Would you like to live for 250 years? Do you have a hankering to play musical instruments or perform open heart surgery, but have no time for years of study or practice? Maybe you would enjoy being able to rid yourself and others of all forms of disease, including cancer and AIDS? Well, you can. All you have to do is get in touch with your inner, cosmic self. And it only takes seven days.


So stated the participants in "The Teacher and the New Cosmic Thinking," a press conference sponsored by the International House of Folk Tradition. Organized in anticipation of Teachers' Day, which will be celebrated on Oct. 2, Wednesday's conference advocated a rather non-traditional approach to education in the 21st century.


Clearly, the new cosmically correct teacher will have more to worry about than the three "R"s.


"The teacher is responsible for creating the person of the future," proclaimed Albert Ignatenko, president of the International Academy of Psychoenergetic Sciences. "With the right teachers, our children will have tremendous powers."


And it is never too early to start the education process. Ignatenko boasted that his son, five weeks after conception, was already responding to commands from outside the womb, and by the age of five he could dissipate clouds with the force of his psychic energy.


"Any child could do this, with proper training," Ignatenko added modestly.


The proper training can be supplied by Ignatenko's school, which holds seven-day seminars in various locations around the world. "That is really all it takes," he smiled, in response to questions from incredulous journalists. "After seven days, a person is cleansed, his ego is gone. Anyone can do it."


According to Ignatenko, the 21st century earthling will have a much longer life span -- 200-250 years, and will be free of disease.


"The human organism will just reject disease; it will heal itself," said Valentina Vasilyeva, an artist who claims to be in touch with nine or more cosmic civilizations.


Vasilyeva, a physicist by profession, stated that she had corrected a congenital defect in the heart of a small girl by calling on her cosmic contacts for help. She also began, suddenly, to play the organ, although she had no prior training in music. And her paintings -- many of which depict non-earthly beings that bear more than a passing resemblance to Steven Spielberg's stranded alien E.T. -- she claims are merely photographs of those with whom she is in contact.


"I just pass on what the cosmos gives me," she said.


Both Vasilyeva and Ignatenko professed to have a special affinity to Sirius, a star that, according to Ignatenko, is particularly close to the Slavic soul.


"When Russians cross over," he said, studiously avoiding the word "die," "their souls normally go to Sirius." By "Russians," he added, he means those that stem from the Kievan Rus civilization -- a useful distinction, since Ignatenko himself is from Ukraine.


In fact, said Ignatenko, his presence at the press conference was due to a message he had received from Sirius -- a welcome boon to conference organizer Tatyana Lepina, who had been unable to reach him by phone from Moscow.


Both Vasilyeva and Igantenko are adamant that Russia is on a special plane of spiritual development -- much higher than its Western neighbors.


"Everything that America or France, say, have attained in the spiritual realm they owe to Russia," he proclaimed.


Other participants in the press conference included Viktor Solovyev, an art specialist from Sergiyev Posad, who runs a toy museum there. He presented his charming wooden dolls, which, he said, bring a spiritual and aesthetic stability to children that Barbie cannot ever hope to match, and made a plea for funding and support. He then looked on, seemingly a bit bemused, as his more astral colleagues expounded their theories.