The consciousness of separation, I thought, leads, through the sense of touch, to the concept of impenetrability. And the concept of impenetrability leads to the concept of matter. I would like to clarify these things. But it's still not clear to me.
... I need three prayers, three warnings for myself, who I am, what is my own, and what I must do. First and foremost: 1) If I love, I know that You are in me and I am in You. And that's why I want to love them always and everyone with thought, word, deed. Second: 2) I want not to think about the judgment of people, but to do only what I can and must do before me, the living in You. Third: 3) The external events of the future are a mystery to me, but I know that they are done according to Your will, and therefore I do not want to wish for one or the other for the future, knowing that what is done according to Your will is always good.
In all things, not my will, but Your will be done. I do not want to desire and expect anything from the future, neither success, nor worldly glory, nor bodily powers, nor life itself. I want only one thing: to be in You and with You, to love always and everyone with thought, word and deed.
May what happens to me be not according to my will, but according to Your will. I wish for the future neither success, nor worldly glory, nor bodily powers, nor prolongation of life. I want only one thing: to be in You and to have Your consciousness in me, I want to love everyone in thought, word and deed.
I am still not satisfied with the form of the prayer. It's the evening of the 9th. I want to express myself differently: I don't want anything for the future, knowing that everything will be good, I don't want people's praise either, knowing that my purpose is not in people's love for me, but in my love for them, love with deed, with word, with thought.
... It is not true that the temptation of worldly glory leaves a man at the moment of death, often it is the other way around, in these moments it intensifies, as in all vain heroic deeds. Vanity is the driving force in almost everything. Yes, vanity, the thought of worldly glory is one of the main obstacles to devoting your life to the service of the spiritual foundation outside of you and within you: from outside you understanding more and more clearly His requirements, and from you subordinating your life more and more to these requirements.
I know that I am dying, and in view of death I can desire nothing outward in the life from which I depart. Nor can I desire the praise of men, because it is of no use to the dead. I can't help but wish for one thing: to always love everyone the same with thought, word, deed, at any moment and until the last moment.
I just thought about something very important for me: I still want, I don't know if it's from old habit or from the nature of the human soul, I want to pray, to address Someone, God. Lately, trying to define my God, I came to recognize the impossibility of a relationship with Him, to deny Him for reason, but the need is alive. Lord, You, You are everything and I am your cloudy manifestation in the body, in the body separated from All, You - All, in Your complete perfection, help me. I say this and I feel better. I don't know who it is that I am asking to help me, but I know that He exists, the more, more sincerely, more fervently I beg Him to help me, the more I feel this help. Yes. Help me to free myself from the body, to merge with You, and I feel that You are already helping me, and I would like to say that I love You, but "I love" is not the right word. My feeling towards You is neither so hot as love, nor so narrow, carnal. It's not love. In love there is the desire for good, and here there is only the desire for union.
I've been composing a short prayer and I'm still praying the long prayer I composed. It's not good. Prayer cannot be one and the same for all days and all hours. Today I need "help". And sometimes I need "thank you". Sometimes only contemplation is needed, and sometimes the remembrance of Him and Himself.
The wise man can only hope and expect one thing: death.
In life we must not wait for the future, but prepare for life in the present.
We tiny separate creatures, with our random external senses (there may be millions of different senses; we see how different they are in animals), create the world through these senses, a world recognizable to us, with microscopic animals and heavenly bodies, and we live with the complete conviction that the world is really like this and only like this. How stupid! Not to mention the fact that this world is absurd in infinite past and future time and infinite space, with infinite bits of matter and equally infinitesimal particles of matter, that is, it is absolute nonsense. Not to mention that (isn't it obvious?) what we call the world of existence really is the product of the senses of a creature gifted by chance with exceptional senses, man. So the world we imagine as the only one existing is only one of countless possible ones. And we know that it is so because we know from participating in it that there is another world that does not depend on certain senses, the spiritual world, one and only one. We cannot say that we know this other world, but we can and must say that it exists. And it is a great blessing to know that she exists.
Care for worldly glory, for the opinion of men, is not one of the human weaknesses, one of the temptations, as some think, no, it is the temptation of temptations. Almost all, if not all, human sins are based on it: wealth, erudition, desire for power, irritation, hatred, despair, all proceed from it. In order to feel the full damaging importance of this terrible temptation, we come to imagine the life freed from it, the life devoted to the fulfillment of God's will, completely free from the care of the judgment of men. Imagine this life vividly in every circumstance, and you will have the image of an amazing freedom, as yet untried, and the consciousness of your human and divine purpose.
About ..freedom of will". How incorrect it is to talk about "free will". But it was as if someone had freed himself from something. Freedom of light, freedom of gravity. What we call freedom of will is life itself, what we call life, but in fact we cannot call it in any way. Dead men understand by freedom of will that life which they have lost and of which they have but a vague recollection.
I remembered how Solovyov had laughed at my assertion that the earth does not revolve, but the sun moves, and I thought that it is indisputably wiser to suppose, to think, and to say that the sun moves, than that the earth spins. The first statement is indisputable, common to all and definitively confirmed by the senses, the second is a conclusion of reason, which in the first place is not accessible to all, secondly, it is not a definitive reasoning, but leads to an even smaller field accessible to all, that of infinite and unfinished, unclear reasonings.
I feel the approach of death, and if dying is what I felt yesterday and partly today, then it is one of the best states I have been through in this life.
For the law of love to be at the foundation of life, we must believe in it just as we believe in the law of violence.
Life is the longing towards merging with the beginning of everything, with God, so how can he fear death who understands the true meaning of life? How can he be afraid of what fulfills His purposes?
Dying, you feel what an abandoned child feels when he returns to a beloved and loving mother.
Death is the cessation of life in space and time. For him who lacks the consciousness of life outside of space and time, it is the end of everything.
To love God and your neighbor means to love all that is boundless in yourself, and all that is bounded in others.
Yes, God created the world, but not another God, but that God that was in me. He made the whole world visible.
I read in the newspaper about the executions, about the crimes that led to the executions and the corruption of the church became so clear to me. A corruption under the cover of Christianity, by perverting the mind, and the state, by legislating, not only justifying, but also by extolling pride, ambition, greed, humiliating people and especially any kind of violence, murders during wars and executions . It would seem that it is so clear, but no one sees, does not want to see this. And they, all of them, church and state alike, though they see how evil proliferates, continue to produce it. As if some people who only know how to have land and have only the tools for plowing, who can survive only by their work, by plowing, would plow the field where the grain is already growing. If in their time church and state were necessary, in our times they are manifestly harmful and corrupt.
Leaving aside the many other benefits of old age: long experience, freedom from voluptuousness (a great benefit), forgetfulness, indifference, tranquility, the greatest "benefit", or at any rate one of the greatest, is that you no longer nothing for your corporeal person, knowing that soon it will be no more. Thus, for me it is very important to know that I will not hear praise, I will not know anything about the impressions that the written ones will produce. So I can only write before God, thinking that only before Him, the One who sent me here, my work is pleasant, it is good.
The idea that one of the main causes of the misfortunes that humanity is going through is inertia, the acceptance of some forms of life that are already obsolete: the church, the state, science, is being formulated more and more clearly and insistently. To plow over the grain, to put on, as an adult, children's clothes and tear them, sew them back, adjust and not understand that they are no longer needed, that they must be thrown away and new ones made.
You can only give yourself importance if you forget about God and your relationship with Him. However important and useful you may be to people, who are you before God? And what is the difference between you and the man who seems most insignificant to you?
It is not given to us to know the importance, the significance of the consequences of our actions. A kind word spoken to a drunken beggar can have more important and better consequences than the most wonderful work in which he accurately formulates the laws of life. And that is why in choosing our actions we cannot be guided by the consequences we assume, but only by the moral dignity that the action has for us.
The religious consciousness of people is constantly moving in the direction of clarification, simplification, accessibility. And in the meantime, people value, pass on to one another, and consider unalterable above all the external forms, which are not subject to either simplification or clarification, and consider equally unalterable the foundations that must change anyway.
The peasant thinks with his mind what he should think about, but the intellectual thinks with the mind of another and what he should not think about at all. But the peasant thinks like this only while he is at home, in his environment. As soon as he joins the intelligentsia, he begins to think with another's mind and speak with other's words.
The fact that we live badly and the nature of this evil has been talked about and is still being talked about, we have no reason to repeat it. We need to think about how to right the wrong. And the only means to correct it is kindness to all and severe judgment to oneself, the religion of kindness, love, love, love.