To die is to go where you came from. What is there? It must be good, judging by the wonderful beings that come from there, the children.
I pray like this: thank you, Lord, because you have revealed to me that it is possible to live in You. I don't want and can't live another life.
How to make me remember that the most important, even the only thing in life is freedom from the darkness (evil) that hides God, and not my happiness, success, approval received from peers for my deeds?
We have no way of knowing which of the manifestations of the divinity of the soul, a kind word spoken to a foolish man who has offended you, or a complete philosophical system, will have consequences, and what they will be.
... For the oppressed, for the vast number of workers, resistance to evil, acceptance of violence and participation in it are a gross prejudice, as are fasting, rosary and all other self-torture.
But what to do? Only irreligious people ask this question. The religious know what to do: to realize the kingdom of God in themselves and not to think about others. The misfortune of irreligious people is that they teach others.
I used to think that intellect (understanding) was the main quality of the human soul. It was a mistake and I vaguely felt it. Intellect is only the instrument of liberation, of manifesting the essence of the soul, of love.
I know that I will not see the consequences of my calling, but I know strongly, with greater certainty than death, that these consequences will come. They will not come in the sense that a certain order of life will be established that we predicted or that we wanted, but in the sense that the foolishness and evil in which the people of the Christian world now live will disappear. So it shall be, I know it with greater certainty than that of death, surely so it shall be, I am convinced.
The true, essential movement of life, the release of the God of love, is not and cannot be seen as sleep. You can't know when you fell asleep. You can will to sleep and, remembering, know that you have slept, but you cannot have the consciousness of the fulfillment of your desire, as you have in the case of carnal desires. Likewise, enlightenment, in the sense of liberation from the darkness that hides the God of love, is found in perfection. But I cannot have the consciousness of the true movement of life, because I am not the one who carries it out, but the Whole, who dwells in everything.
The lowest level is the life lived for fleshly lusts, to please the flesh, the second level is for the approval of men, to please men, the third for the reward of God, to please the God of besides you, the fourth, above all I know, the life lived only to please God in you.
Yes, just like you don't know when and how you fell asleep, you also don't know when and how you were born. And as in sleep, so in life you begin to believe more and more in what presents itself separately from the Whole. And, just like in sleep, you believe more and more and finally you wake up, that is, you lose the personality that lived in sleep and you enter the state in which you were before sleep, but not in the same state, but in a higher one, because you got older, got smarter, better.
The life of each of us does not mean one organization or another, but the general good, not the personal. The general good cannot be achieved by organization, which involves quarrels, malice, violence, but only by love. The important thing is that this is possible, it is in my power, it is part of my nature, and that organization is not even in my power and is also contrary to my nature.
There was a time when there were no states, but there were peoples who governed themselves. Why should we think it will be forever the same? Each of us sucked at our mother's breast, then played, then learned, then married, then worked, educated our children, then grew old, became wise, left everything behind, etc.
Belief in love as the supreme law of life does not exclude the joys of life. You can play, dance, do everything that is not against love by LOVING.
The supreme moral law is law and means something only if no other law can be considered above it, more binding than it.
I recognize in myself the same unknown, X, the force of life, which I recognize in everything and with particular clarity in the beings who are most like me. I call this life force God. I can live in it without being aware of this force, I can be aware of it and live in it. The difference between these two ways of life is that in the first case they live a limited life, surrounded by hostile beings; in the second case I live, besides my limited life, the life of all similar, appropriate beings, having more and more the consciousness of the force of their life and love.
If the laborer will not see his work completed, nor its fruits, he knows that he will not be rewarded for his work, nor punished if he does not do it. If he's a good worker, he'll do it anyway. My work is my life, and the last stage, death, is part of it. Do your job well.
Life is the raising of consciousness. In this consists life and its good. Increase can only take place in this world in space and time. I say in this world because life, therefore consciousness, can increase and increase infinitely, approaching God (Nirvana), and in this approach it can cross universes, that is, states in which limitation and increase occur under conditions other than space and the time.
I want to live in God, and not in my bodily "I", Leo Tolstoy. What this means? That I want to replace the consciousness of Leo Tolstoy with the consciousness of all mankind, even of everything that is alive. And this consciousness I call God. But this consciousness is not Everything, it is not the whole God, but only one of His manifestations that is accessible to me.
Space, time, body and form originate in my inability to know everything as it is. I can only know what is in motion and separately. As I cannot know the globe except when it turns and shows me all its faces, so I cannot know men, animals, and plants except in their movement and delimitation. The first, that is, movement, gives time and space, the second, delimitation, gives body and form.
But what will it be? The question arises only because we have become accustomed to prejudice the way in which we order our lives. Are we, trying to order our lives the way we want, succeed at least in part? Despite our best efforts, life does not turn out the way we want and imagine.
But what will become of me if, among those who fight, among the wicked, I will be the only one who does not resist? Same prejudice. That was about ordering other people's lives, this is about ordering my life. We can never know what our life together or our life apart will be like. The very possibility of death intervening at any moment makes these things impossible to know. Sorting and unsorting my separate life, I know it won't be the way I want it. Only one thing about life is in my power. Namely, her change from the inside, the growing approach to moral perfection. This important and necessary change in my life is always in my power.
What a delusion people are in when they make every effort to make changes in their lives that are not in their power, to order the lives of others, and for the sake of this false order they deprive themselves of that order of life that is always in their power and is she the only one able to influence other people's lives? I don't know and I have no way of knowing what will happen to me, good or bad, what events will happen. I know for sure that it is always good to live morally, both for myself and for everyone else. And, knowing this, will I sacrifice what is just for what is unjust?
There is the self-consciousness of the spiritual essence and the consciousness of limits, which at the beginning of life is regarded as "me." This second consciousness, of limits, encloses, hides the first consciousness, that of spirituality. It seems that awareness of limits is self-awareness. The whole of life is the clearing of the consciousness of the spiritual essence, the liberation from the deception of the recognition of limits. For one who has the full consciousness of his spiritual essence, death is liberation from the limits that constrain it.
Nothing more confirms the indestructibility, the timelessness of your essence, nothing more promotes the quiet acceptance of death than the thought that in dying I do not enter a new state, but only return to that state, devoid of time, space, body, form, in which I was and from which I came in this life. (I expressed myself well.) I cannot even say: in the state in which I was, but in that which is as much my own as that in which I find myself now.
Der langen Rede kurzer Sinn. * The cause of all misfortunes is the prejudice of the possibility of organizing society through violence. The cause of prejudice is the backwardness of faith, an activity already devoid of a wise basis. The cause of the backsliding of faith is the lack of understanding of the religion that corresponds to the age of mankind and is accessible to it. And that is why deliverance from misfortunes depends on understanding the faith that corresponds to the age of mankind, the faith in the supreme law of love.
Socialists make two main mistakes, in addition to the other mistakes, two mistakes that destroy all their arguments. The first is the hypothesis that industrial production concentrated in certain places will remain unchanged even under the conditions of economic freedom of the workers. In reality, the need for weapons, rifles, fortresses, luxuries, railroads, and other items produced now will disappear. Therefore, industrial production, which has always been a burden to people and only appeared under the conditions of the lack of freedom that gave birth to capitalism, will not only not grow, but will disappear. People will no longer live the torturous life in the cities, but will live freely, naturally and joyfully on earth and will not need capital. Technical progress will bring with it inventions that will facilitate production, and manual labor will no longer be necessary... The second mistake is that the socialist order needs administrators. Where will they get people to organize the just socialist order without violent abuses?
Consciousness is the investigation of one's own spiritual being, knowledge is the investigation of everything that is external. One is always at the expense of the other. The bigger one of them, the smaller the other. Memory and thinking effort are in the same ratio: the greater the one, the less the other. As in a limited container. And because it is one for both, they are almost always mingled together, and the one is taken for the other; the higher the memory, the lower the thinking effort, and vice versa. About a man with a good memory it is said: he is smart, about a person who thinks original, but has a poor memory, it is said: he is stupid!
Consciousness is the research of the spiritual essence, knowledge is the research of the body, matter. Consciousness is the science of the ideal of perfection and the relationship between you and it. This is where moral perfection springs from. Knowledge is the science of the material world, inaccessible under the conditions of time and space, of their boundlessness, and therefore nothing springs from it.
The essence of Christ's teaching, the filiation from God, this participation in the Divine life, has been lost.