
rush when I saw the cover of the booksvery childlike and playful and whimsical. So,
lets talk about what the Anastasia seriesThe Ringing Cedar series of books is all
about, because this is just fascinating.
Leonid Sharashkin: It would be very hard to say what it is about because it is basically
about everything. But it tells the story of a Russian entrepreneur named Vladimir
Megre, who in 1994 and 1995 was undertaking trading expeditions in Siberia and was
going to very remote places trading with local people. On one of these trips he heard
fascinating local legends about ringing Cedar Treestrees that accumulate so much
energy that they start vibrating, and that a piece of this Cedar wood worn on ones
body could improve health and even make a person happier. He disregarded these
legends and dismissed them as fantasy. But, when he came back from the trip he
started researching on the properties of the Siberian Cedar and realized that these
trees have huge commercial potential. They produce the Siberian Pine Nuts and
everything in this tree the wood, the needles, the bark has great medicinal properties.
It has been known in this area for thousands of years, even before Europeans and
Russians arrived. So, being the King entrepreneur that he is, he decided to set up
another expedition to go back to this area and to find this ringing Cedar Tree to see
how he could cash in on commercial opportunities.
Regina Meredith: So it was totally about money for him at this point?
Leonid Sharashkin: Well, I have the impression this is still the case. (Both laughing).
Regina Meredith: Let me ask you a quick question right here. He says in the first book
that he encounters these two old men that give him this information. Did that part even
happenthat he encountered two old men? Is that who told him about the lore? Or,
how did that go? How did he find out?
Leonid Sharashkin: I dont pretend to know much more than what is written in the
books.
Regina Meredith: Yeah.
Leonid Sharashkin: Vladimir Megre, himself, maintains that this is a real-life story and a
documentary account. What we know for sure is that he was a well known
entrepreneur in this part of Siberia; that during these two years he did take these
expeditions up and down the Siberian River Ob. But whether he, during this trip met
somebody or whether there was some other kind of source for this information and for

this inspiration it is up to the reader to judge. This is why in the first book the main
character, Anastasia, says I exist to those for whom I exist. And these books are
fascinating in that they can be read either as a factual, documentary account, or a
novel, but they are neither. This question becomes even irrelevant when you see the
messages that these books are trying to convey.
Regina Meredith: That is really true. First of all, what does Anastasia mean?
Leonid Sharashkin: Anastasia, in Greek, means Resurrection. But, actually the root,
Anasta comes from Sanskrit. Not many people know that Sanskrit and Russian are very
closely related languages. Up to the present day they have some common roots, and
Anasta in Sanskrit means Incorruptiblesomething that is so pure it cannot be soiled.
So, basically, the word Anastasia is a symbol of purity and light.
Regina Meredith: Very interesting! Now, the point you make is quite interesting.
Whether Vladimir has actually documented something, or whether he has come about
this information through other extraordinary means is really not relevant when you are
reading this information, in one sense, is it?
Leonid Sharashkin: What I can tell from personally knowing the author, he doesnt give
an impression of an individual who could invent this story. He describes himself very
honestly in the books, and we need to give him credit for that. He smokes; he enjoys a
drink, he is not indifferent towards women
Regina Meredith: He likes women. (laughing)
Leonid Sharashkin: So, he is just a normal entrepreneur who enjoys life and tries to get
everything out of it.
Regina Meredith: Interesting. OK, the second time he goes back he is going to really
squeeze it for all he can. He is going to get the nuts, the wood, the oil, and then what
happens?
Leonid Sharashkin: According to his account he meets the granddaughter of the elders
to whom he had talked the year before. And this woman named Anastasia invites him
to spend three days with her in the depths of the wild forest. He accepts the invitation
because he has come to see this ringing Cedar Tree and to see how it could be cut
down, transported to the city and then sawed into small pieces and sold. But, his
experiences during these three days with Anastasia change his world view so
dramatically because she exhibits knowledge and feelings and wisdom so unfamiliar to
our modern civilization that he, at her request, drops everything abandons his
business, abandons his family and leaves from Siberia to Moscow to write a series of
books about his experiences with her.
Regina Meredith: OK. All I can say is whatever happened Im glad he did it. So, lets talk
about what happened those first three days a little bit. From the first book, called,
Anastasia, just to kind of set the framework for the types of wisdoms that are revealed
in the series of eight books. Well, now there will be nine, you say. There is another book
coming out?
Leonid Sharashkin: It is considered the second part of book eight, but it is the ninth
volume.
Regina Meredith: OK, so what happened to him during these daysthese three days?
Leonid Sharashkin: Well, here he is this entrepreneur with his very materialistic mind
set. In the company of a younger, blonde, attractive woman who lives there in the
depth of the Taiga without any more than an animal does. When he arrived to her home
he couldnt see any kind of manmade shelter and she was not even allowing him to light
a fire.
Regina Meredith: Lets talk about the word Taiga for a moment because I think a lot of
people outside of Russia dont know what that means.
Leonid Sharashkin: Taiga is the Northern Forest. Basically it is a Conifer ForestFir
Trees and Pine Trees and Larch Trees, which is predominant throughout most of
Siberia and parts of northern Canada.

Regina Meredith: OK. So, he is now out in the Conifers with herout in the forest at her
home place, and he cant see a home, or anything else, for that matter.
Leonid Sharashkin: Yeah, and she says that this is where she lives and this is where she
has lived all her life. He gets a shock and wants to run back to the bank of the river to
be picked up by his steamboat, but the shear abnormality of the whole situation makes
him stay because he has come to discover this tree, and to learn more. He witnesses
the amazing harmonious interaction that Anastasia enjoys with plants and animals on
the glen that she lives. Squirrels bring her food to eat and she is not concerned about
providing for her food or for her shelter and sleeps in one of the dugouts prepared for
her by the bear.
Regina Meredith: And sometimes with bears.
Leonid Sharashkin: Yeah, this was his first experience; to keep him warm she invited
him to sleep in the same dugout with the bear. And, he thought it was just a pelt, but it
turned out it was a living creature.
Regina Meredith: (Just laughing with delight.)
Leonid Sharashkin: You know, it may sound too far out, but people who are familiar
with this region, they will tell you that many local people can communicate with local
wildlifewith bears and there is no fantastic in his account up to this point.
Regina Meredith: It is true, even in the Western world through the Disney type of
renditions of this, in movies of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, where they go into the
forest, the one common denominator is that the young woman is always able to live in
harmony with, and communicate with the animals. Growing up I thought that was the
most beautiful thing imaginable. So, it must be some recognition inside of us that is
drawn to that. Our own capability to be able to do this has to be innate to us.
Leonid Sharashkin: Exactly, because this is the image of the Paradise Lost.
Regina Meredith: Thats right.
Leonid Sharashkin: He starts to discover her lifestyle, which is shocking to him. But,
she very patiently tries to explain to him in the very simple terms that he will be able to
relate to, how natural her lifestyle was, and how unnatural our civilization is compared
to the way she and her ancestors had always lived in this part of Siberia. So, even when
he says, How do you keep warm? The temperature is in the 40s. I wear a jacket and
you wear virtually nothing, and you do not seem to be cold. She explains to him that
there are people in our society who can be tolerant to the cold. She sited an example of
a famous proponent of health through closeness to naturea native to Russia, Peter
Runoff (sic), who was so tolerant to cold he could work in only pants during Siberian
winters without any harm to his body. So, you know, the whole thing about his
experience is that what he initially perceived as supernatural something that was
beyond the limits of Mans capabilities all of a sudden seemed very natural to him. And
he started to question our own lifestyle, instead.
Regina Meredith: Yes, and she introduces many subjects in the beginning, not the least
of which is how one absorbs and accesses knowledge, which is fascinating. But one of
the areas that you are deeply involved in in your personal life, and I am very interested
in right now for all of our sakes, is the notion of how we relate to the plant world, to
agriculture, growing our own food, and even how to condition the seeds so that they
are able to relate to your body, personally, and sustain your health. Can you go into
that a bit?
Leonid Sharashkin: Yes. You are right when you say that it is all encompassing; it goes
over so many subjects. In this very first book you are exposed to ideas that range
from gardening to child rearing, from relationships and sexuality to religion and the
meaning of human life. But, the two main subjects that she, herself, enjoyed talking
most about were child rearing and gardening, because she believed that on these two
the future of our civilization depended. To Vladimir Megre it was incomprehensible
because how can the future of our civilization depend on such meaningless things as

gardening? But she explained to him that a food gardenwhen you grow your own
foodit allows you to establish a flow of nourishment, information and energy from
you to the plant world, and back to you. She exposed him to the idea that actually
plants are custom made to meet the needs of your body.
Regina Meredith: To heal us, personally.
Leonid Sharashkin: To heal you, personally. And actually this is something we can
observe in Nature. It is rare to find a sickly animal in the woods, right? It is much more
common to find a sickly looking human when you are walking through the streets of a
large city. Why might that be? She explained to him that in Nature there are in-built
mechanisms to keep all organisms and the whole ecosystem healthy. One of these
mechanisms is the flow of information and nourishment from one organism to the
other. Here is an example: Lets says in a particular area of the Earth there is a warm,
prolonged winter. Nature starts understanding that the summer is likely to be very hot,
very dry and very long. What it creates in the ecosystem that plants and other
organisms have natural mechanisms to adjust their bodies and adjust their food to
match these particular weather conditions during this particular year. And, everybody
knows that a vegetable that you grow in your back yard will be different depending on
the amount of warmth and sunshine and water that you get in a particular season, so it
is just natural and common knowledge. But, she (Anastasia) explains well, in your
civilization you are disconnected from the source of your nourishment. You may live in
the cold climate, but consume fruits, vegetables and other foods that comes from a
hot climate, where this food was grown by Nature to satisfy the needs of bodies in that
particular climate. And this disconnect in both timebecause we can eat out of season;
we have all the fruits, vegetables and all the foods year round todayand in space
because we can have food from all over the worldso, it prevents you from tapping into
this natural mechanism of self-sustaining health. Heres how it works. If you provide
plants with information about your body by applying some small amount of matter from
your body, for example sweatif you wash your feet and then water your garden with
this water, then you provide the plants that grow there with the information of your
bodily needsand the plants have an opportunity to modify the chemical composition
of the food they grow to match the needs of your body. So, in a very direct sense,
food if you grow it yourself, can be custom made for you. And, she recommended
amazingly simple gardening techniques when even in our civilized world, even in your
back yard, or if you have none, on the window sill of your apartment you can plant
seeds that will eventually grow food to heal your body and spirit.
Regina Meredith: It is really amazing that she is bringing up the notion of this incredible
symbiotic relationship as a collective agreement between the plant world and the animal
world for this purpose of healing. And I found that, first of all, as I was reading this
book everything felt correct intuitively for me. IL: I was able to verify this by scientific
sources.
Regina Meredith: Oh, good. Thats what I wanted to know. How has this been done?
And well talk about some of the methods in a little bit. What have you found out? IL:
Well, there are a number of Russian scientists who are researching. One of them,
Mikhail Prokhorov, referred to in the books, as well, was researching the role of
adaptation. And, he discovered that our bodies, in particular our intestines are inhabited
by a whole range of bacteria, that (excuse me) when we defecate, get into the
environment. But this is the natural means to communicate our state of being to the
environment so that the bacteria in the soil can relay the information. And, there is
another scientist who studied bio communication and information exchange between
bacteria, who showed that there is the transference of information from bacteria, even
of different varieties. So, if there is flow of your bodily matter into the soil of the garden,
then the bacteria are responsible for nourishing the plants and making nutrients in the
soil available to the plants, they will get this information from the bacteria coming from

your body. Why is it important? For the simple reason that the life span of a bacteria is
between 15 and 40 minutes compared to 50 to 80 years for Man. What it means is that
bacteria can adapt much more rapidly to the changes in the environment than we
humans can. And it is a natural mechanism provided to us so that we can stay healthy
without any special effort on our part. No matter how unusual some of the information
in Megres books appeared at first glance, when I started looking up scientific literature,
most of it was vindicated.
Regina Meredith: Thats very interesting! Now, lets talk about that seed process she
talks about if you really want to imbue the seeds with your information. . .
Leonid Sharashkin: With information about yourself.
Regina Meredith: . . . and the steps you would go through.
Leonid Sharashkin: So, the first step is to put the seed, for nine minutes, into your
mouth under your tongue to let the saliva permeate it. What it doessaliva has a
different PH from water so it already activates the germination of the seed. Then, saliva
is very rich with bacteria, again, which carry information about our body because
everybodys bacteria will be different depending on the state of your health. Then,
temperatureyou have high temperature with saliva germination. She describes this as
a means of imbuing the seeds with information about your body state. So, you hold it in
your mouth for nine minutes, then you take it out, put it in between the palms of your
hands and keep it there for half a minute.
Regina Meredith: Lots of energy transferred there.
Leonid Sharashkin: Exactly. Now, today, science can measure biological energy fields of
human beings, and we all know that vast flows of energy flow through our hands, in
particular. Then, present [the seeds] to the Sun. Again, you know even from the
biological standpoint it makes perfect sense because it is additional kind of stimulation.
And, she alsolike Rudolf Steiners biodynamic ecology that was so successful over the
yearsshe explained that it is a way to initiate the contact of the seeds with the celestial
bodies.
Regina Meredith: Right.
Leonid Sharashkin: Then breathe on the seeds; it is symbolic.
Regina Meredith: You just do one breath?
Leonid Sharashkin: One breath, yeah. It is to convey additional information. And then
plat it on a spot where during the whole process you have been standing barefoot. This
is also significant because through the sweating of our feet a lot of toxins and the
bacteria who live on these toxins come out, so it is additional information to the seeds
you plant about your bodily needs. Then do not water the seeds for three days so that
it can absorb your information rather than this information being diluted by water you
pour over it. And then, regularly, she recommends every evening, wash your feet
without any soap and pour the water on your garden beds. This is basically everything
she suggests.
Regina Meredith: Now, you have been gardening for 25 years, and we are going to get
into some of this because you are really a part of that Russian tradition. Have you used
some of these techniques yourself?
Leonid Sharashkin: Yes I have.
Regina Meredith: What have you found in terms of the effects on the food or the
qualities of the food?
Leonid Sharashkin: Not only myself, but many, many peopleand the publishers of
these books in English, Ringing Cedars Press, keep receiving accounts of people who
have applied this technique, so it is not just my experience. . .
Regina Meredith: Right.
Leonid Sharashkin: People report that food becomes better tasting. And, again, you
know it is not abstractly better tasting. What we hear is that it is better tasting for this
particular individual, but this is what matters. Different people will have different tastes;

somebody with one body needs will enjoy sour apple, and another will need and enjoy a
sweet apple. This is what seems to be achieved by this technique and by maintaining
this flow of nourishment and information between you and your garden. What many
people have discovered, also, is that plants become draught tolerant, more draught
tolerant. One of the women from Europe wrote to say that all the neighbors gardens
were dry, and even though she was not watering hers it was doing just fine.
Regina Meredith: During a draught.
Leonid Sharashkin: Yeah, during a draught. So, again, it is very hard to measure the
impact it has, but if anything it creates the psychological link, as well. Because it is not
only about the physical connection to the plant world. Again, both the series of books
and scientific evidence shows that there is the psychological link that is absolutely
essential to our well-being. For example, there have been scientifically valid controlled
studies where they have been able to show that just looking at green plants reduces
the blood pressure; that patients who have windows overlooking the garden recover
faster from surgery than patients who are deprived of this view. So you know we come
to the same ancient understanding that was prevalent in all cultures of the world 2,000
years ago, that we are part of Nature not just in some abstract sense, that we are
really embedded into it and the only way to live a healthy and fulfilling life is
understanding all these natural mechanisms that were provided for our benefit.
Regina Meredith: It makes total sense, and the amount of chronic disease in the
Western world and all the parts of the world in which people are no longer connected
to the Earth speaks to that. I mean you dont need to look any further than, in the
winter, in particular, all the people with runny noses and coughs and one sort of ailment
after another. And a lot of the people that live close to the land in Russia where you are
talking about some pretty harsh climates, you dont have the same degree of illness
with people who are doing their own gardening, do you?
Leonid Sharashkin: No you do not see, and actually Russia is such a unique country,
where 70% of the population todayand this is 35 million families, both rich and poor,
both urban and ruralgrow their own food in their food gardens. We are talking about
completely different attitudes toward your environment, a completely different
understanding of the meaning of the food and where it is coming from. If anything, it is
also providing an extremely important safety net in times of economic hardship. Think
about Western society in the United States and elsewhere, we all depend on money and
monetary income to purchase the first necessity of lifefood. What if there is an
economic crisis? Then many peoples livelihood will be jeopardized. But Russians, for
the most part, are really shielded from all the economic calamities just because they do
not depend on the market cash economy for their staples that they grow themselves.
Regina Meredith: I listened to you give a talk yesterday, and I have it somewhere here in
my [notes], but something like 50% of all of the produce raised in Russia is from
backyard gardens!
Leonid Sharashkin: Exactly! Peoples gardens today produce more food in all of the
Russian Federation, more food then all commercial agriculture put together. So,
gardens now produce 54% and commercial agriculture produces the rest, 46%. Also,
to produce this 54% of our food, gardens only use 7% of the agricultural land of the
country. So compare the efficiencyon 7% you produce more than half, and the
remaining 93% barely produces another half.
Regina Meredith: Which is interesting because if you look at biodynamic gardening and
Rudolf Steiners anthroposophical methods of gardening, you are talking about really
high yields in small spaces because it is done with such integrity.
Leonid Sharashkin: And it has always been the case. My research has shown that even
100 years ago researchers already tested the peoples gardens were four times more
productive than agricultural fields. There is an explanation to it. When you have a
smaller size garden that you can attend to every day, that you can take better care of

than you can of a huge field, it just natural that the productivity of these gardens will be
much, much greater than that of large commercial industrial operations. Also, think
about the other dimension: When you dig your own garden with a spade and simple
hand tools you dont require imports of petroleum to support your food growing, you
are not dependent on government subsidies to grown your own food, you are not
dependent on cheaply hired agricultural labor, you are not dependent on chemicals
because it can be grown organically very successfully.
Regina Meredith: Yes.
Leonid Sharashkin: You are not destroying local communities, which has been a huge
problem with American agriculture is that when large corporations come [in] local rural
communities collapse. And then, you preserve tradition. An economist with a very deep
understanding of the meaning of agriculture, Schumacher, author of the famous, Small
is Beautiful, he was saying that agriculture has three purposes. The first purpose is to
reconnect Man to Nature through the every-day activity of gardening, or agriculture.
The second one is to make a piece of land beautiful. And, only the third one is to
provide for our needs. He says that if you take care of the first tworeconnecting the
self with Nature, and making land beautiful, then the third one will be just a byproduct; it
will be added all by itself. Russian gardening has demonstrated, in fact, if you try to
make your garden as beautiful and productive and spend a lot of time there, there are
never problems with productivity.
Regina Meredith: And in Russia you have very short growing seasons compared to
what most of the United States has.
Leonid Sharashkin: This is the most amazing part; you would think that if this garden is
so productive they are in a very good climate and in very fertile soil. Just the opposite. It
is 110 days of growing season per year on most of Russian territoryfrom mid-May to
mid-September, thats it. So, this is the only time you have to grow food supply for the
whole year, and then to can and preserve it for the winter. Then in terms of soil, all
these gardens during the summer period were located on the most marginal lands that
could not be used in State-run agriculture.
Regina Meredith: Is that the dacha?
Leonid Sharashkin: This is dacha gardens, as they are called. So, we are talking about
this huge productivity on unproductive poor soils in a very harsh climate. Also, there is
a great difference in mentality and attitudes. Russian adults who have a garden, on
average, spend 18 hours per week gardening, digging in the soil. Compare this to 32
hours that an average American spends watching television each week.
Regina Meredith: Yes.
Leonid Sharashkin: You know, in this country [America] if people started devoting 1/3 of
their time that they spend on watching TV to growing their own food they could provide
for most of their food need themselves.
Regina Meredith: Thats really amazing, but it really comes back to the word culture,
which is interesting. The root of the word culture is interesting, if you will explain that,
but also, that culture is still very deep in the heart of Russian society.
Leonid Sharashkin: I would argue it is in the heart of everybody because the word cult
to not be afraid of the wordin Latin language it literally means take care of the soil.
This is why the word cultivation. So, originally the word agriculture and culture, as well,
were understood as taking care of the soil. And, it is not by accident that this word cult
has a deeper religious meaning. It is that our ancestors understood exactly that the
best way to demonstrate your spirituality, and the closest link to the Spirit, the Creator,
God or whatever other name you might find for the Life Force that permeates
everything is to communicate and take care of all the living things that surround you. It
is only later that instead of cultivation of the soil, the word cult started to be
understood as some kind of religious rital that can be far, far removed from the reality
of a living Mother Earth. And, it is only later that the word culture started to be

understood not as taking care of the soil, but as taking care of our mind, or illuminating
and enriching our minds rather than the soil. So, now even in the language we use
today there are still the remnants of this very ancient tradition that was common not
only to Americans and Russians, but it was probably all over the world, and the
understanding of the sacredness of this link and the absolute necessity to maintain this
link for the health not only of us, but also of the environment around us.
Regina Meredith: So now we are looking at future generations because it becomes clear
to meI interview a lot of people, as you know, and I know a lot of different theories
and we talk about new technologies and future technologies, and so forthbut it is
becoming painfully clear that until we reconnect with the land in our natural essence,
the rest isnt really going to make a whole lot of difference in the long run for what we
pass down from generation to generation.
Leonid Sharashkin: You are right; this intergenerational principle is so important. Part of
the reason why land is being abused today is that people seriously think that their life is
limited to the life of their bodies. In the ancient Russian tradition, which survives in
many respects unchanged to the present day, life was understood as the life of your
family, and your existence was understood as just one link in a very long chain of all
your ancestors. It is called Kin. In Russian it is Rod. It is the long chain of all your
ancestors, today yourself, and all your descendants in the future. This is what was
understood as the vehicle of Life. For this reason our ancestors had no fear of death,
and they would never sacrifice the integrity of the natural ecosystem around them for
satisfying their present day needs at the sake of their future descendants because they
would see them as a part of their own life. So, there was none of this distinction that I
only live today, and I only have 50 or 80 years to take advantage of what life has to
offer; then I will be gone for good. I think it is very important to change this world view
if we want to change our attitudes towards the way we treat our Earth.
Regina Meredith: Absolutely. And, you have children and you have raised them on the
land, and you told a little story that I thought was so fascinating yesterday. I loved it. It
is very sweet because you are raising them with a lot of these principles that you
understand, which in Anastasias words is a very different way of rearing children than
what we do in the Westmuch more innate wisdom in it. And, shared a story about a
United States Post Office sponsored Hunger Drive. Can you tell that story?
Leonid Sharashkin: Yes, it is a fun story. About a year ago the U.S. Postal Office
organized an Anti-hunger Food Drive. And I received in my mail box, and probably
many more people did throughout the country, a post card inviting everybody to go to
the supermarket and purchase some canned food and put it into your mail box. The
mail carrier would collect it the next day and take it to the local Food Bank to be
distributed to the hungry, to feed them. I took out this post card; it was bright and
beautiful with smiling people and some canned food on it, and my daughter, who was
five years old at that time, asked me, Daddy, what is this? I said, Well, they want to
feed the hungry people so that there are no hungry people. She said, What a
wonderful idea, is it not! I said, Yes it is. She said, What do they suggest? I
explained to her that they suggest that you go and purchase some food and put it in
the mail box and it will be delivered to the poor. Now, this child who grew up with
exposure to gardening and who has a very good understanding where food is actually
coming from thought for 30 seconds without any interference on my partI was not
trying to introduce any judgment of my ownshe, herself, after 30 seconds came up
with the question, But what will happen after they eat all the food that you put into
your mail box? I said, They will be hungry again. She thought a little bit more, and
she said, But, in the first place, why are there hungry people? Dont they know that
they can take a small seed, put it in the ground and it will grow food for you? For a
small child it was incomprehensible that people would try to solve the problem of
hunger not by educating people how to grow their own food, but trying to provide

them with some supplies that will only be sufficient to provide for several days of their
food needs. And then she told me, You know Daddy, when you go to this conference I
really think that you need to tell the audience that they should not be putting the
canned food in their mail boxes because next time they will have to put medicine so
that people heal the diseases that they get from eating this canned food.
Regina Meredith: (Laughing with delight.)
Leonid Sharashkin: This is a child of five years!
Regina Meredith: I love that! From the mouths of babes. . . But she already has that
innate wisdom. Part of that is because you have the innate wisdomyou and your wife
have imbued this to your children gardening and having their hands in the soil with
seeds and flowers is a big part of the transferring of this knowledge. And, this relates
to much higher abilities in terms of our openness of mind and ability to receive
knowledge across the board, not just agrarian knowledge, but knowledge across the
board. In the Anastasia series. . .
Leonid Sharashkin: Exactly. Anastasia explains it in very simple terms. All the objects in
our world can be regarded in a very direct sense as materialized thought. Just think
about when a child plays with a living creature, be it a squirrel or even a pet, or when a
child interacts with a living plant, his interacting directly with the thought of the Creator.
This encourages the child to really reach out and try to expand the thought to reach
the level of whoever created this natural object in front of the child. Compare this with
the child in the civilized world, who is mostly surrounded by artificial toys, which are
the product of the thought of some designer, who is not nearly as perfect as the
Powerthe One who created the squirrel or a bird or a pumpkin. So this is the way she
explains just why exposing children to natural experiences is so important for
expanding and awakening their innate knowledge of how the world works. And, as you
say, it applies not only to an understanding of gardening, but to all areas of Life, as well.
My daughter keeps telling her grandparents, over the phone, how they should live
how they should not live in the city because when they flush the toilet the terds flow
into the river and make the fish unhappy over the dirty water.
Regina Meredith: She is already an ecologist; she understands complex systems for a
little girl; it is beautiful! Well, we could talk for days, but what I would rather do is
suggest that people go on line and pick up the whole series of these books because it is
a magical read. And the wisdoms that are contained within I think are absolutely
essential in helping us shape our future as a species. I dont have enough praise for
this.
Leonid Sharashkin: Thank you. You know the experience of the publisher has been that
60% of the people who read book one, Anastasia, which is book one of The Ringing
Cedar series, 60% carry on to read the whole series. So that means that means that
the material in these books resonates very strongly with people in this country and all
over the English-speaking world.
Regina Meredith: It does and also you, for the next little while, anyway, are going to be
giving talks and showing up at conferences around to begin sharing this knowledge, to
get people on this natural page.
Leonid Sharashkin: You know, I long for going back to my homestead in Russia
because I have a small five-acre homestead and want to be back there planting the
garden, but somebody told me here, Leo, it is wonderful that you are happy planting
potatoes, but you need to be telling other people how to be happy planting potatoes.
Regina Meredith: I agree, and you did a beautiful job yesterday; this has been the
highlight of the conference for me. Thank you so much for taking a little time because I
know you have to catch a plane very shortly.
Leonid Sharashkin: Thank you.
Regina Meredith: Thank you Leo.
Regina Meredith: I cant recommend highly enough that you pick up The Ringing Cedar

series of books. They address just about every issue known to Man from love, child
rearing, intuitive intelligence and the invisible power structures that control us, to E.T.s
and more. They are a wonderful journey! Until next time, thanks for watching CMN.