Ali
Fifteen years of practice, most of them outside Russia. What he teaches is not a method of his own invention — it is self-enquiry as Ramana Maharshi gave it, with Buddhist attention work underneath it.
“Save yourself decades of life. That is my advice.”
The lineage
Ali spent years in India and Sri Lanka. Tiruvannamalai — the town at the foot of Arunachala where Ramana Maharshi lived — is where the core of what he teaches comes from: “everyone there practises ‘who am I’, and the way people relate to each other is simply different.”
Hundreds of satsangs, dozens of teachers. Out of all of it he kept one sequence: attentiveness → acceptance of feeling → concentration → the turn of attention onto its own source.
What he actually teaches
Not states. Not energy. Attention — and what happens when it stops being spent on maintaining an image of yourself.
His map is simple enough to draw on paper, and he draws it at every satsang: awareness → the sense “I am” → three selves, body, feeling and mind → the person with their list of roles → anxiety → aggression → numbness. And the way back.
What he refuses to sell
This is the part that surprises Western visitors most. He attacks the spiritual market harder than any sceptic — because he spent years inside it.
“There is no spiritual world in modern society. There is a spiritually oriented illusion.” “False teachers tell you wealth and abundance equal awareness. They do not. It is a trap.” “Psychology unties one knot and automatically ties another.”
He does not ask anyone to renounce the world either: “I am a layman myself and I live an ordinary worldly life.”
Where he is now
A farmstead between Saint Petersburg and Minsk, together with Masha, who leads the bodily half of the work — breath, movement, voice, sound. Groups of one to four people, all year round. Retreats, satsangs, an online retreat, a YouTube channel with 243 videos, and music.
He answers messages himself. There is no assistant and no booking system — that is deliberate.
Who this is not for
- If you are looking for a guru who will tell you what to do — he will hand the question back to you.
- If you need a certificate, a curriculum or a schedule. There is none of that.
- If English-only is a hard requirement — ask him directly before planning anything.
Write to Ali
He answers himself — there is no assistant. Tell him briefly what brings you, and you will work out the rest in the chat.