People who consider themselves religious are not religious, the learned are not learned, the good are not good, the refined are not refined.
You will never be able to be happy enough that you are judged, blamed, gossiped about and cannot deny. Nothing returns you better to true life for the soul, for God, to life in love.
It would be a far more revolting injustice if, as some learned people believe, man could not know the meaning of life and could not manage without the study of complex and difficult sciences that require time, than if one has millions and another is barefoot .
Religious and scientific activity are incompatible. If you take care of one you neglect the other.
Simplicity is the indispensable condition and sign of truth.
What I begin to feel (as Christ said, sometimes you will see Me and sometimes you will not see Me) is a strange and happy release from the body, I feel only my life, my spiritual being, a kind of indifference to everything temporal, and I have the quiet, firm consciousness that my existence is true. Actually, I can't express this clearly, at least I don't know how to do it now.
Same thing, but from a different perspective. Sometimes I don't feel my body, but I feel my life and that of other beings.
The source of what we call consciousness is the contradiction between the demands of the spirit and the demands of the body, the consciousness of our imperfection. A perfect being cannot have consciousness.
If only the body existed without the requirements of the spirit, we would not have the consciousness of the existence of the body, the body would not exist, and if there were only the spirit, likewise, we would not have the consciousness of it, there would be no spirit.
We are like animals, we want to do good to those who do us good, and evil to those who do us harm. As intelligent beings, we should do the opposite. Those who do us harm, those who are evil, need good the most. Those who do harm to anyone, not just us, are the ones most in need of good.
The reward of good deeds is always promised and expected in the future, in eternity. She, the reward, really is in eternity, in the present, in the moment outside of time.
If the purpose of life is perfection, man can never be good. And that is why resignation is the indispensable condition of life.
Only when you truly love God, meaning everyone, and know the good that this love brings, only then can you not pity people, bad people, and you can, by pitying them, truly love them.
Love gives joy only if it is complete, divine, if you love everyone, that is, you love God and do not expect any reward from God or from people, if no one knows it. As soon as even a single person appears whom you do not love, or the care of being praised, the care that love is useful to you, the good of love disappears. (Madness in Christ.)
When you know the good that love gives, you cannot hold a grudge, you cannot judge the man without love, you cannot not pity him. Then everything becomes clear, simple, and you can only pity Nicholas, Stolîpin, Bülow *, Rockefeller more than beggars or the sick.
To love our enemies, to do good to those who do us harm is not an act of bravery, but only the natural start of one who has understood the essence of love. Doing good to those who love, loving those who love is not love and does not bestow that special and unique good of love. Good is given only by love towards people who do us harm or harm us in general.
Love brings joy only when it is divine love, meaning love towards everything, in deeds and especially in thoughts.
People express their consciousness of their spirituality in the most strange and unexpected ways: consciousness manifests itself first of all in the idea of God, then in the immortality of the soul after death, then in resurrection, in revival, then even in the recognition of eternal matter. In all these ways the effect is taken as the cause. Man is aware that within himself there is a timeless, nonspatial being, and he attributes these attributes to God; and also from this consciousness he draws the conclusion of the endless life beyond the grave, or of the resurrection, or of the eternity of matter.
I started to forget more and more often. Today I slept a lot and waking up I had a completely new feeling that I am freeing myself from my person: it is amazingly good! If only I could free myself from everything. Waking up from sleep, dreams are an example of liberation.
My mood is getting better. The spiritual life, the inner life, the spiritual work replaces the carnal life more and more, and I feel better and better in my soul. What seems like a paradox, that old age, the nearness of death and death itself are good, is an undoubted truth. I feel it.
Christianity is not at all, as some think, disobedience to government, but obedience to God.
No matter by what means people try to get rid of violence, there is one sure way to get rid of it: violence.
Either we make an intellectual effort, stop obeying governments and recognize the necessity of obedience to God, or we continue to live as we live. But if we choose this last path, we must keep in mind what has been revealed, that we inevitably step towards the destruction of body and soul.
I asked myself why am I writing this? Isn't it just a personal desire to get something for myself? And I can firmly answer that no, if I write it's only because I can't keep silent and I would consider it bad to keep silent, just as I would consider it bad not to try to stop some children from falling into the abyss or under train wheels.
The attitude towards my words could be one of indifference, if I were to say something made up by me, something that may or may not happen, but that destruction I am talking about cannot but happen, it will happen without fail. You might ponder, you might follow my exhortation or not, if for it you should do something dangerous, difficult, shameful, humiliating, contrary to human nature; but, on the contrary, what I urge you to do is free from danger, easy, noble, and corresponds to the conscience of human dignity and nature.
They say: if we are so stupid that we do not resist evil, we do not prepare to fight back, the Japanese, the Chinese, the pagans will come, enslave us and beat us. But that law of love for all, in the name of which we will not fight and we will not arm ourselves, is not our personal fantasy, but the supreme law of life, which is found in the souls of all people. The Chinese and the Japanese know this law, just like we do, only it's perverted. People have only to see the possibility of applying this law in life, and they, whether Japanese, or Chinese, or wild blacks, will appropriate the law. And if they don't want it, they will enslave us and beat us, it will be incomparably better than if we beat them.
The good life of nations is possible only to the extent that the people who make them up lead a good life. However, revolutions provoke in people, in addition to the shortcomings above, the most unbearable trinity of sins, incompatible with the good life: pride, envy, malice. The condition of the people can be improved, on the contrary, only by the non-intervention of the people in the affairs of power.
It talks about the immortality of the soul, the life to come, what we need to know about it for true life. How stupid! You have been given the possibility of ever-increasing good here, now; what do you want? Only he who does not know and does not want to find this good can talk about the future life. And what, I pray thee, is what we call the future life? The notion of future refers to time. And time is only the condition of consciousness in this life. To talk about the next life, when this life is over, is like talking about what form a piece of ice will take when it melts, or when, once transformed into water, its component parts will turn into steam. Besides, what need do I have of my life in the future, when all my spiritual life is only in the present? Life is in love, the love of people and of God. Neither one nor the other perishes with my death. Death is only the cessation of the separation of my consciousness.
Memory is a connection with the past, love is a connection with the present. Decreases connection with the past, memory, therefore increases connection with the present. You cannot master both, the greater the first, the lesser the second. And vice versa. Complete destruction of memory and complete union with the present through love is death.
God is not love. We call Him love only because He manifests Himself in people through love.