To-day September 28. Y. P.
Have worked all the time on Resurrection; now I have stumbled on the third part. It is long since I have made no progress.
… I have wrought for myself a calm which is not to be disturbed: not to speak and to know that this is necessary; that it is under these condi-tions one ought to live.
There are here Ilya, Sonya 385 with the children, Andrusha with his wife, Masha with her hus-band.
I am thinking more and more often about the philosophic definition of space and time. To-day, if I have time, I am going to write it out.
I read an interesting book about Christ never having been, that it was a myth. 386 The proba-bilities that it is right there are as many for it, as there are against.
Yesterday with the help of Masha I answered all the letters; many remained unanswered. I am still ill; rarely a day without pain. I am dissatis-
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fied with myself, also morally. I have let myself go very much I do not work physically and I am occupied with myself, with my health. How difficult it is to bear sickness resignedly, to go unto death without resistance and one must. I have been thinking during this time :
1 ) Women demanding for themselves the work of man and the same freedom, mostly demand for themselves unconsciously the freedom for licence, and as a result go down much lower than the family, though aiming to stand higher than it.
2) What is this memory which makes from me one being, from childhood unto death? What is this faculty connecting separate beings in time, into one? One ought to ask not what is it that unites, but what divides, these beings. The faculty of time divides, beyond which I cannot see myself. I am one indivisible being from birth un-til death; but to manifest and to know myself, I must do so in time. I am now such as I was and will be; but one who had to and even will manifest myself and know myself in time. I have to manifest myself and know myself in time for communion with other beings and for influencing them.
3) I plucked a flower and threw it away. There were so many of them, it was no pity. We do not value these inimitable beauties of living be-ings and destroy them, having no pity not only for
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plants, but for animals, human people. There are so many of them. Culture, civilisation, is nothing else than the ruin of these beauties and the re-placing them . . . with what? The saloon, the theatre . . .
4) They reproach you with malice, debauchery, lies, thefts, bring proof, etc. What is to be done? Answer the question with What time is it? Are you going to take a swim? Have you seen N N, etc. That is the best and only means of bearing these accusations and even clearing them up.
5 ) The dearest thing on earth is the good rela-tion between people; but the establishment of these relations is not the result of conversation on the contrary, they become spoiled by conversation. Speak as little as possible, and especially with those people with whom you want to be in good rela-tion.
6) In eating, I destroy the limits between my-self and other beings; creating children, I do al-most the same thing. The results of the destruc-tion of material limits are visible; the results of the destruction of the spiritual limits and the union re-sulting from this are invisible, only because they are broader.
7) “ People are divided (divided from other beings), and this appears to them as space. The fact that they are inseparable in essence appears to them as time.” That is the way I have noted
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it. Space divides, time unites. But this is un-true. Both time and space are dividers and they form the impossibility of realising unity. (Unclear, but I understand. I will make it clear later.)
8) Brotherhood is natural, proper to people. Non-brotherhood, divisions, are carefully nur-tured.
9) Sometimes one feels like complaining child-ishly to some one (to God), to beg for help. Is this feeling good ? It is not good : it is a weakness, a lack of faith. That which more than anything resembles faith the beseeching prayer, is in truth a lack of faith a lack of faith that there is no evil, that there is nothing to ask for, that if things are going badly with you, then it only dem-onstrates that you ought to improve yourself, and that there is going on, that very thing which ought to be, and under which you ought to do that which has to be done.
10) Just now I wrote this coldly, understand-ing with difficulty that state in which you wish to live for God alone, and I see through this how there are people who absolutely never understand this, not knowing any other kind of life besides the worldly, for people. I know this state, but can-not just now call it up in myself, but only remem-ber it.
n) Everything which lives without conscious-280
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ness, as I live when I sleep, as I lived in the womb of my mother, lives not materially, i.e., not know-ing matter, but lives. But life is something spiritual. Endeavouring to remember my state before consciousness, on the threshold of con-sciousness, I know only the feeling of depression, satisfaction, pleasure, suffering, but there is no conception of my body or of another’s. The con-ception of body (matter) manifests itself only when consciousness is manifested. The conception of body manifests itself only, because conscious-ness gives understanding of the presence in one’s self of the basis of everything (spiritual). And at the same time, as I know that I am the basis of everything, I know also that I am not the whole basis, but a part of it. And it is this being a part of a whole, these limits separating me from the whole, I know through my body : through my own body and the bodies surrounding me.
12) If you desire something, if you are afraid of something, that means that you do not believe in that God of love which is in you. If you had believed in Him, then you could not have wanted anything or have been afraid, because all desires of that God which lives in you are being always fulfilled, because God is all-powerful; and you would never have been afraid, because for God there is nothing terrible.
13) Not to think that you know in what the
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will of God really lies, but to be humble; and then you will be loving. And the will of God in rela-tion to you, lies only in this.
14) People convincing others that reason can-not be the guide of life are those in whom reason is so perverted, that they clearly see that they have been led into a swamp.
15) The only instance where a man can and ought to occupy himself with himself, is when he feels unhappy. Unhappiness is the best condi-tion for perfection, the ascent to the higher steps. Unhappiness is a sign of one’s own imperfection. One ought to rejoice at these instances: it is the preparation of one’s self for work, a spiritual food.
1 6) Now I am an ordinary man, L. N. (Tol-stoi), and animal, and now I am the messenger of God. I am all the time the same man, but now I am the public and now I am the judge himself with the chain, fulfilling the highest respon-sibilities. One must put on the chain more often.
L’atterly I have got out of the habit, have weakened. I have only just now remembered.
17) Man is a being beyond time and beyond space who is conscious of himself in the conditions of space and time.
18) Games, cards, women, races, are alluring because they have been thought out for the biases. It is not for nothing that the wise teachers have
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forbidden them. Artificial play is corrupting. They are needed for the blase, but the simple working people need the very simplest plays with-out preparation.
19) Only then will you produce true love, when you will resist offence, overcome offence with love, will love your enemy.
20) They desire, they are excited, they suffer only for trifles or for bad things. The good things are accomplished without excitement. It is from this that the word heart means malice. (Serdit, to get angry, to put into a passion, comes from sertse, the heart. Translator’s note.)
To-day Oct. 2. Y. P.
I am still ill, I am not suffering, but I feel threatened constantly. Morally I am better I remember God in myself more often, and death. It seems to me I have come out of the difficult place in Resurrection. . . . Kolichka went away. Sonya arrived she is ill.
I am continuing to write out from the note-books :
i ) I have made this note : Space comes from the consciousness of limits, from the conscious-ness of one’s own separateness; I am one, and the world is another. And in the world are simi-lar beings with limits: 2, 3, 4, … to infinity.
These beings can find
