Chapter 21 Volume 3 Faith-9

The innocent, honest and simple people know you best.In his view, you are a confidant who knows his inner life well, and a permanent and faithful witness of his beliefs. Even if he is misunderstood by the whole world, only you know his sincerity, and only you understand him.In his eyes, you are a loving father who always has good intentions for him and does everything you can for his best good.He devotes his whole being to your good decision.He said, "Treat me as you wish; I know it will be good, because that is what you have done".The brooding man, who has only heard your voice but never seen your face, wants to teach us about your true nature, and instead erects for us a paradoxical, ugly thing that pretends to be yours. People with a little common sense find it ridiculous, and people with wisdom and kindness find it disgusting and terrifying.

I cover my face before you and raise my hands in blessing.Just as I can never be yourself, I can never see how you exist to yourself, how you appear to yourself.After millions of years of spiritual life, I shall still be as incomprehensible to you as I am now in this hut made of mud. ——Things that I understand become finite things through my simple understanding; this finite thing will never be transformed into an infinite thing by people even if it uses the method of infinite improvement and infinite ascension.What separates you from finite things is not in degree, but in kind.They can only make you, and always a greater man, by that way of infinite improvement, but never into an immeasurable God or an infinite being. —I have only this consciousness of going forward by rigorous reasoning, and can never conceive of anything else.How can I think you have such a consciousness?How can I extend this concept to you without the limitations of the limitations contained in the concept of personality?

I don't want to deal with that which is incomprehensible to me because of the finiteness of my essence, which may not be of much use to me; how you exist in yourself, I don't want to know.But whatever I become what I ought to be, your relation to me, the finite, and to all other finites, is always before me, and it is more present around me than the consciousness of my own existence. more obvious.You have brought about in me the awareness of my duty, of my mission in the order of rational beings; but how you have brought about this I do not know, nor need I know.You know and realize what I think and desire; but how can you know what I think and desire, and with what activity you have produced such awareness, I do not know, although I even know very well that about an activity , especially the concept of a special kind of consciousness, valid only for me, not for you, the infinite.You want, because you want my free obedience to always be fruitful; but I do not understand this movement of your will, but at most know that it is not the same as mine.You have action, and your will itself is action; but your mode of action is quite the opposite of the only mode of action I can conceive.You have life, and exist because your knowledge, desires, and activities are omnipresent and present to bounded reason; but your existence is different from the only one I can ever conceive of.

In the intuition of this relationship between you and me, the finite, I think of peace and happiness.I just know directly what I should do.I want to do it freely, joyfully, and frankly, because it is your voice that commands me to do it, which is dictated to me by the spiritual cosmic plan; and the power with which I carry it out is your power.What the voice commands me to do, to use this power to accomplish, is indeed truly good in the spiritual cosmic plan.I am at peace in all the events of this world, because all these events are in your world.Since you have life, and I am watching your life, nothing can confuse, surprise or depress me.For in you, and through you, O Infinite, I even see my present world illuminated by another light.Nature and natural consequences in the fate and activities of free beings become an empty and meaningless vocabulary with respect to you.There is no nature anymore, but you, you alone exist.

I no longer feel that the ultimate purpose of the present world consists in the mere general state of peace of man, and that this state and his absolute dominion over the mechanical forces of nature should be created, but that the ultimate purpose of the present world consists in The general state of peace for mankind should be created by humanity itself, as this state is desired by all, and this state should be created by all of us as a great, free, moral community.There is nothing new and better for the individual than his will to duty; nothing new and better to the community but a will in common. Good things, this is the fundamental law of the great ethical kingdom, and the present life is an integral part of this kingdom.Therefore, the good will of the individual is often useless for the world, because it is only the will of the individual, the will of the majority is not consistent with it, and its results can only be seen in the future world.Thus even human passions and vices seem to contribute to something better; not, of course, by themselves, for in this sense evil can never produce good, but by virtue of their ability to contradict Balance the evils of each other, and finally destroy the opposite evils with their own advantages, and at the same time destroy themselves with the opposite evils.Oppression can never prevail unless the cowardice, baseness, and mutual suspicion of men pave the way for it.Oppression will continue to grow until it has removed cowardice and slavishness, and despair has awakened the courage that has been lost.Then the two opposite vices would destroy each other, and there would be born the noblest thing in all human relations, viz., eternal liberty.

Strictly speaking, the actions of some free beings produce results only for other free beings, because only in and for these free beings is there a world, and what we all agree on is precisely this world.But the actions of some free beings produce results in other free beings only through that infinite will which mediates all individuals.A call, an announcement, from this will to us is always a demand for us to fulfill a certain duty.Therefore even that which in the world we call evil, the result of the abuse of liberty, exists only by that will; and this liberty exists for all who desire it only because this Add responsibility to them.If in the eternal plan of our ethical upbringing and the upbringing of our race it were precisely these duties which should not be imposed on us, they would not be imposed on us in practical life, and the means of imposing them on us , that which we call evil, would not happen.In this respect, everything that happens here is good and absolutely purposeful.Only one world is possible, and that world is a thoroughly good world.Everything that happens in this world is for the improvement and upbringing of man, and thus for the attainment of man's earthly goals.This higher plan of the universe is what we call nature, because we say that nature leads men from want to industry, from the evils of general chaos to a kind of law, from their miseries of endless wars leading to the ultimate everlasting peace.The infinite, only your will, your providence alone, is this higher nature. —and this is best known only to the simple and unaffected man, for he sees this life as a place of trial and education, as a school for eternity, because he regards what he has He counts as insignificant all the fates that come his way, and counts the utmost importance of your arrangements that lead him to good, because he firmly believes that all things must be used for those who love their duties and understand you. people's best cause.

Oh! In the days of my life I was indeed in the dark;Wonderful spirit, only now do I fully comprehend the teaching that so astonishes me from your mouth, though my understanding has nothing against it; for now I comprehend its The full scope and its deepest grounds. Man is not a product of the perceptual world, and the ultimate goal of his existence cannot be achieved in the perceptual world.His mission transcends time and space, beyond all sensibility.What he is, and for what purpose he should make himself, he must know; and since his mission is high, his thought must be fully able to rise above all sensuous limitations.He must be so; where his being settles, there must also be his thoughts; and the view that is truly most human, and that suits his identity alone, the view that expresses all the powers of his thinking, is this , through this point of view he raises himself above the limits of sensibility, and all sensuous things are transformed for him into pure nothingness, into mere reflections in the eyes of the only non-sensuous things that exist.

Many people have risen to this point of view without clever thinking, but by virtue of their great minds and their pure ethical instincts, since they generally live first and foremost in belief only with their hearts.By their practice they deny the function and reality of the sensible world, and consider this function and reality to be nothing in determining their decisions and measures. It is also nothingness.Those who dare to say "Our hometown is in the sky, we don't have a place to stay here for a long time, but we are looking for a place for the future", those who "destroyed from this world, were born again, and are here People whose fundamental principle is "to enter another life" undoubtedly do not think that all perceptual things have the slightest value. In academic language, they are practical transcendental idealists.

Others, in addition to the perceptual behavior we are all born with, also use their thinking to strengthen themselves in the sensibility, twist with the sensibility, and grow with the sensibility. These people can only use continuous, Only by thinking to the bottom can they always fully elevate themselves above the sensibility; otherwise, even if they have the purest ethical beliefs, they will always be pulled down by their intellect, and their whole essence will remain a constant. posited, never-resolvable contradiction.For such a philosophy, which I am only now fully acquainted with, becomes the primordial force which causes the mind to throw off its outer shell and spread its wings, so that the mind first floats above itself. and get a bird's-eye view of your abandoned shell, so that you can live and gallop in a higher realm in the future.

I wish I were blessed with a moment when I made up my mind and thought about myself and my mission.All my problems are solved; I know what I can know, and I never worry about what I cannot know.I was satisfied; a state of complete harmony and clarity of my spirit began, a new and more magnificent existence of my spirit began. My full and complete mission I cannot comprehend; what I should be, what I will be, transcends all my powers of thought.Part of this mission is hidden from myself, visible only to a spirit, the spiritual father to whom this mission is entrusted.I only know that this mission is sure to me, a mission as eternal and grand as the spiritual father himself.But that part of the mission which I entrusted to myself, I know, I know perfectly, and this part is the source of all the rest of my knowledge.I know exactly what I'm supposed to do in every moment of my life, and that's my whole mission insofar as it depends on me.Since my knowledge cannot go beyond this point, I should not depart from this point; I should not seek any knowledge beyond this point; I should be fixed in this single center point, in which I should be rooted.All my imaginations and zeals, all my endowments should be directed to this point, and this point should weave my whole existence within itself.

I should do all I can to cultivate my intellect, to acquire knowledge for me; but in spite of everything, I must make up my mind, thereby preparing duty within me to a larger scale and a wider range of activity; I should desire Many things, so many things can be achieved.I should use my strength and skill from every side, but only to equip duty in me with a more useful and skillful instrument; for till the order out of my whole personality, I am all responsible to my conscience for this.I should do my best to express in me the fullness of humanity, but not for the sake of humanity itself; humanity has no value in itself, on the contrary, it is to express in humanity the virtue that alone has value of the highest perfection.I should use my mind and body, with all that is in me, to see me only as a tool to perform my duties, and to do my best, caring only that I do my duties, that I can do them.But as soon as the order—if it is really only an order I obey, if I am really only conscious of the sole pure purpose of my obedience—outside my personality and enters the world, I need not worry about it anymore, because From this moment the order enters into the hands of the Eternal Will.To worry about it from now on would be the unnecessary pain I inflict on myself, it would be disbelief and distrust in the eternal will.I should never do what I like, try to govern the world instead of the eternal will, listen in my conscience not to the voice of the eternal will but to the voice of my finite intelligence, and substitute short-sighted individual one-sided plans for the overall view of the eternal will the plan of.I know that I must thereby be separated from the order of the eternal will, and from the order of all spiritual beings. Just as I respect this higher order with equanimity and resignation, so should I respect in my actions the liberty of other beings outside myself.The question is not what they should do according to my concept, but what I can do to push them to do what they do.But only so far as the order of society and their own will permit, can I hope to influence their beliefs and their own will directly, and never in spite of their beliefs and their will, to influence their strength and power. relation.They themselves are responsible for doing what they do, and here I cannot or cannot change what they do, and the Eternal Will will direct all things to the best.The important thing for me is that I respect their freedom, not that I block or cancel that which I find evil in the application of their freedom. I raised myself to this point of view, became a new kind of creation, and my whole relationship to the existing world was completely changed.The cords that had hitherto connected my soul to the world, and secretly guided its movements in this world, were broken forever, and I stood free, peaceful, and motionless, and became myself. own world.I no longer rely on emotion, but only by the eye to grasp and relate to them, and this eye itself shines brightly in freedom, and sees truth and beauty through error and ugliness, as if in peace. Forms on the surface of the water purely reflect themselves in a softer radiance. My spirit is closed to trouble and confusion, to hesitation, doubt and fear; my heart is closed to grief, remorse and greed.There's only one thing I can know, and that's what I'm supposed to do, and I always know that absolutely.Of all other things I know nothing, and I know that I know nothing of all other things, and I firmly hold to my ignorance, instead of fantasizing and speculating about things I do not know, which make me ignorant of such things. Things contradict themselves.No event in the world moves me through sorrow or joy; I look down on everything calmly and indifferently, because I know that I can neither explain any single event nor understand its connection with the only event that concerns me.Everything that happens belongs to the plan of the Eternal World, and is good in that plan, that's all I know; Made me more or less happy, I don't know.In this planned world, all things grow and prosper; this satisfies me, and this faith of mine is unshakable; but in this planned world what is only the seed, what is the flower, and what is the fruit itself, I don't know. The only thing I can care about is the progress of reason and ethics in the realm of rational creatures, and that's only for rational creatures themselves, for progress.It does not matter to me whether I or another person are the means to this end, whether my actions or those of another person make or hinder the cause.Wherever I see myself only as one of the means to a rational end, I value and love myself, concern myself only as such an end, and hope that my Actions succeed.In exactly the same way, therefore, I look upon all events in the world, whether they be of mine or of another, directly concerning myself or of another, purely in terms of this one goal.My heart is closed to the vexation of personal humiliation, to the ecstasy of personal achievement, because my whole personality has long since disappeared and sunk for me in the intuition of the goal. Although there is often an appearance, it seems that truth is now completely silenced, that virtue has been eradicated, that irrationality and vice have exerted all their power, and it is almost impossible to feel that they are not rational. and true wisdom; though the human condition, when all good men wish it to be better, has never been so bad; The sudden and unexpected transformation of the cause on which my eyes were fixed, into the most base and outrageous things, does not cause me to lose my self-control, just as in another case, despite the seemingly sudden prosperity of the Enlightenment, Liberty and independence are so vigorously propagated, and gentleness and generosity, fairness and humility are so common in the world, that this superficial appearance cannot make me inattentive and convinced that everything seems to be done. —I think that's the way it is; or, that's the way it is, it does seem to me.In both cases I knew, as I usually do in any possible case, what I should do further.For all the rest I am still in the most perfect state of tranquility, for I am ignorant of all the rest.Those events which have saddened me may have been immediate means to good ends in the plans of the Eternal; and the struggle of evil against good may be the last important struggle it wages, and this time it may gather its All powers, in order to lose them and reveal its whole impotent truth.The phenomena that please me may be based on very dubious foundations; what I regard as enlightenment may be only a superficiality that seems rational and aversion to all ideas; what I regard as independent may be just headstrong and bohemian; what I regard as mild and honest, may be mere sluggishness. I don't know it, but it may be so, so I seem to have no more reason to be sad about the latter than I should be happy about the former.But I know that I am in the world of the highest wisdom and goodness, which sees its plans completely and completely, and executes them without error; The fact that free beings, destined for reason and ethics, turn against reason, exert their powers, promote irrationality and crime, does not deprive me of my self-control, nor does it make me rest in anger and injustice. The power of indignation.They hate good because it is good, and they promote evil because they love evil for itself. This inversion, though it may fill me with righteous indignation, does not impute to any being with a human face, for I know that in human nature This inversion is not included.