Atlas›Domain XIV · Western esoteric, divinatory & new spiritual movements›Guide 135
Guide XIV-135

Grabovoi's Teaching of Universal Salvation

Grigori Grabovoi1995Russia
A 30 · L 53 · M 1714 interventions in the Trinity explorer4 described for recognition only
Client cardCompare
[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: the teaching "On Salvation and Harmonious Development" as Grigori Grabovoi's own lecture series and licensed translations present it (the German epubli edition of one lecture in that series is the primary text consulted), together with Russian and international news reporting on the movement, its foundation and the Moscow fraud case from 2006 to 2021. The number-sequence practice is named here only; it has its own tab (156, Grabovoi number codes).

This is a healing and salvation movement, not a therapy. Its founder, Grigori Grabovoi (born in Soviet Central Asia; Interfax and RFE/RL give Kazakhstan, RBTH gives Uzbekistan [uncertain: sources differ]), teaches that its stated aim is eternal life for everyone, and that people who receive the teaching should pass it on by teaching others, under a personal licence, sub-licence or contract with a licensed organisation [source: Grabovoi, lecture front matter, epubli]. He has publicly called himself Christ in the Second Coming and campaigned on a programme of "prohibition of death" [source: Meduza 2021; Interfax 2010]. Followers attribute to him the power to prevent disasters, heal illness, foresee the future and resurrect the dead [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006, reporting followers' views]. His best-known technique is concentration on number sequences, set out in a book whose title translates as "Restoration of the human body through concentration on numbers" [source: Meduza 2021, which dates it 2003; Wikipedia gives 1999 [uncertain: secondary, unverified]].

The movement's account of change: consciousness, directed by the teaching and by concentration, is held to restore health, steer events and ultimately overcome death [source: Meduza 2021; epubli front matter]. Evidence status in one line: no controlled study or systematic review supports any of the healing, event-control or resurrection claims, and a Moscow court found that taking money for promised resurrections and cures was fraud [source: Interfax 2010; Reuters 2008].

For the psychotherapist, the clinical work is not to use or test the teaching. It is to understand what it means in the client's life, support autonomous and medically informed decisions, coordinate with the client's doctor, and help with grief, family conflict, money lost and, where relevant, leaving. In this guide the movement's practices are given as public outlines only, attributed; the therapist's procedures are marked [synthesis] unless a source is named. All medical decisions belong to the treating doctor; no practice described here treats cancer or any other physical disease.

2. Framework

How the movement is organised (as reported)

  • Origins and structure: activity began in the mid-1990s and was formalised legally by 2004 to 2005 [source: Moscow central-district prosecutor, quoted by NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Grabovoi set up a foundation bearing his name, ran lectures and collected money from believers [source: Interfax 2010]. Prosecutors described a model in which he trained people for a fee, then contracted regional organisations to run the teaching and received 10% of their income [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006].
  • Formats: large paid seminars (prosecutors cited up to 500 people at a fixed fee per head in 2005) and much more expensive individual sessions [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]; books and lecture transcripts sold under licence [source: epubli front matter]; since his release, teaching abroad, an education centre in Serbia, online material and costly devices claimed to stop ageing [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021, citing Sobesednik].
  • Online spread: from 2020 to 2021, "Grabovoi codes" spread on TikTok and Instagram as "cheat codes for the universe", detached from the organisation and often sold on by creators [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021]. See tab 156.
  • Typical session count and duration: no source gives these for the movement, and none applies to the therapist's work below.

The psychotherapist's phases [synthesis]

  • Engagement and meaning: learn what the teaching, the founder and any practice mean to the client, in the client's words. Move on when the client feels understood and the presenting concern is agreed.
  • Assessment: Cultural Formulation Interview, medical status and the involvement of a treating doctor, grief history, finances spent, family position, risk (including suicide risk in acute or traumatic bereavement), and differential assessment. Move on when you know whether any medical decision is pending and whether anyone is at risk.
  • Decision support and coordination: where illness is involved, help the client make informed decisions with their doctor, with consent to liaise. Move on when medical care is in place or the client has made an informed choice.
  • Focal work: grief, shame and anger after loss of money or hope, family conflict, dependency on the teaching, or worries arising from codes. Move on as goals are met.
  • Consolidation and, if chosen, leaving: rebuilding meaning, relationships and finances; religious or spiritual support from a community the client chooses.

3. Guiding principles

  • Attribute, do not adjudicate: describe the teaching as the client and its sources hold it, neither confirming nor ridiculing it. In practice: "In this teaching…" rather than "That can't work" or "Yes, it might". [synthesis]
  • Distinguish belief from harm: belief is not a symptom; the targets are risk, loss and distress the client wants help with. In practice: you ask what the practice costs and gives, not whether it is true. [synthesis]
  • Medical care stays with the doctor: never advise starting, stopping or changing treatment; help the client talk to their doctor. In practice: with consent, a shared plan that names the treating doctor. [synthesis]
  • Grief first: when a client sought resurrection of someone who died, the loss is the clinical centre, not the payment or the teaching. In practice: you return to the person who died. [synthesis]
  • Autonomy with information: adults may keep their beliefs and practices; your task is that choices about health and money are informed and free. In practice: you check who decided and on what information. [synthesis]
  • Watch the money: paid services promising cures or resurrection were the core of the 2008 fraud conviction. In practice: you ask, gently and routinely, what has been paid and to whom. [source: Interfax 2010; synthesis for the clinical use]
  • Do not shame: bereaved clients who paid, or families whose organisation was publicly linked to the founder, may carry stigma and self-blame. In practice: name that grief makes everyone search for a way back. [synthesis]
  • Stay in role: the therapist is never a healer, reader, initiator or teacher of this or any practice, and does not use number codes or "concentrations" in therapy. In practice: if asked to join in, decline warmly and explain why. [synthesis]
  • Safeguard children: a child's health care is not deferred to any teaching; minors exposed to codes online are helped without ridicule. In practice: know your local child-protection route. [synthesis]
  • Respect community: if the client wishes, involve a faith leader or community they trust, including an Orthodox or other church they belong to. In practice: ask before contacting anyone. [synthesis]
  • Ethics: keep to your profession's ethics code on competence, boundaries, informed consent and avoiding exploitation [source: APA Ethics Code, https://www.apa.org/ethics/code, cited for its general scope only; specific standards [uncertain: not verified]].

4. Intervention inventory

The first four entries describe what the movement offers, as an outline so you can recognise what a client is describing. They are not for use in therapy. The remaining entries are the psychotherapist's procedures.

The movement's lectures, seminars and licensed teaching (outline)

  • Purpose (as the movement states it): to spread the teaching "On Salvation and Harmonious Development", whose stated goal is eternal life for all [source: epubli front matter]. Grabovoi says he composes each work by first applying a "prediction" aimed at controlling eternal life and then shaping the text to secure it [source: epubli front matter].
  • What it involves: numbered lectures published as books; paid seminars and individual sessions; a licensing chain in which teaching others requires a licence, sub-licence or contract [source: epubli front matter; NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Regional organisations paid a share of income to the founder, according to prosecutors [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006].
  • When it reaches clients: a client attends seminars or online classes, reads the books, or a relative does.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Tell me how you came to these lectures and what you hoped they would open up for you."
  • Watch for: rising spending, pressure to buy further levels or licences, pressure to recruit or teach, and the teaching being used to override a doctor's advice.

Concentration on number sequences (outline; see tab 156)

  • Purpose (as presented): sequences of digits are said to restore the body or bring about a wished-for event when a person concentrates on them; the founder's book title speaks of restoring the human body through concentration on numbers [source: Meduza 2021]. Grabovoi released sequences presented as protecting against coronavirus in early 2020 [source: RBTH 2021].
  • What it involves as circulated online: choose a sequence for a goal, say or picture it, write it on paper or on the wrist, or trace it in the air; some posts advise keeping it on the skin for days [source: RBTH 2021]. Online goals range from money, grades, love and weight to cures [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021]. No sequences are given here.
  • Evidence status: no controlled trial or review supports any effect; users quoted by RBTH tended to attribute successes to coincidence or autosuggestion [source: RBTH 2021].
  • Example language (illustrative): "What does doing the numbers give you on a hard day? And is there anything it has stood in for?"
  • Watch for: a sequence used instead of medical assessment or treatment; checking, repeating or fear of "doing it wrong" (assess for OCD); adolescents told by creators that codes carry a spiritual price, which RBTH reports some TikTokers claimed [source: RBTH 2021].

Offers of healing and resurrection (outline; risk flagged)

  • What was offered: the criminal case opened in March 2006 concerned services "including resurrection of the dead and curing of illnesses" [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006, quoting the case decision, translated]. Reuters reported a payment in 2003 for an attempt to cure a man's dying parents and another for the resurrection of a woman's two sons [source: Reuters 2008].
  • Status: the court treated taking money on these promises as fraud (see Harm account).
  • Example language (illustrative): "You hoped this would bring them back. Can we stay with that hope for a moment, and with what it was like when it didn't happen?"
  • Watch for: bereaved clients still awaiting a return, or paying for further attempts; seriously ill clients or relatives deferring care. This is the highest-risk point in the movement for a therapist to know about. See "Health-decision support" and "Grief work" below.

Devices, online courses and the education centre abroad (outline) [uncertain]

  • What is reported: after release, Grabovoi moved abroad, opened an education centre in Serbia, and sold expensive devices said to stop ageing [source: RBTH 2021]. Claims that devices treat HIV and cancer, and their prices, appear only in a secondary summary of a Sobesednik report [uncertain: secondary, unverified].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Before buying, would it help to look at what this would cost you and what your doctor thinks?"
  • Watch for: large single purchases, borrowing, and any device presented as treating a disease.

Client-led exploration of meaning

  • Purpose and when: at the start, and whenever the teaching comes up; to understand what the teaching, the founder and the practices mean in the client's life (hope, control, connection to a dead child, a community). [synthesis]
  • Steps: ask permission to talk about it; use the client's own words ("the Teaching", "concentrations", "the norm" or whatever they say); ask how they found it, what it promised, what it has given and what it has cost; reflect without evaluating; note whether family members share or oppose it. [synthesis]
  • Example language (illustrative): "I don't practise this myself, but I'd like to understand what it means to you. Where did it first come into your life?"
  • Watch for: relief at not being judged (working); guardedness or testing of whether you will mock them (slow down); signs that the teaching is the client's main or only support after a loss.

Cultural Formulation Interview, with the spirituality, religion and moral traditions module

  • Purpose and when: in assessment, to place the teaching within the client's cultural, religious and family context (for example a client raised in an Orthodox family who joined the movement after a bereavement). [synthesis]
  • Steps: use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview core questions on the client's definition of the problem, cultural perceptions of cause, stressors and supports, cultural identity, coping and help seeking, and the therapist–client relationship; add its supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: not verified, module wording not reproduced]. Record the client's own explanatory model.
  • Example language (illustrative): "How would you explain what has happened to you, and how would people in the teaching explain it? Does anyone in your family see it differently?"
  • Watch for: conflict between the client's own model and that of family or doctors; where the client places authority (founder, family, doctor); whether "Religious or spiritual problem" (ICD-10-CM Z65.8) fits better than a disorder [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Unbound Medicine].

Differential assessment without pathologising belief

  • Purpose and when: when beliefs are new, escalating, idiosyncratic or accompanied by functional decline. [synthesis]
  • Steps: separate a shared group belief (held by others in the movement, culturally intelligible) from psychotic content (personal, fixed, bizarre beyond the group's own teaching, with other symptoms); screen for mania (spending, grandiosity, reduced sleep), prolonged grief (persistent yearning, inability to accept the death), OCD (compulsive checking or repeating of codes, fear of mistakes), depression and suicidal ideation; take a collateral history with consent. [synthesis]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Do others in the teaching see this the same way you do, or is this something that has come to you personally?"
  • Watch for: belief in the founder's powers is not on its own evidence of psychosis; refer for psychiatric assessment when there are hallucinations, disorganisation, risk or sharp decline. [synthesis]

Grief work with clients who sought a resurrection

  • Purpose and when: for bereaved parents, partners or relatives who paid for, or still hope for, the return of someone who died; especially after traumatic or mass-casualty deaths. Prosecutors described the fraud as exploiting people's state of grief [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. The clinical method is [synthesis].
  • Steps: start with the person who died and the circumstances of the death, not the movement; assess traumatic grief, prolonged grief and suicide risk using your service's standard procedure; distinguish continuing bonds (an ongoing inner relationship with the dead person, rituals of remembrance, the client's own faith) from a bond that has become a paid project of physical return; explore the hope of return with compassion, including what it protected the client from feeling; when the client is ready, name the loss of that hope as a second bereavement; address guilt ("I should have known"), shame and anger at the founder or at themselves; build remembrance that costs nothing and belongs to the family; refer for specialist prolonged-grief or trauma-focused treatment where criteria are met [uncertain: not verified].
  • Example language (illustrative): "You loved her so much that you were willing to try anything to have her back. That says something about your love, not about your foolishness."
  • Watch for: yearning that does not ease, waiting for a return date, new payments, intrusive memories of the death, and any hopelessness or suicidal thoughts (follow your risk protocol at once). Working: the client speaks of the dead person in the past tense with less terror, and remembrance stops depending on the founder.

Health-decision support and coordination with the doctor

  • Purpose and when: whenever the client, or someone they care for, has a serious illness and is using or considering the teaching, codes or devices. The movement has offered healing of illness and, online, codes against disease [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006; RBTH 2021]. The method is [synthesis].
  • Steps: ask what illness, what treatment the doctor has advised, and whether the client is following it; do not advise on any medicine or treatment; ask consent to contact the treating doctor; help the client prepare questions for the doctor; separate "using the teaching alongside treatment" from "using it instead of treatment"; if the client chooses to decline treatment, check capacity concerns with the doctor and that the decision is informed and free of group pressure; for a child, follow child-protection procedures (see Section 5).
  • Example language (illustrative): "Many people use their faith alongside treatment. I want to be sure your doctor knows what you're doing, so you can decide together."
  • Watch for: missed appointments, stopped medicines, secrecy from the doctor, rapid deterioration. Working: the doctor is informed and the client feels their beliefs were respected.

Financial exploitation and dependency review

  • Purpose and when: when spending on seminars, individual sessions, books, licences or devices comes up, or a family raises it. Courts awarded civil damages to victims in the fraud case [source: Interfax 2010]; a psychiatrist quoted by RBTH warned believers may lose savings and homes [source: RBTH 2021]. The method is [synthesis].
  • Steps: make a simple, non-judgemental timeline of money spent and what was promised each time; note debts, sold property, loans from relatives; identify pressure (urgency, new levels, recruitment); explore what the client would want to keep and what they would stop; signpost to consumer-protection, debt advice and, where fraud is suspected, the police; respect the client's choice to continue while keeping risk in view.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Could we write down what you've paid and what you were told each time? Not to judge it, just so you can see it in one place."
  • Watch for: shame that stops disclosure; escalating spending after a setback; a sense that stopping will harm someone ("if I stop, she can't come back").

Family conflict work

  • Purpose and when: when spouses, adult children or parents disagree about the teaching, money or a relative's medical care. [synthesis]
  • Steps: meet individually first; hear each side's fear (for example losing a parent to illness versus losing the last hope); agree shared goals such as medical safety and keeping contact; avoid ultimatums and ridicule, which tend to push the member closer to the group; set clear lines where a dependent person's care is at stake.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You both want your father to live. You disagree about how. Can we start from what you agree on?"
  • Watch for: one member cut off; secrecy about money; children caught between parents.

Supporting young people who use codes from social media

  • Purpose and when: adolescents and young adults who picked up "cheat codes" online [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021]; method [synthesis].
  • Steps: explore with curiosity, not ridicule; ask what they hoped for and what happened; check for fear (some creators say codes have a spiritual cost [source: RBTH 2021]), compulsive repeating or checking, money spent on creators' products, and any health use; where OCD features are present, refer for exposure and response prevention as clinical OCD sources describe it [uncertain: not verified]; involve parents with the young person's assent where safety allows.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Lots of people your age have tried these. What made you try, and how has it felt since?"
  • Watch for: magical thinking that grows into anxiety, using codes instead of seeing a doctor, or the young person feeling foolish.

Leaving and religious or spiritual distress

  • Purpose and when: when a client wants to leave, has left, or is torn after the founder's conviction or a failed promise. [synthesis]
  • Steps: let the client set the pace; acknowledge what was good (community, hope, structure) as well as what hurt; work with loss of meaning, betrayal and anger; rebuild social ties outside the movement; offer contact with a faith community or leader of the client's choosing; consider whether "Religious or spiritual problem" (ICD-10-CM Z65.8) describes the focus [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Unbound Medicine].
  • Example language (illustrative): "You can grieve what you hoped for and still be angry about how it was sold to you."
  • Watch for: sudden loss of all support, intense guilt, depression, and pressure from remaining members.

Referral and role boundaries

  • Purpose and when: throughout. [synthesis]
  • Steps: decline any request to perform, endorse or test the practice; keep any personal spiritual practice entirely separate from therapy; self-disclose only for the client's benefit; refer to psychiatry for possible psychosis or mania, to medical care for any untreated illness, to specialist grief or trauma services, and to debt or legal advice; build spiritual and religious competence through training (Vieten et al. 2013 is a commonly cited framework [uncertain: not verified]).
  • Example language (illustrative): "I won't use the numbers with you here, because my role is different. What I can do is help you think through what they mean to you."
  • Watch for: your own reactions (contempt, fascination, rescue fantasies) and pressure to take sides in family disputes.

5. Handling problems

The sources describe the movement and the fraud case, not therapy, so all guidance in this section is [synthesis] unless a source is named.

  • The client will not discuss the teaching, or tests whether you will mock it: say plainly that you will not judge or try to talk them out of it, and that your interest is in how they are and what they want. Return to the presenting problem; the teaching usually comes up again once trust exists.
  • The client asks you to confirm the founder's powers, or to use codes in session: decline warmly, explain your role, and ask what it would mean if you agreed or did not. Do not debate.
  • A seriously ill adult is relying on concentrations or a device instead of treatment: stay calm and connected; ask consent to talk with the treating doctor; help the client hear the doctor's advice in full; check for group pressure and for capacity concerns with the doctor; document. Never advise on treatment yourself. The movement has offered healing of illness and online creators have promoted codes against disease [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006; RBTH 2021].
  • A child's medical care is being deferred or refused because of the teaching or codes: this is a safeguarding matter; follow your local child-protection procedure and consult your supervisor or safeguarding lead promptly; keep working with the parents' fear and hope while acting on the child's need.
  • A bereaved client is waiting for a return and becomes hopeless when it does not happen: assess suicide risk the same day using your standard procedure, involve supports and crisis services (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US; Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland; local crisis lines elsewhere), and treat the collapse of hope as a further loss. Follow safe-messaging principles when discussing deaths, especially deaths in a mass-casualty attack.
  • Family members want you to "deprogram" the client: decline coercive or confrontational approaches; offer family sessions focused on shared goals, safety and keeping contact; refer relatives for their own support if needed.
  • Overwhelm when the client learns of the conviction or of others' losses: slow down, ground the session, and allow ambivalence (grateful for the community, angry about the money). Avoid pushing the client to a verdict on the founder.
  • Non-adherence to therapy tasks because the teaching says illness or grief is a fault of consciousness: explore self-blame directly; separate personal responsibility from blame for a death or an illness.
  • Rupture after the client feels you dismissed the teaching: acknowledge it, repair ("I came across as judging, and I'm sorry"), and restate the stance.
  • Continued large payments during therapy: name the pattern you both see, revisit the money timeline, and offer debt or legal advice; respect choice while keeping safety visible.
  • Young person anxious that a code will bring harm: normalise, assess for OCD features, and refer for exposure-based treatment if indicated; avoid giving counter-rituals.
  • Your own reactions: notice contempt, fascination or rescue impulses, and take them to supervision; a client's past belief in resurrection is a grief response, not a character flaw.

Harm account

What was actually done

  • Background: Grigori Grabovoi ran his teaching through a foundation bearing his name from the mid-1990s, with paid lectures and seminars [source: Interfax 2010; NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Prosecutors said he trained people for money, then contracted regional organisations to run the teaching across Russia and took 10% of their income [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006].
  • Fees: according to prosecutors, in 2005 seminars of up to 500 people were charged a fixed fee per head, and individual sessions cost many times more [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Reuters reported that in 2003 a man paid about 39,500 roubles for an attempt to cure his dying parents, and that a woman paid 118,000 roubles for an attempt to resurrect her two dead sons [source: Reuters 2008].
  • Beslan: after the September 2004 school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which many children were killed, Grabovoi held seminars in the town and promised to resurrect pupils of the school who died, according to prosecutors' case reporting [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Reuters reported that he met mothers of the children killed and promised to resurrect them for a fee [source: Reuters 2008]. Interfax called this his most notorious promise [source: Interfax 2010]. This part of the story is contested: the Mothers of Beslan group denied that any member paid him [source: RFE/RL 2016]; Meduza reports that a 2005 press conference on the subject split the group, with most members disbelieving him [source: Meduza 2021]; a supporter on Radio Svoboda said the group told prosecutors he had made no such promise [source: Radio Svoboda 2008, supporter's claim, unverified]. Reuters reported that the 2008 verdict itself was not linked to the Beslan meeting [source: Reuters 2008].
  • Criminal case: Moscow prosecutors opened a fraud case on 20 March 2006 over services "including resurrection of the dead and curing of illnesses", after many complaints, some from Beslan residents [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. A prosecutor said the fraud was linked to exploiting people's state of grief [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Grabovoi was detained after a seminar at a Moscow hotel in April 2006; police said about 30 followers tried to prevent the arrest [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006].
  • Conviction: in 2008 Moscow's Tagansky District Court found Grabovoi guilty of 11 episodes of fraud and sentenced him to 11 years and a fine of one million roubles; civil claims by seven victims were partly upheld, with more than 270,000 roubles awarded for material damage [source: Interfax 2010]. Reuters reported the verdict in July 2008 [source: Reuters 2008]; Meduza dates the 11-year sentence to November 2008 [uncertain: sources differ on the month]. In October 2008 the Moscow City Court reduced the sentence to eight years and the fine to 750,000 roubles [source: Interfax 2010]; whether this was a retrial or an appeal ruling is [uncertain: not verified]. A court in Berezniki granted parole in May 2010, over prosecutors' objection [source: Interfax 2010]. In 2016 the European Court of Human Rights awarded him 2,500 euros because his pre-trial detention of more than two years breached the Convention; this ruling concerned detention, not the fraud finding [source: RFE/RL 2016].
  • Afterwards: he moved abroad, opened an education centre in Serbia and sold expensive devices claimed to stop ageing; in early 2020 he released number sequences presented as protecting against coronavirus; in 2021 his codes spread worldwide on TikTok [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021].

How it caused harm

  • Exploiting grief: the core mechanism, as the prosecutor framed it, was selling hope of physical return to people in acute grief [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006]. Clinically, a paid promise of resurrection can postpone acceptance of the death, add a second loss when the promise fails, and leave guilt and shame at having paid [synthesis].
  • Financial loss: courts found 11 episodes of fraud and awarded damages to victims [source: Interfax 2010]. A psychiatrist quoted by RBTH warned that believers may lose their savings and even their homes [source: RBTH 2021]. Psychologists quoted in 2006 described involvement as financially burdensome and dangerous to mental health [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006].
  • Hope sold at the end of life: the 2003 payment for an attempt to cure dying parents shows money and hope going to the founder at the end of a relative's life [source: Reuters 2008].
  • Delayed medical care [uncertain]: the services prosecuted included curing illnesses, and online codes have been promoted against disease, including coronavirus [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006; RBTH 2021]. Reliance on these instead of medical care risks delayed diagnosis and treatment [synthesis]. Documented individual cases of treatment refusal or death linked to the movement: none found in the sources consulted [uncertain: not verified]. Claims that devices were marketed for HIV and cancer appear only in a secondary summary [uncertain: secondary, unverified].
  • Harm to bereaved communities: public association of the Beslan families with the founder divided their organisation and exposed grieving parents to suspicion and publicity [source: Meduza 2021; RFE/RL 2016].
  • Who was most at risk: bereaved parents and relatives, people with serious illness and their families, older followers (Reuters described supporters as mainly older), and, since 2020, adolescents and young adults reached through social media [source: Reuters 2008; RBTH 2021].

Recognising it today

  • Names and phrases: "Grabovoi codes", "Grabovoi numbers", "cheat codes for the universe", the teaching "On Salvation and Harmonious Development", "eternal life for all", "prohibition of death" [source: RBTH 2021; Meduza 2021; epubli front matter].
  • Practices: writing sequences on the wrist or paper, tracing them in the air, keeping them on the skin for days; sequences offered for specific illnesses [source: RBTH 2021]. See tab 156.
  • Commercial features: paid seminars and individual sessions, licences and sub-licences to teach, costly devices, creators selling coaching or merchandise alongside codes [source: epubli front matter; NEWSru.co.il 2006; RBTH 2021].
  • Red flags in a group or practitioner: any offer to restore a dead person; any claim to treat cancer, HIV or another disease; fees that rise with need or grief; discouraging doctors; urgency and recruitment pressure [synthesis].
  • Red flags in a colleague: a therapist who uses number codes or "concentrations" as treatment, charges for them, or tells clients to rely on them instead of medical care [synthesis].
  • How legitimate practice differs: continuing-bonds work, remembrance rituals and faith-based coping accept that the person has died, cost nothing beyond ordinary care, and sit alongside medical treatment [synthesis].

What to do instead and how to help those harmed

  • Safer alternatives: for the bereaved, grief support and, where criteria are met, specialist prolonged-grief or trauma-focused treatment [uncertain: not verified]; for illness, the treating doctor and palliative care where appropriate; for spiritual needs, a faith community or leader of the client's choosing [synthesis].
  • Assessment of affected clients: traumatic and prolonged grief, depression, suicide risk, shame and self-blame, anger and betrayal, debts and losses, family rifts, and health conditions left untreated [synthesis].
  • Treatment considerations: put the loss first; treat paying for a resurrection as an act of love under extreme grief; avoid re-exposing details of a mass-casualty attack beyond what the client chooses; work on meaning and remembrance; involve family with consent [synthesis].
  • Ethical duties: stay in role, never perform or endorse the practice, avoid dual relationships, document medical-risk discussions [synthesis; APA Ethics Code for general scope].
  • Reporting and legal duties: follow child-protection law where a child's care is deferred; tell clients they may report suspected fraud to the police or consumer authorities, as the complaints that led to the 2006 case did [source: NEWSru.co.il 2006; synthesis for clinical routing]; duties differ by jurisdiction, so check local law and consult [synthesis].

Sources

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