About memory. I almost completely lost my memory. The past is gone. In the future I do not expect or wish for (almost) anything. Is there anything better? I feel this great good. How can I not ceaselessly thank God for this wonderful, free, happy life?!
After Death. Sleep is like death, with the difference that you wake up and fall asleep in this life, and when you're born you don't know what life you came from, when you die you don't know what life you're going to.
What is religion? why do you live I do not know. And if you don't know even that, you'll never know what to do and what not to do. And he who does not know this does not live well. That's why, since people have existed in the world, they have thought about the meaning of life and, understanding it, they have taught their fellows what they should and should not do. This teaching is called faith.
The Indians say that only their Brahmin faith is true, the Chinese say that only the Buddhist faith is true, the Tartars, Turks and Persians say that only the faith in Muhammad is true, the Jews say that the truth is in their faith, the Christians say that all these faiths are false , and the only right one is the Christian one, but they themselves are divided into all kinds of faiths: Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Lutheran and various Protestant faiths. True faith is only that which is one for all men. And this necessary for all exists in all faiths. Only this thing is true and we must take it into account.
If you ask people they will tell you what year you were born and how old you are. But of yourself you cannot say when you began to be: of yourself you know that you have always existed, that if you had not been, nothing would have been. The same about death: people say you will die, but you know you cannot die. Your body began to be, it grows, it will grow old, it will die, but that which is not corporeal and lives in your body, the spirit of God, cannot die.
I felt to-day, as I was painfully conscious of my weakness, the wretchedness of caring for worldly glory. I strongly felt the importance of my previous work, in its good minutes. I had something to go back to. Yes, that is true prayer. To trace, to blaze a path of the best thoughts, of all that is best, highest, accessible to me in the best minutes of understanding life! Then, in the less good minutes, to take shelter under this understanding. Today I understood this with all clarity. I fell very low and saved myself with great joy through the previous, already known, free, happy state of communication only with Him, through the consciousness that I am one of His members. O You who helped me to escape, help me to remain in this condition!
If you do not act against His will and against the will of your true self, you will do only those necessary and good deeds that you can do. Everything we consider important, even bringing people to the path of true life of love and goodness, however important and obvious it may seem, is derisive. Ridiculous, in the first place, compared to that life which we vaguely glimpse, of which we are a part, even if infinitely small, and which we serve with our lives, and, in the second place, because, in our limitation, we do not we can see how to serve.
Yes, our service is valid only when we do not know what it consists in, but we only know what we should not do. (January 20)
We will do all kinds of things whether we want to or not. Our effort is directed only towards not acting against His will, towards not deviating from the path.
The most obvious, beneficial and rational activity, full of self-sacrifice for the good of people, not only revolutionary, but spreading the religious truth that we consider indubitable, can be not only futile, but also harmful, if not contrary, at least in disagreement with His will. (The Lord's ways are impenetrable.) Restraint from the smallest deeds, in the narrowest circle, may be just what He wants and the most important thing for what He wants in Himself and in my soul.
Anticipation, conjecture, desire to see your thoughts spread, increase the number of fellow-ideas, desire to write something that would attract sympathy, praise, all these are inauspicious for life. We need nothing but to remember our present position as an organ of the Godhead.
Let us only remember the complexity of the worldly events in which men participate to clearly understand the folly, the futility, and the perniciousness of assuming that they serve the common cause.
Yesterday the bishop came by and I spoke to him openly, but very carefully, I did not speak to him about the sins of his institution. And I should have done it... [...] He obviously wanted to convert me, and if he didn't succeed, then to destroy me, to reduce my harmful influence, in their opinion, on faith in the church. I felt very embarrassed that he asked me to let him know when I was going to die. If they don't snort something to make people think I "repented" before death. And therefore I declare, though I think I repeat myself, that I cannot go back to church, take communion before death, just as I cannot before death speak dirty words or look at obscene pictures. That is why everything they will say about my penance before death and communion is a lie. I say this because there are people for whom, according to their religious conviction, communion is an important religious act, the manifestation of longing for God. For me, any such external action, such as communion, would be a denial of the soul, of the good, of the teaching of Christ, of God.
The problem is that man first of all knows himself, his "I", and finds this "I" chained by spatial and temporal limits, and by observing and studying spatial and temporal phenomena, he comes to recognize at first separate beings like himself, organisms , and then to recognize beings that are not separate, but merged into one: crystals, molecules, atoms. And, naturally, he sees in them that spatial and temporal limit that separates him. One stumbles into the meaninglessness of infinity by recognizing the universe as an object whose center is everywhere and whose limits are nowhere. That is, starting from the most known thing, from himself and from his consciousness, the rational man unwittingly first comes to the knowledge of those that are close to him, then of those that are farthest away, and, finally, he acquires the consciousness of the inconceivable. Materialists, however, start from observation and, reaching atoms, the infinity of universes, they do not stop there, but from atoms and the infinity of universes, that is, from what is impossible to know, they reach the knowledge of the knowable, that is, the self.
... Just as I was instilled from childhood to channel all my energy into the bravery of hunting and war, we can instill in children to direct all their energy into self-struggle, into increasing love.
I just threw a book on the shelf, it slipped, fell on the floor, I got angry and cursed the book. Just as evident and shameful must be the anger directed at the man who does not do what I want.
The life of which I am aware is by no means the life of my "I". I am an illusion necessary for this life, and the illusion is like the forest, the scaffolding, the work tools. But it's not work. On the contrary, the transfer of interest to the "I" destroys, stops the work. And work brings not only benefit and good, but also joy. What does it consist of? It is not given to us to know it to the end, but in part, as much as it is necessary, it can be seen. Real work is where you do the right thing, but not for yourself.
Reason, to which we attribute a decisive, supreme importance, not only has no such importance for real life, but has none. It is necessary only for the life of the "I". Reason is important and obligatory only here, among humans, but if we imagine life after death, not only can we imagine it without the guidance of reason, but we must imagine it that way. There another guide will take the place that reason occupies here.
Thinking about what will be after death, we think about what we cannot think about. We think temporally, i.e. with the participation of time in the state that will be outside of time. For time is only a form of our life, and so is space. And we will leave it behind.
Even in this life there is something timeless and nonspatial about our activity, and this something is the most necessary, important and beneficial thing. We are so used to space and time that even when we imagine life after death we transfer it there.
Time does not exist. There is my life. And it is only written in time. There is the composition, but there are no lines, letters. It is only written with lines and letters. The fact that a good composition is written in lines and letters in no way proves that the future lines and letters of the book will continue the composition or form a similar composition.
Time, space and matter are delusion, and my self is delusion (not delusion, but fiction, dream), and life exists and my participation in it is not delusion, in life, I do not say eternal, but outside of time and space. And the fact that I will not live in the body after death, and that my "I" will not exist, not only does not diminish my belief in life after death, but strengthens it. What I call and am conscious of as my "I" is outside of time, it is the only thing that really exists, I cannot say that it is a part, because the part presupposes the concepts of space and matter, but it is life itself.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that our life is something other than the mere consciousness of our separateness, what we call our "I," and something more than the mere consciousness of the life of the whole. To be separate, there must be that thing from which we feel separate. And this something from which we feel separated cannot be understood otherwise than as infinite in a material sense inseparable from us in a spiritual sense. This inseparable from us is what we call God. If we allowed ourselves to ascribe, as we are wont, intentions to this God, then He would grant us this separation and the consciousness of our spiritual inseparability from the whole, would grant us life and its good. Death is the cessation of the consciousness of separation. What is it replaced with? Is this consciousness destroyed? One thing is certain: this self-consciousness cannot be destroyed, because it is the only one that exists. Outside of it there is nothing.
It's evening. I keep thinking about what I wrote this morning. Yes, if we have the consciousness of our separation, it is because we were (the words "were" are inaccurate, because it expresses time, when in fact it is about timelessness) unseparated, or rather the fact that we feel separated is an illusory or "temporal" consciousness ", but in reality we do not cease to be one with the whole (in religious language this means that God lives in us). This simultaneous separation and non-separation give us power, freedom, omnipotence, give us life and its good. Therefore, death is only the destruction of the illusory, temporal consciousness of separation. We do not know if it will be replaced by another consciousness, we cannot know and we must not know, because this science would destroy the freedom of our life.
I also wanted to add that activity in the name of non-separation consciousness is the ultimate activity, always free and the source of good. But the activity in the name of consciousness of separation is always full of sufferings, fears, unsatisfied desires.
I wanted to write more and that, willy-nilly, I am forced to believe that a glory was created for me, unbecoming of me, as an important, "great" man and writer. And this position obliges me. I feel that I have been given a mouthpiece which might have been in the hands of others, more entitled to use it, but it is volens nolens with me, and I would be to blame if I did not use it well. Lately, it seems that I use it more for empty chatter and repeating the same old things. We will try.
It is clear that what really exists appears to me as an infinite sphere only because I, like every man, not only contemporary, but also like those who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, perceive myself as the center from which infinite rays start. Only this something which appears to me as a sphere, but which can have no form, only this really exists, I and the worms are imagined, that everything is material. The whole material world is only imagined. Matter without limits is an absurdity, contradictio in adjecto. Truly there is only something spiritual, from which I feel separate.
Life has four stages: the first animal, the infant; the second imitation, listening to the urge to "do what everyone else does", childhood; the third step, youth, is for worldly glory; the fourth, for the soul, for God, the true life. All four remain for life. The second, tradition, inertia, hypnosis, do what everyone else is doing, is the main engine of 99% of human activity in the family, social skills, state and religion.
Prayer: I would like to ask God for help. But no one has seen God anywhere, that is, we cannot understand God. We cannot understand him, but we can communicate through love with him. If we love, we are in him, and He is in us. So let us love everyone, both near and far, and those who love us and those who hate us. We will always love everyone in thought, word, and deed. Here is God's help, here is the ultimate good that He gives us.
I would like God's help. But only through love can I understand God. If I love, then He is in me and I am in Him. And that's why I will love everyone, always, with thought, with word, with deed. Only in this love will I receive God's help.