13) As soon as you have a disagreeable feeling towards a man, it
means there is something you don’t know. And you ought to find out:
you ought to find out the motives of that act which was disagreeable
to you. And as soon as you have understood the motives clearly then
it can anger you as little as a falling stone.
14) You get angry at a woman because she does not understand--or she
understands, but does not do that which her reason tells her. She
is unable to do it. Just as a magnet acts on iron and does not act
on wood, so are the conclusions of reason not binding on her--have
no motor power. For her feeling is binding, and the conclusions
of reasons are so only when they are transmitted by authorities,
i.e., by the feeling of the desire not to remain behind others. So
that she will not believe and will not follow an obvious demand of
reason, if it be not confirmed by an authority; but she will believe
and follow the greatest absurdity if only every one does it. She
cannot do otherwise. But we get angry. There are also many men like
that--womanish.
15) One has to serve others, not oneself, if only for the reason
that in the serving of others there is a limit and therefore it
is possible here to act rationally, build a house for him who is
without, buy cattle, clothes; but in the serving of oneself there
is no limit: the more you serve, the worse it is.
16) Time is only for the body: it is the relationship of beings with
the various limits seen by us, to beings whose limits we do not see;
to the movement of the sun, the moon, the earth, to the movement of
the sands in the hour-glass. And therefore time is for that which we
call the body, for that which has limits; but for that which has no
limits: for the spiritual--there is no time. Therefore you remember
only those times in which you lived spiritually. (Unclear, but was
clear.)
17) We suffer from ourselves, from the demands of our “self,” and
we all know that the only means for not suffering from that “self,”
is to forget it. And we seek forgetfulness in distractions, in
occupations with art, science, in wine, in smoking--and there is no
real forgetfulness. But God made it so that there should be only
one real forgetfulness, one that is real and always at hand--in the
care for others, in the serving of others.
But I forgot this and I live a terribly selfish life, and therefore
I am unhappy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account