In all of us there are two "I's", the corporeal one, made up of the union of body and consciousness, so bodily life, and consciousness alone, that is spiritual life. In children, spiritual life manifests itself, when it manifests itself, with all purity, without the participation of the mind and its fruits, temptations, that is why it is so sympathetic.
One of two, either we live in time and space, and guide our activity according to what will be and external material conditions, and then we fear, hope, always make mistakes and suffer, or we live only in the present and for the spiritual principle, for soul, and we guide our activity according to the law of the spiritual principle of the soul, love, and then we live without fear, disappointment, mistakes or suffering. Life does not let us live one way or the other to the end. Life is life only if the spiritual principle overcomes matter, and this victory is life itself.
The love of God and the consciousness of God are like the gravity of the earth and the attraction of the earth to a greater center, and of that to an even greater center, and so ad infinitum. Love towards fellow humans, towards animals is also an attraction of objects subject to the universal law of gravitation. We know God like we know gravity. As we know gravity by its law, so we know God by His law, the law of love. The law of love of God is like the law of gravitation to the common center of gravity, and the law of attraction between separate material objects is like the law of love between separate living beings. Just as we do not know and cannot even imagine the common center of attraction, so we cannot know or imagine God. But just as this incomprehensible center undoubtedly exists, so also is the existence of God beyond doubt.
The devil of pride is so cunning and cunning, that as soon as you begin to judge yourself with the greatest sincerity and see all your wickedness, he is already present and begins to whisper to you: Behold, see how good you are, not as others, you are humble and condemn yourself, you are good.
We have been educated to understand through religion a certain exact image of God and His law, therefore we do not accept an incomprehensible but certain God, nor His commandments which are not written in books, but in our hearts. But only in this incomprehensible God and in His commandments written on our hearts is actually religion, the only true religion.
When you meet a man there should be only a feeling of joy and gratitude because the possibility of union arises.
Patriotism is impossible for the man who wisely believes in anything at all.
Life is so full of contradictions in relation to everything we think and feel that we need the giddiness of tobacco and wine.
You judge others without knowing them. And about you how many villains you know and forget about them!
The Japanese consider Christianity a feature of civilization. Will they be able to neutralize Christianity, like our Europeans, so that it does not destroy what they take from civilization?
The great majority live only an animal life, and in human affairs blindly obey public opinion.
We pray in words. And communication with Him, with God, is possible not through words, but only through love.
Consciousness awakens us from sleep. So only consciousness (who am I?) awakens us from the false carnal life. The soul is consciousness. It would seem that it is a small conscience. Life is so complicated and tangible, and consciousness so small, so hard to notice. Small and hard to see, but she is Everything. What is consciousness? It is the fact that I will ask myself the question of who and what I am. And I will answer, I am me. But I will ask myself who is this second "I"? The answer is only one: me too, and whenever you ask me too, me. Obviously, the "I" is something outside of space... outside of time... The only thing that really exists. Everything corporeal could have appeared under the conditions of space and time, but not consciousness. And consciousness is everything.
One of the main causes of suicides in the European world is the false Christian doctrine of the church about heaven and hell. The world does not believe in heaven and hell, but meanwhile the idea that life must be heaven or hell has been so strongly imprinted on its mind that it does not accept the rational understanding of life as it is, not as heaven or hell, but as struggle, unceasing struggle, unceasing because life means precisely struggle, but not the struggle of the Darwinist theory between beings, between individuals and beings, between individuals, but the struggle of spiritual forces with their bodily limits. Life is the battle between soul and body. Understanding life in this way, suicide is impossible, useless, absurd. The good is only in life. I look for the good. How to leave life to find the good? I'm looking for mushrooms. Mushrooms only grow in the forest. How to get out of the forest to find mushrooms?
The only thing that can please me, as a man who lives for his soul, is that I have become less of a villain than I was before. And this is not just a phrase for the sake of the beauty of the idea and the word, but my honest, controllable and real state of mind lately. And the joy of being aware of every progress, no matter how small, is a great joy.
Detachment (actions performed mechanically, unconsciously) is the basis of true life, the basis of moral perfection. Life is the striving for perfection. Man's accomplishments add to the domain of what is experienced, of habit, and man makes new efforts to add habits to the sphere of the unconscious. Struggle is always negative. Nor can it be otherwise, since life means liberation. Release takes place. Our life's work is to do nothing that opposes liberation. Therefore the deed is the awareness of life and combating everything that stands in its way. The effort that transforms something done into habit is the most important thing, the only work of life. Without effort, there is no human life, only animal life. Materialists are very right when, speaking of animal life, they reduce it to the struggle for existence and the formation of habits. But if we talk about human life, we have to explain its main quality, striving. What is striving from a materialistic point of view?
The longer I live, the less I understand the material world, and on the contrary, I become more and more aware of what is impossible to understand and can only be aware of.
The Christian ideal of our time is absolute righteousness. To regard marriage as a holy thing, or even as a good thing, is an abdication of the ideal. Christian devotion, if we accept the religious act of devotion, can be only one, devotion to absolute righteousness, in no case the acceptance of sexual relations, and the oath can be only one for the two spouses, not of faith to each other, but of righteousness, which presupposes faith towards one alone. "And what will happen to the human race then?" I don't know. I only know that, just as for man the animal law of struggle is not binding, on the contrary, so there is the law of love which denies struggle. I also know that the animal law of association is not obligatory for man, but the opposite ideal of righteousness is obligatory. What will come out of this? I do not know. But I know that following the higher aspirations of my being, of love and righteousness, nothing but good can come.
It is very important: as the concept of creation entered the minds of people and demanded an answer to the question: how did the world appear in time? - the creation of the world (Darwin) - the same happens with the question about the source of evil (Adam's sin, heredity). Both are gross prejudices. The world did not appear, but I exist.
It goes without saying that people could not spoil life, make a good life essentially a bad life. They could only, and have, temporarily ruined the lives of the present generations, instead they have unwittingly introduced into life the element which pushes it rapidly forward. If they have done and are doing the greatest harm by the irreligious perversion of men, they also unwittingly introduce what unites men by their injurious inventions, for themselves and their generations. They corrupt people, but they corrupt everybody, Hindus, Chinese, blacks, everybody. Medieval theology or the depravity of the Romans only perverted their peoples, a small part of humanity. Now, however, electricity, railways, the telegraph, the printing press are perverting everything. All appropriate, they cannot but appropriate everything, and all suffer equally, are forced to change their lives equally, all are forced to change the most important thing in life, their understanding of it, their religion.
Cars, to do what? The telegraph (telephone), to transmit what? Schools, universities, academies, to learn what? Meetings to discuss what? Books, newspapers, to spread information about what? Railways to go where? And who goes? Millions of people gathered and subject to one authority, to do what? Hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, to prolong life, but why prolong it?
For God's sake, not for His sake, but for your sake, come to your senses. Understand the craziness of your life. At least for an hour detach yourself from the trifles in which you are caught and which seem so important to you: all your millions, your robberies, the premeditation of murders, your parliaments, your sciences, your churches. At least for an hour detach yourself from all this and look at your life, look at yourself, look at your soul that lives in your body for a short and slow time, come to your senses, look at you and at life around you, understand all your madness and shudder. Shudder and seek salvation. [...] Come to your senses for an hour and you will see clearly that the only important thing in life is not something external. We only need what is within ourselves. Only if you understand that you need nothing, absolutely nothing, except one thing: to save your soul, because only in this way can we save the world. Amen.
...All because of the terrible, harmful and very widespread prejudice of people who live without faith, the prejudice that people can order their lives, it would be good if it were their lives, but they all order the lives of others, families, social strata, the peoples. This prejudice is horribly damaging because man squanders with the arrangement of his life and that of others that force of the soul given to perfect himself.
The prejudice of evil. Evil did not exist. Life is good. Evil, absent good, is only an indication of error. Time exists only for us to see our mistakes and correct them, having the joy (ultimate good) of correcting our mistakes. But if we do not correct our mistakes, they are corrected against our will by death. Yes, life is good, evil does not exist. There are only our faults, the common and the personal. And we are given the joy to, through time, not only correct them, but use the experience of all mankind.
How easy it is to acquire what we call civilization for individual men and nations! Finish a university, clean your nails, use the services of a tailor and a barber, travel abroad and here is a civilized man in all his glory. And for the peoples, as many railways, academies, factories, dreadnoughts *, fortresses, newspapers, pariahs, parliaments, and behold the most civilized people. This is why people cling to civilization and not to education, people and nations alike. The first is easily obtained, does not require great efforts and is accepted, the second, on the contrary, requires great efforts and is not only not accepted, but is always despised and hated by most people, because it exposes the lie of civilization.
We call evil that which we and our bodies do not like, a bad dog, a bad horse, a bad feather (do not write), a bad children's table because it has struck it, a bad man, a bad God.
How good would it be to answer the question: How are you doing with your health? to be able to answer honestly: I don't know, it doesn't concern me.
Religious truth presupposes the consciousness of the unseen principle which gives life to all, and the aspiration to fulfill the requirements of that principle. Requirements that can be known by every person and even more so by those in whom this consciousness is alive. It is the same everywhere, the expression of this supreme principle unites people, and those united under the influence of lusts, passions falsify the understanding of this principle and its requirements. Their union is therefore the basis and the cause for not fulfilling the requirements.
How difficult, but how good and what a joy it is to live independently of the judgment of people, only before the judgment of your conscience, before God. When I feel that it feels so good!
Memory? How often memory is mistaken for intelligence. But it is not observed that memory excludes cleverness, it is incompatible with it, with the cleverness of the original solution of real problems. One replaces the other.