13) I walked along the road and thought, looking at the forests,
the earth, the grass, what a funny mistake it is to think that the
world is such as it appears to me. To think that the world is such
as it appears to me, means to think that there can be no other being
capable of knowledge except myself with my six senses.[116] I stopped
and was writing that down. Sergei Ivanovich[117] approached me. I
told him what I was thinking. He said:
“Yes, one thing is true, that the world is not such as we see it
and we don’t know anything as it is.”
I said:
“Yes, we know something exactly as it is.”
“What is it?”
“That which knows. It is exactly such as we know it.”
14) One is often surprised that people are ungrateful. One ought
to be surprised at how they could be grateful for good done them.
However little good people do, they know with certainty that the
doing of good is the greatest happiness. How then can people be
grateful to others that these others have drunk themselves full,
when that is the greatest enjoyment?
15) Only he is free whom nothing and nobody can hinder from doing
what he wants. There is only one such work to do--to love.
16) Prayer is directed to a personal God, not because God is personal
(I even know as a matter of fact that He is not personal, because the
personal is finite and God is infinite), but because I am a personal
being. I have a little green glass in my eye and I see everything
green. I can not help but see the world green, although I know that
it is not like that.
17) The æsthetic pleasure is a pleasure of a lower order. And
therefore the highest æsthetic pleasure leaves one unsatisfied. In
fact, the higher the æsthetic pleasure, the more unsatisfied it
leaves one. It always makes one want something more and more. And
so without end. Only moral good gives full satisfaction. Here there
is full satisfaction. Nothing further is wished for or needed.
18) A lie to others is by far neither as important nor as harmful
as a lie to oneself. A lie to others is often an innocent play, a
satisfying of vanity. A lie to oneself is always a perversion of
the truth, a turning aside from the demands of life.
19) Although seldom, yet it has happened to me that I have done good
from pity, a real good. In that case you never remember what you
really have done and under what circumstances. You remember only that
you were with God (this occurred to me in regard to my favourite
boots which I remember I gave away out of pity and for a long time
I could not remember where they had gone). It is the same way with
all those moments when I was with God, whether in prayer or in the
business of life. Memory is a fleshly affair, but here, the thing
is spiritual.
20) Man can not live a fleshly life, if he does not consider himself
in the right and he can not live a spiritual life if he does not
consider himself sinful.
21) ...
I am going to sleep. It is 12:30 in the morning, July 30th.
_July 31, Y. P. If I live._
_July 31, Y. P._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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